SPIRIT MATTERS

A comprehensive manifesto calling for the development of a socially and environmentally responsible spirituality.

Tikkun editor Lerner (Jewish Renewal, 1994) is a former Clinton guru who helped develop the ill-fated “Politics of Meaning” some years back. Here he tries to hit the comeback trail with this earnest, long-winded, radical attempt at giving American society some spiritual CPR—an effort sorely in need of details, parables, or (at the very least) a sense of humor. Lerner anticipates a great spiritual awakening in our millennium, after which market profits will no longer dictate the cultural bottom line. Instead, a GNP of spiritual happiness, oneness with our creator (and creation), social responsibility, and goodness will transform our institutions and prevail throughout our noncompetitive globe. The idols of amoral scientism and unchecked greed will be toppled. The lubricant for this messianic world will not be religion: the organized religions, in Lerner’s view, peddle a “reactionary spirituality” that is given to veiling women and circumcising men. Lerner’s God, on the other hand, is “the force of healing and transformation in the Universe,” and his “emancipatory spirituality” will challenge the male chauvinism that objectifies women. Too many of Lerner’s fine sentiments and proposals (for sharing resources equitably, forcing corporations and nations to be accountable for social and environmental sins, and reforming law and education) are hortatory rather than specific, and his spirituality in general has too many syllables to catch fire. His treatise is so warm and fuzzy that the bibliography is called “Supportive Reading” (although Lerner is not shy about plugging his own magazine ad nauseam).

This ambitious and worthy effort would be far more effective if told in a voice that was less shrill and more eloquent. But that would require a different author.