The American Muslim (TAM)

NETWORK OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESSIVES - Background & Resources

collected by Sheila Musaji

Posted Aug 4, 2005

The Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) is an interfaith project of The Tikkun Community. The Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) is an association of people interested in:

1. Changing the Bottom Line in America. Today, institutions and social practices are judged efficient, rational and productive to the extent that they maximize money and power.That’s the Old Bottom Line. Now Here is the NEW BOTTOM LINE for which we advocate: We believe that they should be judged rational, efficient and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity and behavior, kindness and generosity, non-violence and peace, and to the extent that they enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings in a way that honors them as embodiments of the sacred, and enhances our capacities to respond to the earth and the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement.

2. Challenging the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the Religious Right, and educating people of faith to the understanding that a serious commitment to God, religion and spirit should manifest in social activism aimed at peace, universal disarmament, social justice with a preferential option for the needs of the poor and the oppressed, a commitment to end poverty, hunger, homelessness, inadequate education and inadequate health care all around the world, and a commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, environmental protection and repair of the damage done to the planet by 150 years of envrionmentally irresponsible approaches to industrialization, investment, trade, energy and transportation.

3. Challenging the many anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions and behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture, and challenging as well the extreme individualism and me-firstism that permeate all parts of the global market culture. We will educate people in social change movements to carefully distinguish between their legitimate critiques of the Religious Right and their illegitimate generalizing of those criticisms to all religious or spiritual beliefs and practices. We will help social change activists and others in the liberal and progressive culture become more conscious of and less afraid to affirm their own inner spiritual yearnings and to reconstitute a visionary progressive social movement that incorporates the spiritual dimension, of which the loving, spiritually elevating and connecting aspects of religion has been one expression (but so has the group-in-fusion experience of the movements of the 30’s and the 60’s and the communitarian aspirations of many other efforts—social healing and health care, progressive summer camps, the wide appeal of service and service learning, the women’s spirituality movement etc).

The Network is a project of The Tikkun Community, so when you join you automatically receive the option of free membership in The Tikkun Commnunity. You will also receive a one year subscription to Tikkun magazine.

Our perspective is more fully articulated in the Core Vision of The Tikkun Community which you can find at www.tikkun.org,and the article there entitled Why America Needs A Spiritual Politics. If you feel uncomfortable with the perspective articulated there, you should not join the Network of Spiritual Progressives which is an organization formed around those ideas.

... for more information go to Tikkun’s website

The Network of Spiritual Progressives website

Spiritual Activism Conference Coming in Spring 2006

Rabbi Lerner invites American Muslims to join with him in creating the Network of Spiritual Progressives, an organization which seeks to challenge the misuse of God and the Bible by the Christian Right, the hostility toward religion and spirituality by some sections of the liberal and progressive culture of the Left, and the materialism and selfishness of consumer culture in America. 1,200 people attended the first of two founding conferences, and Rabbi Lerner wishes to increase the percentage of Muslim participation in the founding of this enterprise. For more information, please read the Core Vision and the plans for this organization at www.tikkun.org

SOME ORGANIZATIONS WORKING ALONG THE SAME LINES

The Cordoba Initiative

The Tent of Abraham founded by Rev. Bob Edgar of NCC, Dr Sayid M. Syeed, Sr. Joan Chittister, R. Arthur Waskow