the left hand of god

Michael Lerner's newest book, The Left Hand of God deals with the issue of how political progressives can connect to, build and develop a Spiritual Left movement to counter-balance the Religious Right. (A topic not infrequently brought up here.) Alternet, recently put up an excerpt from the book which inspired the following remarks.

Michael Lerner's central claim, which seems rather obvious to me at this point is that:

By addressing the real spiritual and moral crisis in the daily lives of most Americans, a movement with a progressive spiritual vision would provide an alternate solution to both the intolerant and militarist politics of the Right and the current misguided, visionless, and often spiritually empty politics of the Left.

Lerner points out that there isn't a necessary or natural connection between those who are conservative in their religious principles and those who are on the right wing in a political sense. The "Religious Right" is actually the result of a conscious strategic compromise between different factions and has developed over a period of time. (Earlier today on NPR there was even a report on the development of this strategy)

This political Right achieved power by forging an alliance with a Religious Right that is willing to provide a sanctimonious religious veneer to the selfishness and materialism of the political Right in exchange for the political power it needs to impose parts of its religious agenda on America. Capitalizing on a very real and deep spiritual crisis engendered by living in a society that teaches "looking out for number one" as its highest value, the Religious Right has managed to mobilize tens of millions of people to vote for candidates who end up supporting the very economic arrangements and political ideas responsible for creating the spiritual crisis in the first place.

And furthermore, the status quo and the hopelessness and materialism it engenders helps feed into and maintain the arrangement in the first place:

It is the search for meaning in a despiritualized world that leads many people to right-wing religious communities because these groups seem to be in touch with the sacred dimension of life. Many secularists imagine that people drawn to the Right are there solely because of some ethical or psychological malfunction. What they miss is that there are many very decent Americans who get attracted to the Religious Right because it is the only voice that they encounter that is willing to challenge the despiritualization of daily life, to call for a life that is driven by higher purpose than money, and to provide actual experiences of supportive community for those whose daily life is suffused with alienation and spiritual loneliness.

I don't want to just cynically suggest that secular leftists and Muslims and anyone who wants to tag along should just cobble together an alliance for the sake of political expediency. But I do see spaces where there should be meaningful and constructive cooperation between like-minded groups when it comes to specific changes in foreign and domestic policy. And ideally there would be a spiritual vision inclusive enough to provide a wholistic foundation.

Also, Finding Spirit Among the Dems is the title of an interview with Michael Lerner which goes further into the ideas in his book.