Progressive Revival

African-Americans are disproportionately represented on death row. Of the 3,500 people on death row, about 42 percent are black, and virtually all are poor. Studies underscore that it is race and class, more than guilt, that determines whether a defendant, once convicted, is sentenced to death.

The statistics paint an ongoing portrait of inequality. Unemployment for African-Americans remains twice that of whites and studies show there is no scientific rationale -- neither education nor experience -- that explains the gap. In some American cities, 50 percent of school-aged black men drop out of school and as much as 50 percent of young black men are unemployed.

        On the one hand, I wanted the Network of Spiritual Progressives to be included in a list of some of the most important religious forces in the U.S. I was honored that we had been invited to be among them.  On the other hand, my requests that a stronger statement be floated or that the Religious Summit on Health Care being held today in Washington D.C. include an endorsement of Single Payer (Medicare for Everyone--not just for people over 65) or  at least a strong public option that could negotiate lower costs for drugs from pharmaceuticals and could force insurance companies to lower their costs in order to compete with the far more efficient public sector possibilities (already demonstrated by Medicare) were met with explanations that the coalition would be narrower should the statement be stronger, and that in any event the "realities" of "Inside the Beltway" consciousness already guaranteed that Single Payer was "off the table" and even "public option" might seem Utopian (note the coded message to Congress from Rahm Emanuel yesterday saying that the Obama Administration was willing to give up on a public option since that was only one possible way of achieving cost savings, and that "enhanced competition" between insurance companies might achieve the same goal).

         My counter argument was this: Obama loves to find "common ground" among the contending forces. So if the only voices he hears contending range from centrists who back his already compromised notions to right-wing forces who oppose any health care reform to insurance companies, hospitals and other health-care profiteers who seek to weaken any pressure on them to provide for the common good, of course the outcome will be a compromise toward the political Right. That's why the Religious Community has a responsibility to be a Prophetic Voice, and to insist on the approach that is most consistent with actually giving "care" the priority over "profits" for the health-care profiteers, and saying that that must be the principle guiding the health care debate. That would mean endorsing Congressman John Conyers'  HR 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act , insisting that the media give attention to the ways that that kind of "single-payer" plan would be both more cost efficient and provide better care, and insisting that the discussion be shifted to the issue of care rather than "what will fly in D.C." which is simply code words for "what will those Congressional reps who are dependent on the contributions of the health care industry be willing to allow to get through their committees."  In terms of how to have an impact, the only way we can get something close to reasonable (by the criterion on providing the best care accessible to the greatest numbers) through the Congress is if the White House fights for it, and the White House will NOT fight for that unless they face the pressure for a "care-oriented" proposal rather than a "mollify the health-profiteers" proposal. 

        Why, you might ask, does it have to be "the religious community" that should take the lead in creating the more progressive alternative? Why isn't that already happening from the liberal and progressive forces? The answer is because Obama has organized those forces into a campaign for an already compromised position without any clear guiding principle other than "we urgently need health care reform"--and that is precisely what is reflected in the statement I signed below. In effect, Obama has cut the ground from under the progressive perspective by convincing them all to be "realistic"--and as a result, he faces no counter-pressure apart from the pressures to his right.

       So then why did I sign? I succumbed to the same pressures that have "de-Prophet-ised" the religious world. "Wouldn't it be better for the Network of Spiritual Progressives to be represented on this list of liberal religious forces than for it to be absent?" I asked myself. The lure of "inclusion" and "access to the powerful" and "being part of the consensus" seemed attractive, while there seemed to be little to be gained by simply not being on the list--no one would be asking "why wasn't the NSP part of the statement?" but instead they'd just assume "the NSP isn't important enough to be part of it. After all, there's nothing in the statement we disagree with, so why not keep our name as part of the process? " And this is precisely how the psycho-political dynamics of "lowest common denominator consensus" works, driving prophetic critique out of the discourse and replacing it with the bland generalities that will disturb no one  that is reflected in the statement below.

         Unfortunately, my desire to explain to you the behind-the-scenes reasoning is precisely ruining our temporary status as "insiders." The moment I talk like this, I break the cardinal rule of "inclusion" and "access to the powerful," namely: keep your prophetic ideas to yourself and never expose the way that fundamental principles are being abandoned for the sake of having power. In fact, it is precisely the tendency in me to not play by that rule which has kept me from being part of the insider-crowd all along. But that is the price of taking seriously that our fundamental commitment is to the God of the universe (or, for our secular spiritual members, a commitment to the highest ethical values of the humanist tradition)--and hence our responsibility is to fight for the full picture of what we need in order to alleviate unnecessary human suffering!

         "But wait," some of our critics will shout out, "don't you realize that politics is 'the art of the possible' and that you are making the mistake of making 'the best' become the enemy of 'the good-enough'?"  This is the standard line of the compromises, and it is based on the false assumption that they, the realists, know what is possible. But my  experience as a social change activist for the past 45 years of my life has taught me the opposite: that one never knows what is possible until one struggles for one's highest vision. And over and over again when people struggle for their highest vision, what appeared to be unrealistic and impossible becomes actual and achieved. It is actually the professional "realists" who don't understand, or don't want to understand, this essential truth about politics, in part because understanding it would push them into having to engage in struggles thaat might alienate them from the forces that are currently powerful, an alienation that would then make them feel that they had lost their one claim to "being important," namely their access to the powerful! But there is another way to "be important," namely to align your life with the highest values and deepest truths you know, and fight for them even when doing so risks putting you out of step with whatever the media, the corporate powers and their allies in government, and the manipulated consensus of public opinion tells you is "realistic." And that is why, despite signing this statement, I decided to tell you about why the religious community leaders are not playing prophetic politics in Washington today, and why, after saying all this, we at the NSP are unlikely to be included in the future.

--Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun Magazine and Chair, The Network of Spiritual Progressives

P.S.--If you want our voice to continue to speak this level of clarity, please Join the Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org

The Statement of the 47 Religious Leaders

The clerics of Iran are not of one mind on the recent Iranian election and voter fraud.  In fact they are deeply divided. The New York Times reported that in the religiously important town of Qum there is a group of clergy called the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum who issued a statement defying Ayatolla Ali Khamenei and his candidate Ahmadinejad.

"This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic," said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. "Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei."

This is good news for all of us who support the democratic process in Iran.  It is also good for those who question whether or not religious leaders of any type should exert influence in politics. 

Those who argue for a religious absence from politics come from two camps: one religious and one political.  The first is the religious people who contend that politics are too icky for the purity of the religious endeavor and that the two spheres of life - the religious and the political - should not touch lest the religious part be sullied.  This partition of life is not realistic. Any authentic religious practice involves more than the just the personal realm, it also is concerned with the social and how humans relate to one another (the love your neighbor is half of fhe two great commandments given by Jesus, the other half being love God.)  Keeping our religion free of politics leaves one with a small and self involved religious practice indeed.

The second objection comes from those in politics who lament that religious people desire to say something in the public square that stems out of their particular religious convictions.  This irks purely secular politicos because they are not sure that this is fair pool.  They don't know how to respond to someone who is making a religious claim in the public square.  But these objections are a historical - religious people have always made claims upon how we want our politics to work - the civil rights movement is one obvious example.  Religious people will make claims upon the political space - and that is a good thing.

The only exception to the positive blending of politics and religion is when the political and the religion become so intertwined as to be indistingushable one from another and where political and religious debate is curtailed.  This is called a theocracy and it is bad for both politics and religion - and until recently that was the situation in Iran.  Theocracies are hard to criticize or oppose because anyone who dares to do so is not only questioning the state, they are also said to be questioning God. 

The reality in Iran now is that dissenting voices from the clergy have seriously weakened the theocracy of Iran.  Let us pray that the clergy will be bold and that by displaying disagreement among religious people that the Iranian theocracy will fall and in its place will rise an Iranian democracy that welcomes poltical and religious participation from all its people. 

On July Fourth many of us attend parades that, in addition to the local chamber of commerce float, include men, boys and sometimes girls dressed in soldier costumes reminiscent of the war that brought the colonies independence from the British.  Reading about this war we know that it was brutal, horrifying and left serious deprivation for both sides but especially the nascent Americans.  On this July Fourth I am wondering what America as a nation might have become had we gained our independence from England through means of non-violent resistance instead of war?  

The question was brought home to me by my recent trip to India where ahimsa (the principle of no-harm) is honored in this country which gained its freedom from British rule not through war but through a popular uprising using the principles of non-violent resistance. 

This idea of a non-violent American revolution seems, at first blush, to be sentimental, academic or even heretical.   Yet the question of violent vs. non-violent revolutionary movements  is very real for those countries currently attempting to gain their freedom from oppressive occupying forces.  It is very real for the people of Tibet, for example.  Recently a group of students and I were able to meet with the Dailai Lama and with Prof. Rinpoche Sandhong, the Prime Minister of the Tibetan People in exile.  When we asked Prof. Rinpoche about Buddhism and the principle of Ahimsa he spoke of Gandhi.   "Gandhi did not invent non-violent resistance, but what he did was bring the principle of non-violence to an entire people to create change." 

Gandhi led the Indian people to a non-violent attainment of complete freedom from a much more powerful occupying force; Martin Luther King, Jr, was inspired to use these same techniques in the American civil rights movement; and Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu did the same in South Africa.  Today the people of Tibet, led by the Dalai Lama, have halted violent means of securing their freedom and in so doing have shown the Chinese invasion for the travesty that it is while providing spiritual inspiration for people of all nations.  

What if the practice of non-violence resistance had extended further back and had been employed in the Americas?  Would the French revolution have followed suit and been less bloody?  Would a non-violent  American revolution changed our understanding of conquest and freedom and altered our interactions with native American populations and with our neighbors to the south and north?

I am not a complete pacifist.  But the powerful freedom struggles of India and Tibet that did not rely on force but on spiritual principles have inspired me to re-consider our Independence day parades and to remember that there are other models of getting freedom in the world - ones that don't involve violence.  Let us celebrate our independence but reflect upon other means that true and lasting freedom are  attained.  Happy Fourth of July.