Religious Progressives - Rabbi Rami Shapiro

[Guest guest]

Monday, May 01, 2006

Religious Progressives

 

What is a religious progressive? That was the topic at a conference I

attended this weekend in Nashville, TN. Most of the participants drew

their insights from Jim Wallis ( " God's Politics " ) and Michael Lerner

( " Left Hand of God " ), two wonderful thinkers who find in their

respective faiths (Christianity and Judaism) a politics of compassion

that surpasses the fear-based religions of the Religious Right.

 

I could and did nod in agreement. There is little if anything that

either Jim or Michael says that I cannot support. But I have a

contrarian streak; I need to stand out; to say something different.

This is a psychological disorder, I am sure, but it is mine

nonetheless. So when asked to define " religious progressive " I

suggested that a religious progressive is someone who has progressed

beyond religion.

 

At the heart of religion, or at least at the heart of the three

Abrahamic religions, is the illusion of scarcity. God chooses Jews

not Christians or Moslems; saves Christians not Jews or Moslems; and

gives the one uncorrupted revelation to Moslems not Christians or

Jews. Because God's love is scarce, the religions that compete for

that love share a zero-sum theology: for one to win, the others must

lose.

 

Of course there are liberals in all three faiths who have outgrown

this, but that isn't enough. We have to name it and openly reject it.

We have to own the fact that scarcity infects all three Abrahamic

faiths in a way that makes them intrinsically fear-based and violent,

and then we have to reinvent our respective faiths from a position of

God's infinite and timeless love (ahavah rabbah/ahavat olam, to use

Jewish terms).

 

A true religious progressive is one whose faith is not in religion,

but in God; not in the known but in the Unknowable; not in this or

that belief but in the realization that belief is simply the

projection of ones own ego.

 

The religion of a religious progressive is the religion of radical

humility, hospitality, and holiness: admitting to not knowing the

nature and mind of God; welcoming all to God's feast regardless of

gender, race, religion, ethnicity, etc.; and using justice and

compassion toward all beings as the standard by which to measure the

value of any creed or system of belief. Religious progressives can be

Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, New Age, etc. What

matters is not the label but the ability to hold it lightly, and to

transcend it in the greater reality of the One Who is all.

 

Let us religious progressives stand for that, and we will stand for

something invaluable.

 

Rabbi Rami Shapiro

http://rabbirami.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html