On spiritual environmentalism 6

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1. 

   caniscandida Posted 10:25 am
   22 Mar 2006

   why should an atheist be hesitant?This is a fascinating interview, and so is the excerpt from Rabbi Lerner's book.  As a fairly-far-left-wing Catholic (and living I believe in the same part of NYC as he, if that is relevant), I understand very well what he is saying and hoping to accomplish, and entirely agree with him.  Whether materialism and thoughtless selfishness are failings found more among Republicans or Democrats or religious people or non-religious people would be hard to demonstrate; but I do not think he tries to do that.  For myself, it is my values, e.g. love of the world and all its creatures, the importance of the common good, and the need to care for the underprivileged, which I connect to my religion, that make me vote reliably for Democrats.  But he is right, Democrats are less and less reliable themselves as defenders of such values.
   What I do not understand is why David, inasmuch as he is an atheist, seems hesitant to allow the Rabbi's emphases into progressive politics.

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2. 

   truffula Posted 11:26 am
   22 Mar 2006

   magnificently putI hadn't realised how long I'd been waiting to read this article.

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3. 

   peas2you Posted 1:54 pm
   22 Mar 2006

   Amen!As a Christian Democrat, I loved reading this article and hearing about the Rabbi's new book. I plan on reading it.
   I am in total agreement with everything he said.
   I don't like the "blame game" that's going on in the environmental arena. It's not productive. It doesn't help with the main goal. I don't hate Republicans but I do think that they have been deceived.
   One of my environmental heros is Theodore Roosevelt.  Most Republicans that I know don't even know that he was a great conservationist!
   We need to find common ground to find a common solution and Rabbi Lerner may have it.

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4. 

   billofrights Posted 2:25 am
   24 Mar 2006

   Rabbi Lerner's InterviewI am a progressive who welcomes a revival of the "religious left," or more broadly a "spiritual left."  Therefore I pay close attention to folks like Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner, and I have written my own long essay touching on these topics, and the future of the Democratic Party called "The Great Moral Inversion: How the Republican Right Disabled the Democratic Compass" (moral compass, that is.)
   I have heard the Rabbi discuss his new book in person and my copy is on the way, but my sense is that his call for a different bottom line - the values pursued by our institutions and individuals - run into a secular fundamentalism as powerful as the religious fundamentalists on the Right, called the Washington Consensus in international economics, and by author Thomas Friedman "The Golden Straightjacket."  In essence, our economic life is in a dramatic race to the bottom on wages, benefits, pensions, driven by the goal of narrowly defined efficiency: the most production for the lowest cost. Michael Lerner's view, and I think it is similar to Jim Wallis' on the Evangelical left, is for a new social contract based on minimum standards of human dignity, including material dignity, based on their definition of Chrisitanity (Wallis'that Christianity should put the poor and outcast first, not last) and Lerner's broader spirituality, which is still Judeo-Christian based.  
   That this is a very difficult re-orientation is shown by Wm F. Buckley's attack on the progressive Catholic Bishops who pushed their 1986 Pastoral Letter on the Economy - which I think both Lerner and Wallis could live with very easily - as could most secular progressives.  Buckley told the Bishops to stay out of economics!  (But not out of bedrooms).
   I think the great irony of the rise of the Religious Right that both Lerner and Wallis want to counter is that's Right's great comfort in the material American economy, its uncritical embrace of what it costs to family lives, private lives, the environment, and to living by one secular material code for five days of the week and by other values for three hours on Sunday and in brief spurts of charitable works.  
   If we are to have a new social contract, and a better environmental one, we will have to draw upon the values these two religious progressives are promoting, realizing that many (not Evangelicals) on the Religious Right are able to strictly confine their "nurturing" values to the private and charitable spheres.  
   So there are plenty of great debates we're not having, the main one between a new version of the Social Gospel, and a new social/enviornmental contract, and that branch of Protestantism (joined by Conservative Catholics and many neo-liberals Jewish folks)who would like to keep ethical judgements out of the economic-environmental arena.   Lerner, Wallis and environmentalists should not underestimate the width of the chasm that separates these two camps, both claiming grounding in the same Judeo-Christian sources.  
   
   William R. Neil
   
   Rockville, MD

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5. 

   Bioimproveable Posted 10:40 pm
   25 Mar 2006

   Family ValuesIt's good to hear somebody talking about real family values.

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6. 

   freewill618 Posted 9:48 am
   29 Mar 2006

   Environmentalism and Ethics and SpiritualityFor me being an environmentalist and believing in ethics and the spirituality in life are inevitably intertwined.
   However anyone else believes or looks at the environmental movement, that is where I am.  And I grew up an environmentalist with parents who were environmentalists.  My parents also believed in the "quality" of life and I am not talking about materialistic anything.  And my parents ended up Progressive Jews -- and that is where I am -- as a Jew and an environmentalist.
   Rabbi Michael Lerner says the following in his interview with David Roberts:
   "What we care about is that when you get down to making a decision, whether it's in the board room or in a school room or in conference committee, that your criteria are ecological sanity, love and kindness, generosity, and awe and wonder at the universe."
   For me, he is talking about ethics -- about life itself -- and what else is environmentalism about???
   Environmentalism is about keeping our planet alive for future generations to live decent lives -- to look beyond the short-term and to look at what is ethical for all life, because the reality is that we have a web of life and for us human beings to live, there is more than just what we want now - in any specific moment.
   I also believe that it is important that every being have the right to choose how they worship God -- or to live in their own spirituality.  
   But the bottom line is that we need to make decisions on how we live our lives -- so that we can all survive across all of life -- and that involves making ecologically sane decisions and spiritually sane decisions.
   It is not always easy -- it is very often hard, but very worthwhile.
   I look to The Land Ethic as written by Aldo Leopold on many environmental issues -- especially land issues -- because his concept of the land and the environment and us as human beings operating as one community is the reality of life, as I see it.
   I think what Rabbi Michael Lerner is doing is important.
   I think that those of the "left" or the "liberal" who would look down on spirituality is actually sad.  You can be liberal and believe in God and have it all work together.  I do.
   
   freewill618

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