Spiritual Activism Conference - May 17-20

[AnnieBW]

Got this on another list that I'm on, and I figured that I'd forward it here.

Here is the forwarded post from Network of Spiritual Progressives:

http://www.tikkun.org/community/spiritual_activism_conference/

I would like your help in getting word out to the largest email lists
to which you have access (both personal and organizational) about the
Spiritual Activism conference that will be held in Washington, D.C.
May 17-20, 2006. The conference is the first East Coast appearance
for the Network of Spiritual Progressives, co-chaired by me,
Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, and professor of African American
studies and Religion at Princeton U. Cornel West. I'm sorry I have to
reach you through this impersonal note--but I don't know how else to
do this.

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.

This is the ground floor of building a new kind of paradigm for
progressive politics, and it could have a major impact in making the
liberal and progressive forces far more successful in healing and
transforming American society. As I've shown in my new book The Left
Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right, many
people agree with the Left on specific issues but still end up
feeling that their greatest pain is the deprivation of love, a sense
of meaning in work, and a feeling that they are surrounded by
materialism, selfishness, and moral insensitivity, that their
children are subjected to sexual pressures before they are old enough
to handle them, and that the Left seems oblivious to these kinds of
issues and only addresses economic entitlements and political rights.

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.

Even if you can't come to the conference, you can join as a dues
paying member the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) and help us
out financially, or even help us build a local chapter in your area.
For information on registering for the conference or joining the NSP:
www.spiritualprogressives.org or 510 644 1200 (between 9:30 a.m. and
5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time).

I hope you personally will come, or join, and I'd particularly
appreciate it if you'd send this note to everyone you know, and in
your own name urge them to come as well..

Many blessings,

Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco, and
author, The Left Hand of God
[e-mail]

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Ya Hu!

Thank you for posting this. I know of Shaykh Kabir-I believe he has connections with the American Mevlevi Order, but don't hold me to it. There are plenty of spiritual folks out there that seek unity through diversity, tolerance and openness and not hate and bigotry. Glad to see this conference is taking place.

[patrice]

2. Star Hawk

from Oklahoma.

I also heard that the Rainbow Coalition has been getting together again in the Ozarks.

And the people who did Rolling Thunder are still out there.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. Lots of spiritual activity going on in the Ozarks

Some of the Sufi activities are listed here: www.ozarkdancecircle.us

[lvx35]

3. Thanks for the info.

Sounds like Sister Joan is up to some seriously important work. I'll be looking for a chapter around Seattle. :)