Critiquing contemporary religious progressives

Thanks to Faithful Progressive for pointing me toward "The Reckoning: The proper place for religion in politics", an article by Catherine Tumber in the Boston Review. It is focused primarily on a critique of the current state of the progressive spirituality movement(s) in the US, in particular as expressed in (Judeo-)Christian terms by authors such as Rabbi Michael Lerner (The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right) and Jim Wallis (God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It). I think there are definitely some points worth very serious consideration even for those who may not be rooted in Judaism or Christianity. Given the ongoing debates among Unitarian Universalists about just who they are and what they are about (small example), I think UUs will find these points particularly challenging and hopefully rewarding...

[A] vague sense of interconnectedness and existential marvel are pretty watery gruel for serious spiritual hunger. They can hardly rival what conservative religion has to offer: an overarching eschatological narrative, beginning with First Things and End Days, in which personal salvation and eternal life are secured; ironclad rules for living—a precise sense of sin—along with serious cosmic and psychological consequences should they be transgressed; and a place of common, often joyous worship, where pride in offering one’s gifts to the assembled is tempered by humility before God...


What’s troubling about Lerner—about spiritual progressivism in general—is the idea that inclusiveness itself is the principal act of spiritual formation. At its best Lerner’s religion offers little more than therapeutic anarchy... Religious convictions offer interdictions that provide grounds for moral censure and restraint when people are carelessly harmful or intellectually dishonest. Absent those convictions, as Philip Rieff argued 40 years ago, the rich healing power of religion descends into self-manipulation...


The inverse of right-wing moralism, which treats interdictions as invitations to punishment, Lerner’s progressive spirituality is instrumental religion at its most breathtaking. Not only does it lend itself to utopian naiveté, it closes the circle of meaning so securely around the self that it locks out mysterious truths gleaned from contemplation of the transcendent. It is hard to respond to that universe with awe and wonder, no matter how fervently Lerner insists we do so...


Wallis might be one of the few liberal religious leaders who has reflected enough on the subject to guide his more secular and modernist brothers and sisters toward reckoning with the limitations of reason and human will. The stakes are high, because the absence of such a reckoning can unleash a drive toward perfectionism, through either an aggressively purist, world-denying gnostic spirituality or a non-transcendent, heart-squelching materialist reliance on science and technology. Not only is the quest for perfection a terrible and even fool-hardy burden, it is antithetical to the very spirit of Christian humility Wallis calls for...


[Martin Luther King, Jr.'s] own social-justice ministry was not crafted for politics but rooted in a sense of cosmic struggle that grounded hope itself. King was never much troubled by the “literalism” that discredited so many white evangelicals’ eschatology in the eyes of liberals, because the black church had always relied on figurative biblical interpretation; literalism had, after all, given warrant to slavery. Though he took in the theological currents of his day while in seminary—the personalism taught at Boston University and Niebuhr’s “Christian realism,” with its insistence on spiritual discipline against resentment—and though he had once been “embarrassed” by the “emotionalism” of the black church, with its talk of “mansions in the sky,” he ultimately drew on its cosmic, catastrophic story line. In black-church eschatology, “what is hoped for is in some sense already present,” as King put it in a 1966 sermon, as evidenced by those who refuse to give up on Christian hope itself—the slave forebears, the sick, the abused and tormented—hope that is never confined to personal desires but is always extended to others. The mystery of the “already”–“not yet” motif holds the eternal–temporal divide in tension and could never warrant a simple linear optimism or a belief in moral progress. As King said, “human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.” This is the conviction that underwrote the black church’s ministry of deliverance and forgiveness—crucial resources for King. It also made it possible to accept unmerited suffering as aligned with the purposes of God, with full knowledge that one can retain moral control of a situation, even in the teeth of agony....


Learning from King, contemporary religious progressives would do well to look for signs of religious integrity—a mood, a set of convictions, an orientation specific to religion—without using a political prism. Among them might be included a double consciousness of knowing yet not knowing God; a humility before the majesty of the heavens; a sense of worldly alienation that dares hope for reconciliation; a sense of mystery breaking in on the prosaic; an understanding, with Kierkegaard, that faith often requires a “leap”; a reckoning with the limitations of life that surpasses stoic resignation; a sense of a cosmic future that will outlive us, upon which to base present hope. Without at least some of these elements, which capture facets of God’s immensity, religion loses its shape and becomes all too malleable to human purposes.

I must admit I recognized a lot of what Tumber is describing here. For example, in October of last year I wrote: "[I]f there is a standard or banner for progressive politics and liberal religion/spirituality, it is inclusiveness." This compares rather well to Tumber's assessment that "What’s troubling about... spiritual progressivism in general is the idea that inclusiveness itself is the principal act of spiritual formation."

I agree to a point, at least if I am understanding Tumber correctly, as I wrote next:

Unlike the characterization often made by those who oppose such a perspective, it does not mean having no standards or principles or accepting any standards or principles, nor that there is no discrimination. The issue is what is being accepted and what is being discriminated.

Quite simply, what is being accepted are people. That is where the inclusiveness comes into play. If you are a sentient being, a human being, then you are accepted. That is the liberal idea of inclusion, especially the religiously/spiritually liberal form. What is challenged, differentiated, and judged? Beliefs and behaviors.

So in the sense of the word spiritual as I prefer it acceptance, or opening one's heart, to all people is the core of spirituality as it practiced. Yet the question is valid - upon what is the practice based? Which is why I appreciate the critique Tumber offers. It is one thing to suggest there is something lacking in the general milieu of contemporary progressive religion, it is another to then suggest where we might look to find examples of it. I think it is why I have emphasized being cautious when trying to "sanitize" sacred traditions rather than trying seeing them as the continuation of an ongoing dialog on the human experience with the Source, Being, the Divine, etc. A (sometimes flawed or frustrating) heritage perhaps, but a rich one which can inform and nourish the current experience if seen as a part of a living tradition or which can smother and petrify it if seen as a straight jacket for the heart and mind.

Perhaps an as yet unspoken problem with the lack of conviction in certain areas of contemporary progressive religious debate is the desire to not wish to appear as fervent or "serious" in one's commitment to God, the Transcendent, etc, much less the teachers such as Jesus or Mohammad or the Buddha, as those who could be labeled fundamentalists, in particular the religious far right (conservative Christians) or groups such as the Taliban. Is there an implicit assumption that it is somehow the degree of devotion or commitment, rather than the nature of one's understanding of Allah or Vishnu, that makes religious people (potentially) dangerous? Is the mere idea of committing oneself to a holy life enough to set off quiet alarm bells among many liberals who are indifferent toward or dismissive of religion? I suspect this may be so. If it is, No wonder so many get the impression that progressive people of faith, in particular Westerners and especially Western politicians, do not take their religion(s) seriously!

But yet such devotion and commitment was, as Tumber suggests, key to the effectiveness and lasting impact of the efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr. I believe the same can be said for other figures who are often favorably "claimed" by liberals of both religious and non-religious persuasion (Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, etc). There needs to be a frank discussion in progressive spiritual and liberal circles about the idea that people are somehow decent and respectable in spite of their beliefs. Otherwise, to modify a well-known political acronym, we might as well be liberal RINOs (Religious In Name Only).