The Issues

What does a progressive spiritual perspective have to contribute to an analysis of public life that goes beyond the standard liberal or progressive agenda?

Our policy papers, analysis, and online discussion will answer this question through articulating a values-based, inspirational, and transformational vision of public life and direction for public policy. We will work to develop a progressive "politics of meaning" agenda, beyond the standard materialist "politics of interest" perspective, for a host of relevant issue areas.

For instance on the topic of education, we agree with the liberal and progressive agenda that there needs to be more funding for schools and teachers. What we seek in a Spiritual Activism is a vision of what a spiritually infused education would look like, how teachers could participate and develop their own spiritual resources, how to prevent spiritual education from becoming a slippery slope to the establishment of any particular religion, and how to build a foundation for students through their education that gives them the resources to resist the materialism and selfishness of the marketplace when they enter what the cynical realists call "the real world" outside of school.

Similarly we engage in serious discourse on what a new progressive spiritual politics would look like for each issue we address and how to organize to realize this vision.