Network of Spiritual Progressives: I stumbled on them tonight

[Pacifist Patriot]

I attended a social for a local umbrella progressive group and they had two new chapter organizers from NSP give a presentation. I'm really drawn to their "middle path" approach and emphasis on compassion and community.

1. Changing the Bottom Line in America (from dollars to people & the environment)

2. Challenging the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the Religious Right

3. Challenging the many anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions and behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture

This group arose from Rabbi Lerner and his book The Left Hand of God. The survey they send out to political candidates is just brilliant.

http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/

[MADem]

1. Welcoming to "Spiritual but not Religious" Secular People As Well

They seem to be an equal opportunity "get yer shit together" group. They nail the right for misusing Jeeeeeeeeeeeesus (or God in general) and they slap the left for being shitty to people who are religious.

And they go for the 'love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity and behavior, kindness and generosity, non-violence and peace' stuff that I can get behind.

Good. If they get any traction they'll pull people our way. Even though we do have a segment that is shirty about religion, when we really get down to it, we're the "suffer the little children" party, and we're the "help the poor, elderly, sick, and needy" party, too.

[KittyWampus]

2. This is what I am talking about! Love Rabbi Lerner and am so glad

that slowly but surely, Progressives are catching on.

Americans have a huge gaping hole inside that physical objects can't fill no matter how hard we try.

Progressives need to acknowledge the importance of Spirituality in making us feel whole.

[Pacifist Patriot]

3. As I said last night at the meeting...

Americans have a spiritual hunger the far right feed with junk food.

[bobbieinok]

4. Lerner is the editor of Tikkun, a Jewish magazine

http://tikkun.org/magazine/tik0609/frontpage/spiritculture

In the latest online issue is this long article from the nun who writes for the National Catholic Reporter.

From the Spiritual Activism Conference
Joan Chittister, OSB

....

I suggest that we must all begin again to look at the bases of social brokenness and see the spiritual link between the personal and the political. I’m suggesting that we look again at what ancients called the seven capital sins/signs of social brokenness, but this time on two levels: the level of the personal as well as the global. Remember with me: envy, pride, anger, lust, gluttony, sloth, covetousness.

Envy, ...

But globally, isn’t this ethnocentrism as well? When we create and uphold criminal governments for our own good—such as in Iraq—rather than recognize the needs of the people of the country; when we impose our system and structures in return for trade, isn’t that the failure to accept a thing for what it is?

Pride is, of course, the need to dominate and coerce others on the personal level. But on the global level isn’t it also the mania for national superiority, for being “numero uno,” for having the best of everything (e.g., strawberries in winter, whatever the cost to the pickers?).

Lust ...

But is there yet enough conscience in us to also see lust as the national passion for the instantaneous gratification that justifies the exploitation of whole peoples so that we can have the cheap cash crops and conveniences we demand while raping their lands and looting their futures? Isn’t it the exploitation that comes from lust that leads to the feminization of poverty and the loss of feminine resources and values in a world that is reeling from the institutionalization of masculine values? Two-thirds of minimum wage workers are single mothers with three children. Lust is child labor at 6 cents an hour: economic pedophilia.

....

My prayer is that we can summon up within ourselves the kind of holy anger that will finally do something to take this country back to its best and glorious self.

[Pacifist Patriot]

5. I didn't realize Tikkun had generated the NSP movement until last night.

His work is fantastic and I hope it grows. I share your prayer.

[nosillies]

6. Great site, thank you .

Looks like I'll have lots of reading to do over the weekend!

Another site you might find interesting, if you haven't found it already -- www.faithfuldemocrats.com
It is "Christian," but it has links to similar sites for all faiths.