What is Spiritual?

Ethics, aesthetics, love, compassion, creativity, music, altruism, generosity, forgiveness, spontaneity, emergent phenomena, consciousness itself, and any other aspect of reality not subject to empirical verification or measurement. Many scientists are also spiritual: they understand that the scientific method is appropriate for describing regularities in the natural world, but not for understanding all of reality. Those aspects of reality that cannot be reduced to publicly observable and verifiable behavior we call spiritual.

What Is A Spiritual Progressive? (Hint:You don’t have to believe in God or Be Part of a Religion).

YOU are a spiritual progressive if you endorse the New Bottom Line: Institutions, corporations, government policies, legislation, our political system, our health care system, our educational system, our legal system, and even our personal behavior should be judged “efficient,” “productive” and/or “rational” not only to the extent that they maximize money, power, or fame (the OLD Bottom Line) but also to the extent that they maximize or help produce, sustain or enhance our abilities to be loving and kind, generous and caring for others, ethically and ecologically sensitive in our behavior, able to see others as embodiments of the sacred (or as deserving to be treated as ends and not as means to our own ends), and increasingly able to transcend the tendency to look at the physical world merely in utilitarian terms (how can we use it for human purposes) so that we can respond with awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of all that is. You don’t have to believe in God, deny science, or be part of a religion to be a spiritual progressive. Spiritual progressives use the New Bottom Line to assess the value of our economic, political, and social arrangements and seek to do tikkun (heal and transform the world), using tactics and strategies which themselves manifest that new bottom line (e.g. non-violence and non-violent communication). Or to put it in a short sound byte: we support The Caring Society—Caring for Each Other and Caring for the Earth.

Welcome. Please Join the NSP

There are tens of millions of people around the world who want a world based on love, caring kindness, generosity and ethical and ecological sensitivity, only they don’t know you exist and you don’t know they exist. The media and our political leaders make spiritual progressives invisible. Progressive but secular social change movements often ignore the spiritual progressives amongst them. Even in liberal religious denominations, there is a severe split between those who believe that we can only be safe if we have power and domination over others, and those (spiritual progressives) who understand that the greatest safety can come through love and generosity toward others.

The Network of Spiritual Progressives can provide a way for all those who want a New Bottom Line and The Caring Society to become visible to each other and to work toward a world that is ecologically sustainable and filled with love and generosity. But to make that happen, WE NEED YOU TO JOIN US. And when you join, you’ll get online access to Tikkun Magazine (the part on their website that isn’t available to non-members).

In many places, we already have local projects of the NSP. And where it doesn’t exist yet, you can help us create a local group. But even if you just want to support the NSP financially, your membership is deeply appreciated and badly needed so that we can all feel empowered to affirm their own highest consciousness: that our well being (and even survival in the 21st century) depends on the well-being of everyone on this planet and on the well-beingt of the planet itself! Let that be our guide as we build the kind of world that the skeptics and cynics tell us is “unrealistic,” “utopian,” and impossible to achieve. Be part of the voice that insists that a world of love and generosity, of non-violence and caring for the earth, is the only rational path for the human race.

The NSP welcomes people of every faith and all people of good will. In every faith there is a struggle happening right now between those who hear God speaking as the force of power and domination and those who hear God speaking as the force of healing, transformation, love and generosity. As the Network of Spiritual Progressives, we put our spiritual values into practice by lifting up our voices and working together to make love and caring the new bottom line in our personal, civic and political lives. We are glad you are here!

What’s Affordable?

Puzzled by what you hear about the federal budget and what cuts we need to make?  Check out these facts about what’s affordable.

Order New Book

Embracing Israel/Palestine is now available. Click here to order your copy right now!

Embracing Israel/Palestine is a must-read for those who care about peace in the Middle East. It is provocative, radical, persuasive, and, if given the attention it deserves, could make a major contribution to reconciliation. Please read this book! Archbishop Desmond Tutu

UN Petition

Recognize Palestine / Recognize Israel

The NSP encourages you to sign this petition. Click here to read more and to add your name.

Editorials and Actions from Tikkun Magazine

European Intellectuals Speak Out AGAINST AUSTERITY–and provide an alternativeEditor’s Note:  Tikkun author Ulrich Duchrow, a professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and cofounder and moderator of Kairos Euope, an ecumenical network striving f …
Obama: a Civil Libertarian’s NightmareEditor’s Note: Criticism of Obama does not imply support for his political opponents. However one decides to vote in November, one must do so with as full a picture as possible of what policies one is …
Günter Grass “the Terrible”Note from Tikkun Editor Rabbi Michael Lerner: While Avnery is certainly right that there is nothing automatically anti-Semitic about a German today criticizing the policies of the State of Israel, he …
Easter Sacrifice of the LambsRabbi Lerner’s Note: The argument presented below as a critique of Christian practice is equally applicable to Jewish and Muslim practice as well as to the tens of millions of secularists who do the e …
Uri Avnery on the New Mandela : Marwan BarghoutiUri Avnery March 31, 2012                                                   The New Mandela                                                             MARWAN BARGHOUTI has spoken up. After a long sil …

News from the Tikkun Daily Blog

C. A. Bowers: Why the Occupy Movement Should Address the Need for Educational ReformsA major step in healing the injustices being challenged by the Occupy Movement is to understand that the conceptual roots of today’s injustices can be traced to the long tradition of mis-education tha …
Arlene Goldbard: Compassion: Annals of Online DatingWhen packing for online dating world, be sure to bring along plenty of compassion. Having chronicled my adventures in online dating in my blog series, I’ve become an object of curiosity to certain rea …
Mark Kirschbaum: Weekly Torah Commentary: Perashat Behukotai- Walk This WayHere we are, at the close of the book of Vayikra, “Leviticus”, the Book of Holiness, concerned primarily with what was intended to be the highest service, that of the Temple, the sacrifices, and the p …