Back in the day

This is probably more a "faith and politics" type blog entry rather than "doctrine" but there are so many interesctions it seems a shame not to put it in, especially when such luminaries as Matthew Fox and John Shelby Spong get a podium spot. The quotes below are taken from a longer article posted on The Weekly Standard, about Michael Lerner, long-time activist and former agitator on Berkeley, Ca., campus, on or about the 1960s.

[H]is "Conference on Spiritual Activism," held at Berkeley this summer, tried to present a left-wing alternative to the dreaded Religious Right. Amid opening "visualizations" directed to Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, and the "goddess Divine Mother," Lerner hosted a fairly prominent array of Religious Left luminaries.

Item of interest: the term "prophetic faith" as contrasted with "fundamentalism" by evangelical left-wing activitst Jim Wallace. I have heard the term "prophetic faith" bandied around UCA circles, but I have never really grasped what it was supposed to mean. Now I get it. According to these guys, it's tied up with environmentalism, feminism, opposition to war (in particular the one in Iraq) and sexual liberation - all favourites of left-wing US politics.

Also amusing:

Defrocked Catholic priest Matthew Fox, now an Episcopalian, blamed war and economic injustice on "those who want to worship a dominating punitive Father God which includes the put down of women, nature, [and] gays." In soothing contrast, Fox offered a unisex, pantheistic "mother/father God who is embedded in nature, creativity, our bodies and all our art forms." Fox lambasted the Pope for defeating liberation theology and faulted Protestants for succumbing to a "kooky Christianity" of "domination and not of justice."

...and this:

Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong lashed out at this "domination" religion. "It's time to name evil as evil when sounded in pious accents of biblical religion," Spong declared. Conservative Catholicism and "evangelical fundamentalists" are growing because "hysterical people are seeking security," Spong fretted. Referring to the rise of religious conservatives based in the South, Spong claimed, to the audience's delight, "The old [segregationist] George Wallace vote simply applied perfume and call themselves the Religious Right."

.... and this, the icing on the cake!

Mindful of such progressive spiritual goals, an opening "visualization" exercise summoned a wide range of spirits, including the archangels, Adam and Eve, Hindu deities, Socrates and Aristotle, Moses and Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, Leonardo Da Vinci, White Buffalo Woman (from Sioux mythology), anthropologist Jane Goodall, environmentalist Rachel Carson, Gandhi, Anne Frank, Mother Theresa, and the Dalai Lama.

The reader is invited to draw their own conclusions about the relationship between these.