Progressive Revival

***update*** Read Thomas Friedman’s piece in today’s New York Times about the parallels between this time in America with President Obama and the time before Rabin was assassinated in Israel in 1995.   As Progressive Revival readers know, I am worried about the level of violent language that is being leveled at our President.  This article from Religious Dispatches…

Senator Inhofe is known for his denial of climate change by relying on an ever dwindling number of scientists who believe that our present global warming is part of a cyclical warming and cooling, and insist that human produced pollution has no affect on this cycle.   The important policy implications of this belief is that…

ABC’s Nightline has been running a series on the Ten Commandments in which they explore the issues and dimensions of each commandment in contemporary society.   Tonight’s commandment:  Thou shalt not commit adultery. The series is interesting and, in many ways, inclusive.  After all, the Ten Commandments form the ethical basis of the world’s three great…

Kate M. Ott, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of The Religious Institute: Faithful Voices on Sexuality and Religion   On Monday, Carolyn and Sean Savage of Sylvania, Ohio, told the national audience of the Today Show that Carolyn was implanted with the wrong embryo during an in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure.  What if she were…

Praying for peace is not as easy as it sounds.  Praying for peace requires two separate but related beliefs.  The first belief is that prayer ‘works’ and that our meditations and/or petitions to God can affect the material world and can change our individual and collective lives.  The second conviction is that peace is worthy of the effort…

John Gehring is Media Director and Senior Writer for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good Catholic progressives are not the only faithful worried about the dangers posed by some U.S. church leaders turning away from civil engagement in the public square and embracing a confrontational style when it comes to politics. The Obama-Notre Dame…

What would you do if you found out that people in your neighborhood had a 30% higher cancer rate, 25% higher infant mortality rate, and 95% higher cirrhosis of the liver rate than the surrounding area?  Then you found out that hair sample surveys of your neighbors showed that 34% of the population have toxic…

I have been noticing a racial tinge to the health care reform protests.  But after seeing the sea of angry white faces holding signs with Obama as an African Witch Doctor, and other signs commenting about his Muslim heritage, I have to agree with President Carter that there is an element of racism and xenophobia…

It’s been 20 years since the Berlin wall fell and the Soviet Union officially collapsed. And it has been about that amount of time since socialism served as a buzz word in American political life. Now, thanks to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, Victoria Jackson, the Tea Party brigade, and the health care forum…

Media analyses of President Obama’s health care speech were divided on whether he had indicated serious support for a public option or had, instead, cleverly tossed a bone of “recognition” to the progressives while simultaneously demanding that they drop their insistence that the health care reform undercut insurance company profits. The confusion, for once, is…

Michael Lerner
about

Michael Lerner

Rabbi Michael Lerner was a student and disciple of Abraham Joshua Heschel when Lerner studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He earned a ph.d in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and a second ph.d in clinical psychology at the Wright Institute. He subsequently formed the Institute for Labor and Mental Health where he did research on the psychodynamics of American politics, and discovered the immense hunger for "meaning and transcendent purpose for life and work" that became the hallmark of what he calls "a poltiics of meaning." Lerner founded and is Editor of Tikkun Magazine and Chair of The Network of Spriitual Progressives.

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