Recently in Defining Progressive Category

People often ask me why I don't blog more often in the crucible of the news cycle when an issue is "hot."  My friends and editors are always trying to get me to speed up--as I tend to be slow with my words.  Last week, for example, I was quiet as the war of words escalated between partisans in the Professor Gates/Cambridge police affair.  President Obama did, of course, jump in the fray with his poorly chosen assessment that the Cambridge police behaved "stupidly," only to apologize a couple of days later and invite the wronged parties to the White House for beer

President Obama's actions underscore my reticence to enter the blog-fray in heated battle.  By inclination and academic training, I'm a historian.  Historians believe that the more time we have to understand a situation, the better.   When seeing the picture of Professor Gates hauled away in handcuffs from his own house, I was shocked.  But I also suspected that something had happened of which I was unaware.  As a commentator, I had a sense of my own limitations.  Better, I thought, to let the picture speak for itself.  And better to hold back before starting to call someone names like "racist" or "bigot" or "idiot" or "rogue cop" or whatever.  The escalation is even more shocking than the original event--culminating yesterday with Glenn Beck calling President Obama a racist!

If nothing else, the events leading up to today's Beer Summit at the White House have underscored the importance of slow words.  Although progressive Christians are known for activism, liberal and progressive Protestantism also is marked by a commitment to intellectual analysis.  As a group, we are often painfully slow at decision-making--sometimes to the point of institutional paralysis.  But we are so slow because we believe that the world is a complex place that defies black-and-white (no pun intended) characterizations.  In particular, morality and ethics are often shades of grey, a shadowy realm of mixed human motives and less-than-perfect choices.  In my religious tradition, moving slowly is a spiritual practice--one that accounts for careful and thoughtful engagement with important ideas and events.

The progressive emphasis on thoughtful analysis is more than a matter of taste or the privilege of educated elites.  It is drawn from--what is arguably the most important of all liberal Christian sacred texts--the New Testament Letter of James.   This week's shouting match is well-described in this ancient paragraph:

For all of us make many mistakes . . . The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.  How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!  And the tongue is a fire.  The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell . . . No one can tame the tongue--a restless evil, full of deadly poison (James 3: 2-8).

The letter's author goes on to say that the tongue is corrected only by "works done with gentleness born of wisdom," by those who "make peace."  Quick and uninformed judgment must be restrained by a quest for wisdom.

Here, at Progressive Revival, Paul Raushenbush and I are trying to create a blog space that reflects the deepest virtues and values of mainline Protestant traditions--a way of being in the world that believes to hold back the tongue--even for a moment--creates the space for understanding, opens new possibilities, and allows us to glimpse God's reign.  Consideration, discernment, and thoughtfulness should never be an excuse to avoid action; rather, they should frame the way we act.  We're not in a contest for speed; we're on a journey toward wisdom. 

In the midst of the fray, I humbly invite spiritual progressives into a "slow word" movement.  Like the "slow food" movement that argues food must be savored to be healthy, so care-filled words also need to be digested in order to be wise, to act justly, and to make peace.  Slow words are a spiritual practice, one much needed in a world of junk politics and faux news events.  Slowing down, guarding our words, might reintroduce a measure of reality into our lives. In order to change the world, we must first learn to bridle the tongue.

Three news stories in recent days point to significant change in the landscape of North American religion.  For decades now, the conventional wisdom about church growth has been that only conservative churches--those that take the Bible literally and embrace conservative politics--could grow.  But it appears that conventional wisdom is being seriously questioned.

Take a look at these stories:

1.     The Southern Baptist Convention--the largest and most conservative Protestant denomination in the USA--records a continued decline in baptisms and an increasingly aging membership.  The oft-reported number of 18 million members has declined in the last decade to just over 16 million.  And, according to journalist Christine Wicker (see her book, The Fall of Evangelical Nation), the internal number of active members may well be around 5 million people.

2.     The Anglican Church of North America, the umbrella group for conservative Episcopalians who have left their denomination over women's ordination and full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons, has long claimed over 100,000 members.  Recently, they admitted that only 69,000 persons in 650 churches in the USA and Canada have joined their association. There are 2.2 million Episcopalians in the United States and approximately 1 million in Canada.  Thus, the conservative group--the one that has garnered so much media attention in recent years is a very small percentage of the entire North American Anglican membership--some 2% of the total.  And with their rigid opposition to women's ordination, it is hard to imagine that this group will find much appeal with young North Americans. 

3.     President Jimmy Carter last week publicly explained why he renounced his life-long affiliation with the Southern Baptists in an opinion piece appearing in The Age.  He denounced the Convention's leaders statement that women are inferior to men (created "second") and responsible for original sin as inherently discriminatory and that Southern Baptist views on gender were contrary to both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the teachings of Jesus. 

Taken singly, the stories might seem anecdotal.  But there are many other examples as well--the decline of Roman Catholicism among all demographic groups except new immigrant communities, the acceptance of LGBT inclusion among young evangelicals--and added together they are snapshots of what quantitative surveys have been pointing out for a couple of years--that membership decline isn't only the struggle of liberal churches.  As Jon Meacham wrote earlier this year in a Newsweek cover story, many conservative Christian groups aren't really doing very well, either.  The old accusation--and theological threat used by conservatives against mainline denominations--that the denominations have failed because they are too liberal--is now being proved false by both qualitative journalists and quantitative researchers.  Almost all Christian institutions are experiencing slowing growth and/or membership declines.  The only growing Christian churches in North America are "non-denominational," and those congregations are difficult to classify theologically because they are so diverse.

What is causing the erosion of Christianity in North America?  Most North Americans look at Christianity--especially as embodied in religious institutions--and find it wanting.  I suspect that Christianity is in decline because it appears both hypocritical and boring.  Although young North Americans express deep longings for a loving, just, and peaceful world, they don't find an equal passion for transforming society in meaningful ways in most congregations.  And, sadly, many churches simply lack the imagination and passion that many spiritual people are searching for.  Folks aren't looking for answers nearly as much as they are trying to clarify their questions and are hungry for accepting communities in which to ask them.

If you think about it, mainline liberal churches embody a theological vision of God's reign that resonates with contemporary hopes for social transformation.  But they often lack passion, acting on God's dream for the world in business-as-usual ways.  Conservative churches are chock-full of passion.  But they are often passionate about all the wrong stuff--like excluding people and supporting the military-and-economic status quo that is destroying the planet.  

Perhaps North American Christians are smarter than anyone suspects--that we are looking for congregations, communities and denominations that put the pieces together--passionate, imaginative, open, justice-seeking, inclusive, and loving gatherings of faith that actually live, as Jimmy Carter put it, "the teachings of Jesus Christ."  If progressive faith communities can be both--transformative and passionate--we may be better poised to reach a new generation than the "decline" bellyaching of recent decades suggests.  With the waning of conservative churches, it may well be the historical moment for the rest of us to step up the the spiritual plate.  

        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

With yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust museum, I was reminded of a story told to me several years ago by a professor of when he had been a doctoral student. 

An eminent post-modern theologian had come to his university to deliver a lecture on morality.  The guest insisted that morality was completely embedded in culture, "and that there was nothing that was universally wrong from one culture to another.  "Nothing," he insisted, "there is nothing that has been wrong in all places, all times, and to all people."  Then he added, "I dare you.  I dare you to tell me one thing--one thing--that is always wrong!"

My friend, whom I knew to be a liberal Democrat and was also a serious Methodist, rather sheepishly raised his hand.  "You there," the famous lecturer called on him, "can you tell me something that is always morally wrong?"  The young student responded shakily, "I think so.  One shouldn't burn Jews in ovens?"

The post-modern theologian stopped, and he looked as Paul might have on the road to Damascus.  "That's right," he thundered.  "One shouldn't burn Jews in ovens.  That is one, universally true moral principle." 

Well, there it is.  A universal moral principle--along with a corresponding principle, "One shouldn't walk into the Holocaust museum and start shooting people."

Yesterday, all of the news commentators agreed that James W. Von Brunn's action was morally wrong.  And, whenever a criminal breaks violates the communal moral conscience, everybody asks, "Why?"  What was the source of his evil?  Where did he go wrong?  What triggered this episode?

As pundits discuss these questions on the airwaves, their answers will fall into two predictable camps.  Conservatives will emphasize that Von Brunn was a "lone wolf," a deeply troubled man, who, acted on a bad belief (hatred of Jews) and made a bad choice (to pick up a gun and shoot people).   Liberals will analyze anti-Semitism, placing Von Brunn's actions within a larger framework of structural sin involving racism.  Some may also comment on institutional sins--gun control laws, the current economic crisis, and the "climate" created by talk radio for example--as sources of Von Brunn's actions. 

This is, of course, an old argument.  For almost a century, conservatives and liberals have been arguing the same point about sin.  Conservative theologians believed that sin is a personal matter, a choice made to break a moral code, usually based in some flawed belief system; liberal theologians believed that sin resulted from structural evils, whereby people act out of subservience to some form of institutionalized sin.  Hence, conservative sought to reform individuals while liberals sought to reform systems.  What made someone sin?  The soul or structure?  The individual or institution?  And this theological division made its way into political life--and it has shaped the way we argue about moral events in our public discourse.

In the 1990s, biblical scholar Walter Wink wrote a series of books arguing a new progressive understanding of sin.  He suggested that Christian theologians needed to re-engage the ancient biblical idea of the "principalities and powers,"

In the biblical view the Powers are at one and the same time visible and invisible, earthly and heavenly, spiritual and institutional . . . the Powers are simultaneously an outer, visible structure and an inner, spiritual reality. (Wink, The Powers That Be)

In other words, sin--the "powers" are both.  They exist in the malformed soul and are intrinsically tied up in the ways in which the world and culture are structured.  Everything--and everybody--has both good and evil within. 

This integrated understanding of sin goes a long way to help understand Von Brunn, where inner and outer "powers" combined to push him toward a form of racial idolatry and personal wickedness that resulted in killing another person.  But an integrated understanding of sin also begs the question:  Where was I in this story?  What do I do to resist these dehumanizing powers?  What systems and structures that I am part of perpetuate the evil from which Von Brunn acted?  (Talk radio hosts, take note....)

To say that Von Brunn was a lone gunman in a lone incident misses the point.  However, to say that D.C. has weak control laws (which were recently weakened by the NRA) also misses the point.  Von Brunn lived--as all of us do--in a complex, connected web of unredeemed powers that act as a cancer in the world. 

Walter Wink proposed that:

Redemption means actually being liberated from the oppression of the Powers, being forgiven for one's own sin and for complicity with the Powers, and setting about liberating the Powers themselves from their bondage to idolatry.  The good news is nothing less than a cosmic salvation, a restitution of all things, when God will "gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth". . . The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures. (Wink, Powers That Be)

Progressive Christianity is in no way a morally relativistic vision; instead, it is emerging as a morally integrated theology.  We need to examine all the powers-at-play in Von Brunn's reprehensive moral act--to name and resist the Powers is one way to transformation.   It is wrong--in every case, everywhere, for everyone, and every institution--to target people and deny them basic human dignity because of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual identity.  And equally wrong to let the "little" sins that contribute to the bigger evils to pass unchallenged.  

In 2004, a little book appeared that made quite a splash among dispirited Democrats:  George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant.  In it, Lakoff argued that Republicans and Democrats worked out of two different "framing" stories--frames are "mental structures that shape the way we see the world."  Republicans frame their politics in the terms of "a strict father family," while Democrats frame theirs on the ideal of a "nurturant parent family."  According to Lakoff, the party with the most compelling storyline often "wins" in public discourse.

Yesterday, in the dueling national security speeches of former Vice-President Cheney and President Obama, the two storylines stood in stark contrast--a visible demonstration of the difference between political approaches.

On one hand, Vice-President Cheney enacted the part of the strict father.  He chided Obama as a parent might correct an erring child--delivering a verbal conservative spanking to the young upstart who (according to Cheney) doesn't understand the ways of the real world.  He protected the traditions of the older generation, applauding himself for his own wisdom and insight--all the while reassuring the rest of the fearful family that his way is the right way.  Stay on the course of the Fathers (Cheney and Bush) and all will be well. 

And it was implicitly religious in the style of a Puritan jeremiad.  Cheney chastised the new administration for the sin of departing from the true path and threatened hellfire and damnation would result.  He insisted Obama repent and return.  Only then can the nation be saved.  It was a narrative masterwork of the old Republican frame--brilliant, scary, intimidating, and bizarrely reassuring all at the same time.

In contrast, President Obama's speech embodied many of the characteristics of nurturing parent politics--he empathized with people's worries about terrorism, and reiterated his commitment to national security (thus allowing for maximum human happiness).  He brought themes of freedom, fairness, community-building, trust, and open communication to the discussion--all of which are the nurturing values of progressive politics. 

However, Obama turned the prism of nurturing parent politics in an interesting and unexpected way.  Historically, progressives have said, "I empathize with you" (as did Bill Clinton), "These policies empathize with you" (as did Jimmy Carter), or "The government empathizes with you" (as did FDR).  But President Obama essentially said, "The law empathizes with you."  The entire speech, delivered at the National Archives (the building that houses our most cherished legal documents), argued that the closest possible attention to the traditions of the law would both protect us from harm and save our national soul.  The nurturing parent is not an individual, policies, or government.  In Obama's progressive politics, the law nurtures the American family with its hopes for happiness, fairness, community, and justice. 

This emphasis on the law-as-nurturing parent helps explain Obama's own coolheaded and dispassionate nature--he is able to stand alongside an issue and analyze it through the lens of legal traditions.  And it also explains his remark on wanting an "empathetic" Supreme Court justice.  He wants someone who shares this vision of the nurturant law as his legacy on the Court.

It is also a profoundly Judeo-Christian vision.  The law--as summed up in the injunction to love God and love one's neighbor--saves.  The law is not a set of rules to be adhered to in every circumstance (as some people misinterpret it); rather, the law is a summary of divine wisdom of how to shape a community in both devotion and ethics.  As rabbis, ministers, and theologians know, the law both instructs and empathizes.  According to Jewish and Christian scriptures, the law delights; the law forms the soul; the law teaches; the law nourishes; the law guides; the law frees; the law protects.  The law establishes Israel; Jesus reaffirmed the grace-filled power of the law in his own teaching:  The law is life.

Obama isn't trying to mediate between liberals and conservatives as Dick Cheney charged.  The President is trying to create an entirely new vision of progressive politics--one based deeply in American law, and one anchored in the wisdom traditions of Judaism and Christianity.  A progressive revival--both secular and sacred--of American community through the Law.

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.  They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.  In all that they do, they prosper.  Psalms 1:1-3.