The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right

One does not need to be a "religious" person to commend and endorse Rabbi Lerner's message of love, tolerance, and respect for one another regardless of our religious, ethnic, and/or political affiliations. And Rabbi Lerner is right when he suggests that we need to be less selfish and more concerned about taking care of our planet and all those who inhabit it. Too often we have become a self-indulgent, wasteful, or even destructive society. We drain our limited natural resources for our own pleasure instead of preserving and replenishing those resources. We should protect the quality of life and the health of our planet so that future generations will benefit as well as ourselves. As a society it is deeply troubling that one segment of our population, namely the extreme religious right, attempts to control our politics, culture, and behavior. These extremists condemn ANYONE who does not conform to their mold. Isn't that contrary to tolerance and forgiveness as the Bible teaches? I admire Rabbi Lerner's stand against the extreme religious right's bigotry towards non-Christians, intellectuals, homosexuals, or anyone else whom they consider "objectionable". Rabbi Lerner seeks to comfort and bring people together based on our shared humanity. The extreme religious right choses to ostracize and demonize those who are different from them. They are not true Christians. They are bullies.

People in this country hunger for a politics of meaning. We don't want to distrust our leaders. We don't want to distrust the political process. We want a politics that really stands up for the values we share. These are the fundamental values of our country and of all religions. We want our leaders to truly value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people everywhere. We want an ethical society- not a selfish one. We don't want leaders to talk about compassionate conservatism and then set up prisons to torture people who are randomly collected off streets and are never convicted of any crime. This book addresses issues of value. It helps guide us toward a politics of compassion and a way for all of us, conservatives, liberals, religious, and non-religious to come together to demand responsible leadership at a time of great peril to our country and to the world. This is a great voice of hope, passion, vision, and sanity. I invite every person who has deep concerns for the future of our democracy and for the deepening of spirit throughout the world to buy this book and read it. Then set up a book club and read it with your friends, neighbors, and community. This is a book to be treasured, internalized, and discussed at all levels of society. It has in it the capacity to shift our way of thinking about our world, and therefore, to change the way we operate. This book could enable us to turn the page of overbearing domanence and create a world based on equality and justice.

Michael Lerner's articulate and passionate voice provides hope and nourishment for a progressive and faithful alternative to the hard right. Read this book, share this vision with others and pursue the way of hope in your community. There is indeed an emerging community of interfaith voices rising up in the United States -- a community which includes Christian evangelicals, Protestants and Catholics, Jews of all sorts, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and others --- all who from within their unique tradition offer hope to a broken and hungry world. This book should be read widely by all those who long for a better way. As a young progressive Christian evangelical I am so grateful for the voice of Michael Lerner. His voice declares that hope is on the way, Lerner along with many others including passionate evangelical Christians like Jim Wallis --- are helping Americans live out their faith by caring for the environment (Creation Care), pursuing alternatives to war and violence (peacemaking), and speaking up for the poor and marginalized (justice seeking). As is written in Christian scripture "faith without works is dead" Rabbi Lerner is calling us all to a better way.

I've read a number of the recent books about spirituality and politics, and many of them are quite good, but _The Left Hand of God_ is the broadest and deepest analysis of the situation we are in in this country. Lerner addresses the pain many Americans are feeling that is driving them toward the right and offers a more ethical and less hypocritical alternative to the politial right. The book outlines a "spiritual covenant with America" that imagines what public policy might look like were we to strive toward a world based in love and compassion. The ideas in this book will be useful to people who are skeptical about religion as well as to those who embrace it. I wish everyone would read this book!