Jim Wallis offers, in an op-ed piece in the August 4th  New York Times, a brief response to the current talk about the need for progressives to do a better job of "framing" the issues, an idea articulated most clearly by George Lakoff. He says that language is indeed important, but that "the message remains more important than the messaging."

Rabbi Lerner, who started the whole thing, celebrates the event as "amazing grace"

The Berkeley Daily Planet offers an interesting report on the keynote addresses by Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner.  The reporter wonders how a gathering of so many liberals can be any easier than herding that many cats.

The San Francisco Chronicle provided a report after the final day of the conference, headlined "Liberals gather to 'demand answers' – Venues include parties, town hall meeting, convention." Your WebWeaver confesses with sorrow that he missed the parties.

A Methodist blogger shares his impressions of talks by Peter Gabel and Jim Wallis, and his reflections on the event as a whole.

[7-25-05]

Rabbi Michael Lerner somehow found the energy to send this wrap-up note today (July 25, after the conference finished on Saturday, July 23). He titled his note ...

Amazing Grace – post-conference elation

It’s impossible to replicate for you the level of excitement and energy that almost everyone experienced at the Conference on Spiritual Activism in Berkeley, these past few days, the first stage in a two year process of launching the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

There were over 1,300 people experiencing what could only be called spiritual elation. First, there were the incredible speakers, some 108 of them, representing some of the most advanced thinking in Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and "spiritual but not religious" thought. There were small groups of ten which met every day for the four days of the conference, so that people got to know others in a much more intimate way than often happens when things get this big. There was music ranging from Holly Near (surprise guest appearance at the last minute) to the wonderful Vocolot to Christian gospel to the melodies of Jewish Hasidism. Over forty workshops and ongoing workgroups produced some valuable material for a future platform which will be finalized in 2007.

But what was equally moving was the quality of attendees. Priests of the Catholic church and the Buddhist faith, ministers of many of the denominations of Protestantism, orthodox Jews wearing their tzitzit out, Reform and Reconstructionist and Renewal and Conservative Jews who packed the Shabbat services and Torah study with Rabbi Lerner and Sylvia Boorstein, Muslims who challenged the distortion of Islam by terrorists and who embodied a path of gentleness and non-violence, Palestinians and Israelis seeking reconciliation, and even representatives from Italy, England and Australia. There were some world-famous scientists seeking a fruitful dialogue with people of faith, lawyers and doctors and educators seeking changes in their professions to make them more consonant with our proposed New Bottom Line, economists who understood the need to revise their profession’s vision of efficiency and rationality, and activists of almost every possible contemporary stripe.

What amazed everyone was the level of kindness, generosity and open-heartedness toward each other that the participants frequently showed (not every second, to be sure, but mostly and enough so that it shaped the gathering and made people feel very safe, and hence created an atmosphere in which people were willing to explore ideas were new and sometimes challenging to their established ways of thinking about the world, a challenge that comes up the moment people really get what the politics of meaning is that we’ve been expounding in Tikkun these past nineteen years). No where was that more impressive than in the respect religious people and "spiritual but NOT religious" people showed each other, neither group seeking to convert or demean the other, but instead showing genuine curiosity and mutual respect.

This, of course, is only the first step. We urge you to join as dues paying members the Network of Spiritual Progressives and to become involved with us in building this venture.

Please read the article by Van Jones, a powerful voice for justice for incarcerated young African Americans, as he tells why he feels so supportive of what we are trying to do (read it at www.tikkun.org).

Also, please click here for Frequently Asked Questions about the Network of Spiritual Progressives as well as here for more info on the basic conception of the Network and our core vision.

One final point: while the Bay Area and Sacramento newspapers gave this full coverage, and Fox News nationally did a story about it (because the Right wing media takes religion seriously), the rest of the media blocked it out. This was the largest gathering of a Spiritual Left to ever occur in American history, and it was not reported. So no wonder most Americans equate religious and spiritual concerns with the Right when the media simply ignores this kind event.