I get a lot of my inspiration in the wee hours of the morning. I lose a lot of them when I go back to sleep, satisfied that I just had a Great Thought. They say that everyone gets one or two million dollar ideas, and I’ve probably had mine already, buried forever when nestled back into my pillow.

I lost another one last week, but I remember it vividly. I woke up one morning at 3 am thinking about the Spiritual Left. As I tried to relax back into sleep, my thoughts danced around this concept. I felt frustrated with the Right’s broad claims to divine moral backing and with the Left’s general abandonment (even mockery) of religiosity. I envied the ability of conservative religious institutions to create communities and to mobilize support. Was there some way to create a MoveOn for religious and spiritually inclined liberals? Even the term “Spiritual Left” seemed problematic, because it seemed merely reactive (to the Religious Right”) rather than a movement that could stand solidly on its own merits.

What the U.S. political scene really needed, I thought, was a grassroots movement, a dynamic community of spiritual liberals, a nation-spanning network that included lone activists as well as religious groups.

I couldn’t wait for someone else to create this. My power was limited, but I needed to do something about it. I pulled out my trusty laptop and began brainstorming and writing an outline for a book. I also thought about how I could use mindonfire.com and mailing lists–maybe even a Spiritual Left podcast–to mobilize support. I would become a missionary again, evangelizing for a powerful cause.

Then I googled “spiritual left” and found that someone had already written my book. After a few deflated moments (how dare he!?), I began to read more about Rabbi Michael Lerner and the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Have any of you heard of this network? It’s a relatively recent phenomenon. In November 2004, Lerner wrote an article called The Democrats Need A Spiritual Left. In it he decries the materialism and selfishness that pervades our society but laments that the Republicans seem to have a monopoly over religious and spiritual politics. While he attacks the hypocrisy of a conservative political platform that purports to value life while opposing gun control and healthcare reform and supporting a war for resources, he doesn’t spare the Left, either:

Yet liberals, trapped in a long-standing disdain for religion and tone-deaf to the spiritual needs that underlie the move to the Right, have been unable to engage these voters in a serious dialogue. Rightly angry at the way that some religious communities have been mired in authoritarianism, racism, sexism and homophobia, the liberal world has developed such a knee-jerk hostility to religion that it has both marginalized those many people on the Left who actually do have spiritual yearnings and simultaneously refused to acknowledge that many who move to the Right have legitimate complaints about the ethos of selfishness in American life.

I went to Borders and bought the July/August issue of Tikkun (to mend, repair, and transform the world) so that I could read Lerner’s editorial on the inaugural East Coast meeting of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP). I found more there that spoke to me. For example, he mentions that

the anger and the cynicism that people have previously experienced at antiwar rallies leads many potential activists to give up, certain that once again the antiwar movement is in the hands of people who are only slightly more appealing than those conducting the war.

This reflected my work with the leaders of the antiwar movement at UCI. I was motivated by principles of nonviolence, and found that the attitudes and tactics that the other leaders used were based more on hatred and violence than on love and peace. There was none of the spiritual consciousness that reflected Martin Luther King or Gandhi’s protests.

Oh, one more thing: this is the first ecumenical movement I’ve encountered that explicitly reaches out to atheists and secularists who value spirituality and recognize the positive contributions of religious communities. I’m welcome here!

Finally, I went out and bought the book I wanted to write: Lerner’s The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. I cut right to the chase, and am currently studying Chapter Nine: The Spiritual Covenant with America (pdf link). This is the blueprint for action and includes sections titled “Covenant of Social Responsibility” and “Covenant of Environmental Stewardship” and “Covenant for Building a Safer World.”

Ultimately, I’m happy that Lerner got there first. He has a solution that has the potential to resolve the concerns I felt as I sat in the darkest hours of the night. The Network of Spiritual Progressives is all about reclaiming the spiritual mandate from the right and building a community of people who share the same spiritual/political values. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m willing to back the vision that he and other liberal spiritual leaders in the U.S. have crafted. On the Spiritual Progressives website, there are suggestions for people like me who wonder “How do I get involved?” The second one is to “create a study group to read books related to spiritual politics” and the third is to “start or join a local chapter.”

I hope that some of you like-minded spiritual lefties will consider exploring these options along with me. Go visit your local chapters and tell us about them. Buy or borrow The Left Hand of God and read it with me. I plan to start a monthly study/reading group–if you are within driving distance of Irvine, California, and are interested, drop me a line (just attach a “john@” in front of my domain name to send me a private message). I’ll encourage related discussion on the site as well. Also, Orange County doesn’t have an NSP chapter–perhaps this reading group will be its seed.¬† Forward, fellow Spiritual Progressives!¬† It’s time to follow in the¬† footsteps of abolitionists, suffragists, and civil rights activists!