Are you part of the Religious Left? Are you willing to fight back and change the dialogue from the religious dialogue outlined by the Right? In his article posted on Alternet
here Van Jones writes about what Rabbi Michael Lerner is up to-
Lerner wants to help forge a new alliance of "religious, secular and spiritual, but not religious, progressives." This alliance will someday expose and challenge the cancer of American consumerism. And it will oppose the religious Right's abuse of scripture to promote war, intolerance and ugly corporate agendas.
This sounds good but we are not off the hook-
More....
He wants to do more than just minister to the mall-lobotomized masses or give the fundamentalists a well-deserved spanking. He also wants to challenge the Left's chronic and toxic bias against religious feeling, expression and people. Lerner hopes to end "religio-phobia among progressives." And such efforts will not be welcome among a great many rabidly secular progressives.
Ouch! That hurts. But maybe it hurts because it is true and I hate to look at the ugly truth.
It is time for progressives to look at the civil rights movement and where this movement originated (The Black Churches) if we want to change the religious movement in this country to a progressive one as Van Jones points out:
All progressives today proudly celebrate that achievement -- and rightly so. But one key fact seems to escape the notice of today's activist crowd. The champions of the civil rights struggle didn't come marching out of shopping centers in South. Or libraries. Or high school gymnasiums.
To face the attack dogs, to face the fire-hoses, to face the billy-clubs, these heroes and she-roes came marching boldly out of church-houses. And they were singing church songs. They set an example of courage and sacrifice that will endure for the ages. And as they did it, they prayed on wooden pews in the name of a Nazarene carpenter named Jesus.
The implications are clear for those who seek today to rescue and redeem U.S. society. The facts are simple and profound: The last time U.S progressives captured the national debate and transformed politics, people of faith were at the center of the movement, not stuck in its closet.
So perhaps we REALLY need to think about this and think hard. What if the progressive religious movement is the only way out of the mess our country is in right now? I, for one, think it is.
Somewhere, in all of these stirrings, I see the seeds of a wisdom-based, Earth-honoring, pro-democracy movement -- one that affirms and applauds religious and spiritual impulses, while opposing fundamentalism, chauvinism and theocracy. Over time, this kind of progressive movement has the potential to win -- and win big -- in the United States. To be honest: it is probably the only type of progressive movement that stands a chance in a country as religious as ours.
What do you think?