Be spiritually progressive

After several years of non-church-going, we’ve started going again – this time to Sunday mass at a local convent of wonderfully radical nuns.

The air quality is fairly good there, which makes it possible for my wife to attend. Other churches in the area have bad IAQ, due largely to people wearing too much perfume/aftershave.

I just rented the DVD of Jesus Camp, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in the intersection of religion and politics.

This Oscar-nominated documentary follows several Evangelical children who are being trained as “Christian warriors” as they go to church and home schooling and a “Jesus Camp” in North Dakota.

I really do not want to condemn people’s purely religious practices, but when religion boils over into politics, then I have a problem.

What bothered me so much about some of the people in the movie is that they are so convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong. That God only comes into some churches. That everyone else is going to Hell.

We are all God’s children. We need to focus on Christianity’s positive messages of love and caring for one and other.

I heard the tail end of a speech today on public radio by Rabbi Michael Lerner about the Network of Spiritual Progressives http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/.

He talked about changing the bottom line in America so that it’s not all about dollars and power, but “love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity and behavior, kindness and generosity, non-violence and peace….”

He also talked about “misuse of religion, God and spirit by the Religious Right” and “Challenging the many anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions and behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture”.

I’m not sure I’m ready to sign up for the organization just yet, but I think they’re onto something.