The Network of Spiritual Progressives has 3 goals:

1. to challenge the misuse of God and religion by the Religious Right to justify war and militarism, cuts in programs for the poor and powerless in order to justify cuts in taxes for the rich, assaults on human rights and civil liberties, and destruction oaf the separation of church and state;

2. to challenge the religio-phobia and hostility toward religious and spiritual people that appears in some sections of liberal and progressive culture, and to help the Left distinguish between reactionary forms of religion and the progressives forms that it took with Martin Luther King, Jr., William Sloan Coffin, Abraham Joshua Heschel and many others. and to build a new spiritual progressive politics not only for religious people, but also for those who do not believe in God but are "spiritual but NOT religious"

3. to seek a New Bottom Line in the Western world so that institutions get judged efficient, rational or productive not only to the extent that they maximize money or power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethically and ecologically sensitive behavior, and enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings as manifestations of the sacred and inherently valuable and to be respected, and enhance our capacities to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur of all that is.

Rabbi Lerner writes:

We in the NSP (the Network of Spiritual Progressives) care very much about eliminating poverty, fighting for equal rights, ending the war in Iraq and the militarist assumptions that led to it, but that these important struggles will not be won until the Left also seems to care about these other "meaning" issues in the lives of many Americans. Moreover, the Left is only clear on what it is against, but rarely has it communicated clearly what it is for. That’s why we are taking our demand for a New Bottom Line to the Congress and the media May 17-20—along with a detailed SPIRITUAL COVENANT WITH AMERICA that is meant to provide a positive vision of what a progressive spiritual politics is about (you can read it fully explicated in The Left Hand of God, which, I’m happy to say, has become a national best-seller since it was published by Harpers in February).

The spiritual activism conference will be a unique blending of progressive religious people with progressive"spiritual but not religious" people. Among the presenters, besides me, Cornel West and Sister Joan Chittister: Jim Wallis (progressive Evangelical editor of Sojourners and author, God’s Politics), Cindy Sheehan (mother of U.S. solider killed in Iraq war), Episcopal ArchDeacon Michael Kendall, Marie Denis (Fellowship of Reconciliation), Rev. William Sinkford (national president, Unitarian Universalist Association), Rev. Joan Campbell (Chautauqua Institute), Harry Knox (Human Rights Campaign), Rev. Penny Nixon (Metropolitan Church, San Francisco), Rabbi Brain Walt (national chair, Rabbis for Human Rights), Seyyed Hossein Nasr (author, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity), Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (chair, Progressive Caucus, U.S. House of Representatives), Shaikh Kabir Helminski (Sufi teacher), Svi Shapiro (author of Beyond Liberalism and Excellence: Reconstructing the Public Discourse on Education), Rev. Ama Zenya (United Church of Christ), John Dear S.J. (Catholic non-violence activist), Rev. Lennox Yearwood (Progressive Democrats of America), Robert Thurman (Buddhist teacher and author The Jewel Tree of Tibet), Jonathan Granoff (chair, American Bar Association committee on disarmament), Rev. Lynice Pinkard (United Church of Christ), Bill Meadows (national chair, Wildlife Association), Enola Aird, Katrina Vanden Heuvel (editor, The Nation), Christopher Hedges (former NY Times reporter and author: War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning), Peter Gabel (associate editor of Tikkun and professor of law, New College of California), Thea Levkowitz (Religion and the Environment), Rev. Tony Campolo (Evangelical teacher), Holly Near (progressive music), Michael Bader (psychoanalyst), Michael Posner (human rights), Arthur Waskow (Shalom Center), Rev. Donna Schaper, Nanette Schorr, Rabbi Debora Kohn, Barbara Coombs Lee, Enola Aird, Rev. Bob Edgar (chair, National Council of Churches), Rev. Debora Johnson, John Seed, Paul Wapner, Mary Darling, Rev. Donna Schapper, Harvey Cox, Janet Chisholm, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Rev. Glenn Harold Stassen, Rev. Paul Smith, Çharlene Spretnak, David Abrams, Rev. Robert Hardies & Rev. Louise Green (All Souls Unitarian church), and many more.

Rabbi Michael Lerner and Tikkun Magazine have announced a conference for May 17-20, centered on the proposal for a Spiritual Covenant for America, which is based in part on the conversations that took place at the July, 2005, conference in Berkeley, California, and was developed into a platform in Rabbi Lerner's The Left Hand of God.

In part, the conference is intended to launch a prophetic spiritual politics agenda to the media and the politicians in D.C., and to train organizers who will take the agenda into their communities.    More >>