by Riana Good
As an admitted unsure seeker, I belong to a minority.
In a country where more people believe in angels than in evolution, embracing religion is difficult for me. On the one hand, the politically progressive, activist community in which I participate tends to shun most things religious. On the other hand, my experimental spirituality would not fit into most right-wing communities, even if I otherwise felt I belonged there.
I attend services when I am so moved, though primarily a spiritual seeker, unsure of my own conception of God. Just as religion may be spurned by the left, it often proves challenging to come out as a progressive to other Jews, beyond the safer issues of housing and homelessness.
As an admitted unsure seeker, I belong to a minority. Americans are a religious people: 90% believe in God, 70% affiliate with an organized religion, 38% call themselves committed Christians. This religious tendency isn't due merely to marketing by skilled preachers. It is driven by our yearning for purpose and meaning. Unfortunately, the Christian Conservative Right has aggressively exploited these needs. Conservative leaders from Falwell to Rove, Robertson to Reed, repeatedly drill evangelical Christians with the notion that Democrats and other progressives disrespect spiritual and moral values and are not truly religious. In turn, the Left often takes the bait by avoiding values-based rhetoric or by dismissing religion as intolerant of dissenters and questioners and therefore not truly inclusive. Often, the relationship between the religious and the political gets framed in purely negative terms or as a strict divide between Church and State. The First Amendment separation clause can and should be upheld while bringing elements of spirit or religion into the political. Religion and politics frequently revolve around narrow issues such as abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, and intelligent design.
By skirting the role of religious belief in the formation of political ideas, as if life were a perpetual cocktail party that feared explosive debate, we also fail to tap into the country and world's moral base. What would happen if more liberal and progressive forces took our spiritual values into the public sphere and articulated them in universal, inclusive terms?
An advocacy that illuminates our connectedness starts with recognizing our own spiritual life and reframing the language used in politics. Reframing conversations can tread delicate ground, but the public sphere was never values-free to begin with. All too often, measures of money and power-which are their own value systems-determine the worth of a person, corporation, or country. We continue to operate with dollars at the bottom-line because quantifiable figures are "hard" whereas value and compassion-based judgments allegedly lack rigor. Yet both frameworks are subjective.
Language is transformative. Framing discussion of the Social Security system around the value of all people at all stages of life speaks to a meaning-driven policy and is more effective than the cold slogan, "Mend it, don't end it." Catchiness isn't everything, and my politics and religion meld since I do not operate in neatly encapsulated spheres. While "Stop the War" is a pithy, accurate demand encompassing myriad points across a broad spectrum of reasoning and outrage, I find my views on the United States' repressive foreign policy more accurately represented by the phrase "Recognize our shared humanity." Try that at your next cocktail party.
For anyone in the Providence area wishing to join others in Jewish practice and Shabbat potluck, the newly formed Westside Minion welcomes interested individuals to contact us. Miriam: mgoldbe [at] gmail [dot] com Riana: rianagood [at] yahoo [dot] com
