{"id":488,"date":"2009-04-07T15:04:46","date_gmt":"2009-04-07T15:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2009\/04\/presidents-faith-based-advisor.html"},"modified":"2009-04-07T15:04:46","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T15:04:46","slug":"presidents-faith-based-advisor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/04\/presidents-faith-based-advisor.html","title":{"rendered":"President&#8217;s Faith-Based Advisory Council Taps Four Progressive Leaders Featured in Recent Book, Progressive &amp; Religious"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/progressiveandreligious.org\/blog\/uploaded_images\/PR-new-cover-small-754191.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;float: left;cursor: pointer;width: 96px;height: 145px\" src=\"https:\/\/progressiveandreligious.org\/blog\/uploaded_images\/PR-new-cover-small-754188.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>President Obama&#8217;s newly unveiled Advisory Council on Faith-Based<br \/>\nand Neighborhood Partnerships taps four progressive religious leaders<br \/>\nfeatured in my recent book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0742562301?tag=progressiveandreligious-20&amp;camp=15041&amp;creative=373501&amp;link_code=as3\">Progressive<br \/>\n&amp; Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders<br \/>\nare Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life<\/a><br \/>\n(Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2008). The leaders come from across the<br \/>\nreligious spectrum, representing Christianity (both mainline and<br \/>\nevangelical Protestant), Judaism (Reform), and Islam.<\/p>\n<p>These<br \/>\nleaders, like many others on the council, have been at the vanguard in sustaining and reviving a progressive public face of<br \/>\nreligion. The excerpts below illustrate how these leaders are faithfully and critically engaging their faith and religious tradition to work for social justice and the common good&#8211;a hopeful sign in this new era.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font>Harry Knox, Director of Religion and Faith Program, Human Rights Campaign<\/font>.<br \/>\nUnder his leadership, HRC created a national speakers&#8217; bureau that<br \/>\nreaches more than 10 million Americans monthly and a national network<br \/>\nfor 22 progressive state clergy coalitions around the country. Knox was<br \/>\ndenied ordination because he is openly gay, and is a former licensed<br \/>\nminister of the United Methodist Church in Georgia.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><font>The<br \/>\npeople that we study now as great thinkers were all revolutionary in<br \/>\ntheir time. They all listened to God first, and then made what they<br \/>\nwere hearing bump up against the text and bump up against the tradition<br \/>\nof the church. And they found that maybe the text and the tradition<br \/>\nweren&#8217;t big enough to hold what they were hearing from God, and so they<br \/>\nsaid some new things.<\/font><br \/>-Knox, in Progressive &amp; Religious<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><font>Dr. Eboo S. Patel, Founder and Director, Interfaith Youth Core<\/font>.<br \/>\nDr. Patel, an Indian-American Muslim, founded his Chicago-based<br \/>\norganization to build the interfaith youth movement through service and<br \/>\ndialogue. Patel is a Rhodes scholar and serves on the Religious<br \/>\nAdvisory Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><font>A<br \/>\nreligious pluralist is somebody who may believe very deeply that their<br \/>\nown tradition is the only &#8220;right&#8221; tradition, but who fundamentally<br \/>\nbelieves in a society where people from different backgrounds have the<br \/>\nfreedom and the right to live by their own traditions and where they<br \/>\ncan live together in equal dignity and mutual loyalty.<\/font><br \/>-Patel, in Progressive &amp; Religious<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><font>Rabbi David N. Saperstein, Director and Counsel, Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism<\/font>.<br \/>\nRabbi Saperstein was recently named the most influential rabbi in<br \/>\nAmerica by Newsweek magazine. For more than 30 years, Rabbi Saperstein<br \/>\nhas represented the Reform Jewish Movement to Congress and the<br \/>\nadministration and lobbied for a variety of social justice issues.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><font>There<br \/>\nis hardly a classic text of Judaism that does not resound with both<br \/>\nspiritual meaning and God&#8217;s call for us to be engaged in creating a<br \/>\nbetter world. You can open up almost any story in the Bible and feel<br \/>\nthis deep spiritual resonance that speaks across the centuries and<br \/>\nembodies this call: that we are called to create a more just and fair<br \/>\nworld for humanity.<\/font><br \/>-Saperstein, in Progressive &amp; Religious <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><font>Rev. Jim Wallis, President and Director, Sojourners<\/font>.<br \/>\nSojourners is a progressive evangelical organization that has been a<br \/>\nlongstanding voice for poverty reduction, peace, and the environment.<br \/>\nWallis&#8217; book, God&#8217;s Politics, stayed on the New York Times best-seller<br \/>\nlist for 4 months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><font>One<br \/>\nthing that changes American Christians is direct proximity,<br \/>\nrelationship to poor people. Revival is going to be triggered when the<br \/>\nrelationship to the poor on the part of the churches reaches a critical<br \/>\nmass.<\/font><br \/>-Wallis, in Progressive &amp; Religious<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These leaders are featured prominently in my recent book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0742562301?tag=progressiveandreligious-20&amp;camp=15041&amp;creative=373501&amp;link_code=as3\">Progressive &amp; Religious<\/a>,<br \/>\nwhich explains how progressive religious leaders are tapping the deep<br \/>\nconnections between religion and social justice to work on issues like<br \/>\npoverty and workers&#8217; rights, the environment, health care, pluralism,<br \/>\nand human rights. The book is the result of three years of systematic<br \/>\nresearch and nearly 100 interviews with progressive religious leaders<br \/>\nin Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.<\/p>\n<p>The website companion to the book (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.progressiveandreligious.org\/\">http:\/\/www.progressiveandreligious.org\/<\/a>) also features selected <a href=\"http:\/\/www.progressiveandreligious.org\/podcasts\">audio podcasts<\/a> and transcripts with these groundbreaking leaders, including podcasts with Dr. Eboo Patel and Rabbi David Saperstein.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Obama&#8217;s newly unveiled Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships taps four progressive religious leaders featured in my recent book, Progressive &amp; Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life (Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2008). The leaders come from across the religious spectrum, representing&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,13,15,14,2,9],"tags":[384,385],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defining-progressive","category-evangelicals","category-jews","category-mainline-protestants","category-muslims","category-religion-in-the-public-square","tag-books","tag-obama-faith-based-initiative"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>President&#039;s Faith-Based Advisory Council Taps Four Progressive Leaders Featured in Recent Book, Progressive &amp; Religious - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/04\/presidents-faith-based-advisor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"President&#039;s Faith-Based Advisory Council Taps Four Progressive Leaders Featured in Recent Book, Progressive &amp; Religious - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"President Obama&#8217;s newly unveiled Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships taps four progressive religious leaders featured in my recent book, Progressive &amp; Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life (Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2008). The leaders come from across the religious spectrum, representing&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/04\/presidents-faith-based-advisor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-07T15:04:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/progressiveandreligious.org\/blog\/uploaded_images\/PR-new-cover-small-754188.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert P. 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The leaders come from across the religious spectrum, representing&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/04\/presidents-faith-based-advisor.html","og_site_name":"Progressive Revival","article_published_time":"2009-04-07T15:04:46+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/progressiveandreligious.org\/blog\/uploaded_images\/PR-new-cover-small-754188.jpg"}],"author":"Robert P. 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Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a29\/a29815cbd9e954843b8a4c2b42db769dx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a29\/a29815cbd9e954843b8a4c2b42db769dx96.jpg","caption":"Robert P. Jones"},"description":"Robert P. Jones, Ph.D. is president of Public Religion Research and author of Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life. Dr. Jones is also a Visiting Fellow in Religion at The Third Way and a regular columnist for the online magazine ReligionDispatches.org. His firm is a national strategic consulting firm that specializes in research and polling to help clients understand the complex ways religion and values shape American politics and public life. Dr. Jones is a member of the national steering committee for the Religion and Politics Group at the American Academy of Religion; he is also an active member of the Society of Christian Ethics and the American Association of Public Opinion Research. Previously, Dr. Jones served as an affiliated scholar at the Center for American Progress and as the founding director and senior fellow at the Center for American Values in Public Life at People for the American Way Foundation. Prior to his work in Washington, DC, he was assistant professor of religious studies at Missouri State University and a teaching fellow in religion at Emory University. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University and M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Jones is also the author of Liberalism's Troubled Search for Equality: Religion and Cultural Bias in the Oregon Physician-assisted Suicide Debates.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/rjones"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}