Today, institutions and social practices are judged efficient, rational and productive to the extent that they maximize money and power. That's the Old Bottom Line. Now Here is the NEW BOTTOM LINE for which we advocate:
We believe that institutions and social practices should be judged rational, efficient and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize and enhance:
2. Challenging the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the Religious Right
Educating people of faith to the understanding that a serious commitment to God, religion and spirit should manifest in a social activism aimed at:
3. Challenging the many anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions and behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture
Challenging as well the extreme individualism and me-firstism that permeates all parts of the global market culture.
We will educate people in social change movements to carefully distinguish between their legitimate critiques of the Religious Right and their illegitimate generalizing of those criticisms to all religious or spiritual beliefs and practices.
We will help social change activists and others in the liberal and progressive culture become more conscious of and less afraid to affirm their own inner spiritual yearnings and to reconstitute a visionary progressive social movement that incorporates the spiritual dimension, of which the loving, spiritually elevating and connecting aspects of religion has been one expression.
We will remind those aspiring to social and political change that most of the great advancements of the past have had overtly spiritual underpinnings and to ignore or dismiss this is to risk cutting oneself off from a power that greatly facilitates healing and transformation.