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Reviewed by Patricia Farris, Senior Minister of First United Methodist Church, Santa Monica, California The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right by Michael Lerner The title of Rabbi Lerner’s book may cause some of you to go right out and buy it and others of you to run the other way. Skip over the title and read the book anyway. For anyone concerned about the state of the soul of the people of God in our country at this time, as well as faith questions about social and public policy (that is, anyone preaching, planning worship and teaching), it’s worth a read. Rabbi Michael Lerner has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley and in Clinical Psychology from the Wright Institute. He is currently rabbi of the Beyt Tikkun synagogue and editor of Tikkun magazine. His long experience in psychotherapy, social psychology and social movements, combine with his faith perspective to provide what may be the book’s most helpful section. Along with other colleagues and students, Lerner has spent most of the past thirty years interviewing middle-income people in the United States, Canada, England and Israel. From this research, in the first section of the book entitled “America’s Spiritual Crisis,” Lerner offers insights into the spiritual hunger and yearning of that group of people as well as a critique of the social and political structures that contribute to their anxiety, their sense of isolation and fear, and the tremendous stress of living in a highly competitive and pressured society. “It is the search for meaning in a despiritualized world that leads many people to right-wing religious communities because these groups seem to be in touch with the sacred dimension of life.” It is Lerner’s contention that many people have affiliated with the Religious Right not out of any support of their political or social agenda, but because the Left has abdicated any acknowledgement or support for what Clifford Gertz named “the politics of meaning.” Of course people want a ‘purpose-driven life’ (small case), Lerner observes. They want a higher meaning for their lives and values for their children. And, in his view, if the only place they can find support for that hunger is on the Right, that’s where they will turn. The second half of the book is entitled “The Spiritual Agenda for American Politics: A New Bottom Line.” The book is obviously a challenge to America’s progressives to “get their spiritual house in order” and to frame their agenda in ways that address issues of meaning and values. He provides an historical analysis as well as a prescription of policy positions. While finding points of agreement and disagreement, readers will be challenged by his assertions and his political claims, as he addresses the range of domestic and foreign policy-- the environment, families, health care, sexuality, non-violence and so forth. Readers in the church of various political persuasions would be well-served to consider his metaphor of the two different hands of God and of the need for a balanced outreach of both. In Lerner’s image, the right hand of God is the strong hand that reaches out in power to liberate God’s people, free them from slavery and give them a home in the Promised Land. But once they are settled and grow to become the dominant group in power, it is the more gentle left-hand of God that reaches out through the prophets to bring compassion and justice to those who are most vulnerable among them--the widows, the orphans, the outcast, the aliens and the poor. In spite of the book’s unfortunate title, there is plenty of material here to forge common ground and focus on God’s people and their spiritual and material needs. For example, Lerner’s reflections on what this country can learn from the Katrina disaster makes important reading for all of our congregations who have sent work teams and financial support to the region. What might we make of the fact that team after team reports hearing that the church is the only presence working to rebuild the Gulf? What can we all—of whatever political bent—make of Lerner’s insistence that our national response must have three foci: the permanent elimination of poverty, policies to sustain the environment and the retooling of the infrastructure of all our cities? A vital conversation across the church at this critical time based on our own experience and Lerner’s contentions could well prove to be transformative for our fractured denomination as well as for our witness in the world. For all Methodists, respectful of differences of opinion and for whom there is no holiness but social holiness, Rabbi Lerner’s provocative book provides plenty of material for reflection, dialogue, and action.
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