SPIRITEAL COVENANT

Spiritual Covenant A progressive spiritual politics challenges the "old bottom line" inAmerican society which teaches people that their life's activities will bejudged by how much they can advance their own material well-being,power and prestige. Surrounded by an ethos of selfishness generatedby the old bottom line, people increasingly treat each other as vehi-cles to satisfy their personal needs. Instead of seeing other people asembodiments of the sacred, they are viewed instrumentally as "use-ful" or as "human resources" for the sake of advancing societal goals.Living in a society where people regularly absorb and then act uponthis "marketplace rationality" in which "looking out for number one"seems the only rational way to live, many people feel lonely, alienated,and scared even in the midst of friendships and marriages-becausethey see themselves surrounded by so many people who only seem tocare about them to the extent that they can "deliver something."What we need, then, is a New Bottom Line, one which judges institu-tions, corporations, legislation, social practices, health care, our edu-cational and legal systems, and our social policies by how much loveand compassion, kindness and generosity, and ethical and ecologicalsensitivity they inculcate within is, and by how much they nurture ourcapacity to respond to other human beings as embodiments of thesacred who can and do respond to the universe with gratitude, awe,and wonder at the grandeur of all that is.This New Bottom Line is the central message of the Network of Spiri-tual Progressives. It leads us to present policies to our elected offi-cials that are embodied in the Spiritual Covenant with America-analternative to both Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" and theeconomistic visions of American society that have been developed byliberal and progressive think tanks that are trying to help the Demo-crats out of their dogmatic slumbers.The Spiritual Covenant with America1. We will create a society that promotes rather than un-dermines loving and caring relationships and families.We will challenge the materialism and selfishness (of-ten rooted in the dynamics of the competitive market-place) that undermine loving relationships and familylife.Every institution or social practice that encourages us to see othersas instruments for our own advancement rather than as embodimentsof the sacred must be reconceputalized and rebuilt so that it insteadmaximizes our capacities to be loving and generous and caring. We willchallenge cynical attempts to reduce life to self-interest. And we willoppose the cheapening of sexuality that regularly occurs as marketersuse sex to sell their products and seek to do so with teens and nowpre-teens. Sure, we need full employment, child care, flex time, a coor-dinated assault on poverty, and many other economic changes; so wesupport all these elements of the traditional liberal agenda-but ourspiritual focus goes beyond the normal liberal list of demands to in-sist on a fundamental change in the values that our society promotes:our society must be safe for love rather than fostering the qualities inpeople that make love more difficult to sustain: cynicism, harshness,individualism, self-centeredness, despair about ultimate meaning,insensitivity to the possibility of transformation, and fear.CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-Family support is alwaysposed in terms that emphasize economic entitlements, butsince everyone knows that family breakdown is not confinedto those lacking economic supports, the liberal platform isseen as just using the family issue for its pre-existing agen-da rather than actually addressing the fear in people's livesabout the breakdown of loving commitments and the result-ing feelings of loneliness. We agree with the supports, butsee them as necessary but not sufficient.CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA-For the conservativeideology, family support often means restricting the rights ofgays and lesbians to marry (as though that had anything todo with why families break up), teaching women to be sub-ordinate to men in family life (a strategy that requires womento give up their own natural intelligence and wisdom to "goalong" with men, rather than to build partnership relation-ships based on mutual respect, which have a much strongerfoundation and greater prospect of lasting), opposing abor-tion (but giving little support to the child when it is born),and providing religious communities in which families areembedded and central (a positive aspect of the conservativeagenda which has to be emulated by creating progressive"communities of meaning" but without a right-wing ideologygoverning them).2. We will take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for ethicalbehavior by reviving the sacred element in sexuality,shaping a purpose-driven life connected to our highestvalues, building an inner spiritual life, devoting timeand energy to caring for each other as well as to self-development, affirming pleasure and humor and joyful-ness and celebration of the grandeur of the universe andthe mystery of being, and recognizing that governmentcannot replace our own efforts to build a spirituallygrounded life.We will be compassionate toward each other, recognizing that each ofus is unlikely to be the fullest embodiment of our own highest ideals.CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-Liberal politicians rarely ar-ticulate any sense of personal responsibility, because theyclaim that these issues are "personal" and have no role inthe public sphere. We agree with them in opposing legisla-THE NETWORkOF SPIRITuALPROgRESSIvESA Spiritual Covenant with AmericaFrom the Network of Spiritual ProgressivesPage 2tion on these issues, but not in believing that they have noappropriate public place. A movement can foster an "ethos"as well as legislation, and that is exactly what we did dowhen we fostered the ethos of respect for women, gays andlesbians, and minority groups. Taking personal responsibil-ity is not just a personal issue. It is an issue of creating aform of community that encourages, supports, and rewardspeople for so doing, and that is absent from the discourse ofthe liberal world.CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA-Conservatives talkabout taking personal responsibility as their alternative tobadly needed social programs, funding for which they con-tinually seek to slash (health, welfare, education, supportfor the poor and the homeless). They claim to be concernedabout poverty, but then say that individuals should takeresponsibility for eliminating poverty (for example, urgingpeople to take jobs on which they could not even subsist,particularly given inadequate child care) or homelessness(but then they don't actually take homeless people into theirhomes each night to provide the "personal responsibility"alternative to abandoning the homeless to hunger and thestreets of our cities). So when we talk about taking personalresponsibility, we do so not to replace government and so-cietal programs, but rather to address areas in our own per-sonal lives where we could have a huge impact.3. We will build Social Responsibility into the normaloperations of our economic and political Life. The SocialResponsibility Amendment (SRA) to the u.S. Constitu-tion that we propose requires corporations to get a newcorporate charter once every ten years. Such a charterwould only be granted to those corporations that couldprove to a jury of ordinary citizens that it had a satisfac-tory history of social responsibility.This is one step toward our larger goal of transforming the bottom linein our economy, government, and social institutions. While seekingsupport and endorsement for the SRA, we will encourage public offi-cials to include a Social Responsibility clause in every contract-award-ing process, so that corporations competing for public funds mustpresent a detailed social responsibility report. and private citizens andlocal community groups and unions can challenge the accuracy of thatreport to the governmental body deciding on awarding of city, state,and federal contracts over $100,000.To make this happen, we will also seek public funding of all state andnational elections and instant runoff procedures for counting votes.CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-The Liberals continuallyseek to legislate minor restrictions on corporate avarice andsocial irresponsibility, and usually fail to get such laws ad-opted because of the tremendous power of corporations toinfluence financing for the legislators who must pass thesebills. Meanwhile, corporations throw all their weight into op-posing each little reform measure. We seek one big reformthat would end the need for countless smaller reforms. Whilethe SRA may take several decades to pass, the struggle forit will concentrate attention on the systemic nature of theproblem we face.CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA-Conservatives typi-cally oppose any attempts to put constraints on corporatesocial irresponsibility because they believe that the bestgood for all will be achieved if each corporation pursues itsown self-interest unrestrained, and then the profits it amass-es will "trickle down" to the rest of the population.4. We will reshape our education system such that itteaches the values of love, caring, generosity, intellec-tual curiosity, tolerance, gratitude, awe and wonder atthe universe, democratic participation, and environmen-tal responsibility. We will emphasize education for thesevalues without abandoning necessary reading and writ-ing skills-and focus on learning respect, thanksgivingand awe for the wonders of the universe, and celebra-tion of all the goodness that has passed on the culturaland scientific wisdom of the human race.CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-Liberals focus on gettingbetter pay for teachers and more money for building schoolswith lower teacher-student ratios. But they'd be far moreeffective in getting support for these important demands ifthey gave more attention to demands about the moral andspiritual content of what is being taught.CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA-Conservatives cor-rectly criticize the values that are actually being taught in ourschools (materialism, competitiveness) but then fail to notethat these values reflect the values of the marketplace thatconservatives champion. And they propose false solutionswhose underlying intent is to dismantle the public schoolsystem or at least wildly under-fund it and thereby "prove"that everything "public" must be a failure and that the onlygood thing is the private sector.5. We will seek a single payer national health care planand also broaden the public's understanding of healthcare. Our physical health cannot be divorced from en-vironmental, social, spiritual, and psychological reali-ties-and the entire medical system has to be reshapedin light of that understanding to focus on prevention,encourage alternative forms of health practice alongwith traditional Western forms, and insist that becausehuman beings have many levels of reality, health caremust reflect that rather than seek to reduce the humanto the merely material.CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-Liberals seek the gradualaddition of benefits for different sectors of the populationbut leave the whole system in the hands of the profiteers,thus guaranteeing that their proposed changes will be un-dermined by the insurance companies and drug companieswho raise their costs to make huge profits and thus makethese health care reforms unreasonably costly. The singlepayer plan does not increase but, rather, will decrease thetotal amount spent on health care by the U.S.CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA-Conservatives con-tinually place private profit over public need when it comesPage 3to health care. They think of health care as something thatneeds to be earned rather than as a manifestation of thesacred obligation we have to care for each other.6. We will be stewards of the environment. We willchampion voluntary simplicity and ethical consumptionwhile seeking to change the global economy so that it isordered in rational and sustainable ways.We will bring spiritual wisdom into daily life to change our addiction toendless consumption and challenge the media and advertising-drivenbelief that price and number of things we own are the measure of ourworth in the world.CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-Liberals fight for partial re-forms that rarely take into account the systemic and globalnature of the problem and rarely note that for every reformthey win, there are ten new areas in which environmentaldamage is intensifying. They have no global plan or willing-ness to imagine how to recast the global economy so asto make our planet environmentally sustainable. And theyavoid any serious discussion of, much less fostering of, anethos of voluntary simplicity.CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVES-Conservatives cheerlead forpolicies that actually reduce the amount of land protectedfrom corporate abuse. They put the interests of corporateprofit above their responsibility to be stewards of the planet,and often deny the urgency of global warming and otherenvironmental disasters.7. Foreign policy and homeland security transformation:We will build a safer world and promote a rational ap-proach to immigration through a strategy of non-vio-lence and generosity that eliminates poverty both in theu.S. and in every other country. The well-being of Amer-icans depends on the well-being of every other personon the planet and of the planet itself.We will support a Global Marshall Plan to use 5 percent of the GDPof the advanced industrial countries societies-each year for the nexttwenty years-to end global poverty, hunger, homelessness, inad-equate education, and inadequate health care. This will do more forhomeland security and military safety than does sinking trillions ofdollars into wars and strategies of world domination that can neverwork and are immoral. Ending poverty both at home and abroad isboth an ethical and a security priority.And we will challenge the globalization of selfishness promoted byWestern corporations (and their clones in China, India, and Japan) andpromote the spiritual values of solidarity, caring for others, and loveas the most effective way to build a sustainable society and achieve"homeland security." Our path to a world of peace must be a path ofpeace, social justice, sensitivity to cultural differences and to environ-mental needs, and non-violence. We will maintain an army on our bor-ders and carefully search every container that comes into the country,and redirect the trillions of dollars that would otherwise be spent onthe military to ending global poverty and creating adequate educa-tion and health care. So, while we support the immediate withdrawalof troops from Iraq and the creation of an international Non-ViolentPeacekeeping Force to prevent conflicts from escalating, we do so inthe context of a coherent global policy that immediately implementsthe Global Marshall Plan (not by dumping money into the hands of cor-rupt governments, but through cooperation with non-governmentalorganizations committed to human rights, democracy, environmentalsustainability, and enhancement and respect for native cultures andtraditions).We seek full rights for all immigrants who have made it to our shores.And we will solve the immigration issue in the only possible way: bymaking the countries from which immigrants are fleeing much moreeconomically successful. Instead of imagining new methods for re-pressing the desire that so many immigrants have for a life free fromextremes of poverty and political oppression, we will support theGlobal Marshall Plan in ways that would build the economic infrastruc-ture of the "underdeveloped" world, ensuring that its benefits flow toall people and not just to the economic elites of those countries. Weseek a world in which open borders are the norm, and there is no fearthat the rich countries are being overrun by immigrants, because theirwell-being has improved so much in their own countries.CONTRAST: LIBERALAGENDA-Still stuck in the militarist as-sumptions of the past, liberal politicians compete with theconservatives about "who is most effective" in projectingAmerican power and domination around the world. They aremore concerned to prove that they are "tough" than to provethat they actually have policies that address the issues thatdrive people into wars and terrorism. Similarly, their correctdesire to avoid repression of immigrants does not link to acoherent answer to "what can be done to prevent future mil-lions from risking their lives to get across our borders if wecreate incentives for them to take such risks?"CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA-Though quick todemand testing of the effectiveness of liberal programs,conservatives have never proved the effectiveness of theirstrategy of providing security through wars and the domina-tion of other countries. Distorted by their own "arrogance ofpower," they cannot acknowledge that 5,000 years of war-making has not worked to bring peace and security but only,century after century, increased the numbers of people killedin wars. Nor can conservatives see that their wars have actu-ally undermined the internal life of America and increasedour propensity to rely on violence as a solution to otherwisefrustrating problems. They call for more repression of immi-grants and of countries that do not follow our rules, but seemunable to acknowledge that such programs do not work.8. We will seek the separation of Church, State andScience. We will protect our society from fundamental-ist attempts to impose a particular religion on everyone,but will not fall into a first-amendment fundamentalismthat attempts to keep all spiritual values out of the pub-lic sphere.We will protect science from invasion by the state, religion or corpo-rate priorities, but reject "scientism," the worldview that claims thateverything capable of being known or worthy of our attention can befully described in scientific terms.CONTRAST: THE LIBERAL AGENDA-Liberals confuse theseparation of Church and State with the separation of spiri-Page 4tual values from the state. They claim to be defending theneutrality of public space, but fail to realize that there is al-ready a religion operating in the public space: the religion ofthe dollar, of materialism and selfishness, the religion whosehighest belief is that all that is real or at least all that can beknown is that which can be verified through sense datum ormeasured by the principle of exchange (which, for the pub-lic realm, usually means money, the one thing most easilyvalidated and measurable). Thus, liberal defense of the firstamendment is based on the false assumption that we actu-ally have a neutral public space and that it must be protectedfrom all values.CONTRAST: THE CONSERVATIVE AGENDA-Conservativesoften seek to privilege Christian values in the public sphereand get lots of support from many Americans who know thatwhen their children come home from school drunk with thedisease of "making it" in the larger society (either throughgood grades to get the best career, or by physical prow-ess and active domination over others) and "making it intheir peer group" (either by conforming to the peer groupstandards of the group or, increasingly for young girls, byresponding to the sexual pressure championed by a grow-ing sector of the media) these children are responding to apublic sphere drenched in corrupt values that loving parentswant to resist. Using this perfectly legitimate desire for alter-native sets of values, the conservatives offer rush in with arepressive agenda that will do little to solve the social prob-lems, and in addition will seek to eliminate or dramaticallyweaken the actual functioning of the separation clause ofthe Bill of Rights.Neither liberals nor conservatives understand how much the requisitesof the marketplace drive "science" in its choice of research topics, soneither has seriously addressed how to protect science from thesepressures. And those same pressures exist, though in somewhat dif-ferent form, in the many religious communities that have become de-pendent on the support of the wealthy or those who have bought intothe assumptions of the marketplace. Too often this has resulted in aclergy more subordinate to the fund-raisers than to their own highestmoral and spiritual values.We seek to change all this.How Realistic is the Spiritual Covenant withAmerica?This vision, needless to say, is "unrealistic" in the sense that it doesnot conform to the assumptions of politicians and pundits in themainstream mass media. For most politicians, that ends the discus-sion, becuase they've consistently been unwilling to risk any electoralloss for the sake of some higher good in which they believe. But thatis precisely why so many Americans have come to distrust their Rep-resentatives-because if they won't fight hard for their own beliefs,how can they be counted on to fight for the best interests of Americansociety when the going gets rough?The women's movement in its early years, the civil rights movementin its early years, and the environmental movement in its early yearswere all dismissed as "unrealistic" because they too stepped outsidethe frame of politics as it was then currently understood by the mediaand the politicians. We are following that same path.We are a consciousness-raising movement, and so our primary task,like that of the other major movements that have had a lasting im-pact on American society, is to not compromise what we believe in forthe sake of short-term political gain. We must instead advocate forour fullest vision and insist on why it makes the most sense as thepath to heal American society.We encourage people to meet with elected officials every year, butthis is only a small part of what we need to do to get our ideas into thepublic consciousness, and we are sure that you can devise many moreimaginative steps to take.The full version of the Spiritual Covenant and what it implies can bestudied in The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from theReligious Right, by Rabbi Michael Lerner (Harper SanFrancisco 2006).