47 National Religious Leaders (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) Call for Urgent Priority to Health Care Reform--and why I signed

        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