On Wednesday, January 11th, I’ll be heading down to DC to meet with a small group of people, called together by Rabbi Michael Lerner, to represent Emergent. Rabbi Lerner contacted Emergent to see if we would be interested in co-sponsoring May’s Spiritual Activism Conference or interested in promoting it to people involved with Emergent. As Tony Jones mentioned in his article, The State of Emergent 2006, “We’ll meet with people and groups who want to meet with us.” The Network of Spiritual Progressives (whose co-chairs are Rabbi Lerner, Cornel West and Sister Joan Chittister) wants to meet with Emergent, and I’m headed down to hear what they’re hoping for the conference and to see if this is something that Emergent would be interested in learning more about.
Emergent has made no decisions about this conference or group at this point, and I am simply going down on a “fact-finding mission” for Tony, as he is tied up with another meeting. Rabbi Lerner describes his new book, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right, as basically a sequel to Jim Wallis’ book God’s Politics; Lerner is one of the more progressive Jewish voices in the public realm. It looks as if progressive/more-left movements are trying to become more and more vocal recently, which is probably a way to try and let the general public know that the Religious Right does NOT speak for Christianity in America. Other organizations that are putting on similar events are CrossLeft and CrossWalk, Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Progressive Christian Blogger Network (just to mention a few).
At any rate, before I head down next Wednesday I am interested in hearing what you “emergent folk” out there think about the tenets of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (here) and what you think about the current structure and content of the May Conference (here).
What do you think Emergent could benefit from co-sponsoring a conference like this? Can you see any possible downsides to joining up with a group like this? Thanks for taking the time to respond to some of these questions.