Overcoming the politics of hate with the spiritual principle of love
BY HARV BISHOP
New Thought can run straight into a partisan political buzz saw as it strives to realize its social justice mission of creating world that works for everyone, says Dr. Roger Teel and Dr. David Alexander. Teel and Alexander, Religious Science ministers and members of the Association for Global New Thought which advocates spiritual social action, say core spiritual principles should be separate from contentious partisan politics.
“The challenge is that some of these issues get politicized,” says Teel. He is senior minister of Mile Hi Church near Denver, one of the largest New Thought churches in the world. “I feel like rights for gays and lesbians and other concerns about equality are really justice issues. Those issues have a spiritual core to them, because everyone is Spirit, everyone has a right to love and everyone has a right to committed relationships. So, for me, that’s a spiritual issue that has sadly enough, been taken up into politics.
“Quite often when speaking about it I get letters from people telling me we should stay out of politics. But it’s not politics, it is justice.”
Rev. David Alexander, senior minister at New Thought Center for Spiritual Living near Portland, Oregon, was active in Oregon’s marriage equality movement prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June 2015 legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states.
“One of the things I was often quoted as saying in Oregon,” says Alexander, “was that the principle of love can never be overcome by the politics of hate. So when people say, ‘Well, if you’re doing social justice, aren’t you getting into politics?’ No. We are articulating principles. And those principles are universal and inclusive. Those principles are what we bring to the social sector.”
Healing political divisions
Teel believes that New Thought’s emphasis on core belief in the unity of humanity can not only help to avoid politicizing human rights issues but also potentially heal political divisions.
“If we get into telling people which way to vote,” he says, ‘which I pray none of our churches do, or proclaim ourselves as liberals rather than conservatives, that’s when we fall into the pitfall of the partisan thing. We then get into the very duality problem that’s in our political and our social system. I think we need to find the ways that we can speak to the unity of people. There certainly are a lot of opportunities [in this time of political polarization].”
Alexander concurs. “Obviously there are aspects of social justice that are political. There are organizations, both religious and non-religious, that are engaged at that level and that’s fine for them. That doesn’t mean that’s how we in New Thought need to engage in it.
“Our role could be that of articulating principle and helping clarify the conversation. Using that example of marriage equality, the inclusive principle of love got hijacked and became a political football. We have an obligation, I believe, if we really believe in creating a world that works for everyone, to stand up and say ‘No. This issue is not a political football. It’s a principle of inclusive love and it is a civil right: end of story.’ You don’t have to follow that up with saying ‘and therefore you should vote this way or that way or therefore sign this petition.’ It doesn’t have to include any of those things, but we do have a place at the table to speak up about principles.”
Dr. Teel and Dr. Alexander will be part of a forthcoming Science of Mind magazine article with other leading New Thought voices asking how Centers for Spiritual Living’s mission statement- “creating a world that works for everyone”- can become a reality.
Dr. Teel’s book “This Life Is Joy” published by Tarcher Penguin is available at Amazon. His website can be found here.
Great article. The thing is that it’s really hard not to pick a side. Not talking about issues doesn’t make them go away. Even though I believe that we do create our realities I have to understand that not everyone believes in that idea. Indeed, most people view the world as cause and effect. I don’t claim to know what the answer is here but I do think we need to be involved at least from the perspective of setting a different kind of example.
It’s an election year. We each choose what we think is best for our country. But that’s an individual choice.
Oh, where to start, where to start? Having spent more than 25 years in political and government communications (admittedly in the peaceful confines of Canadian politics but all the same…), here are some considerations.
First, if it involves or even could involve government, it’s going to be political and there’s no getting away from that reality in our society. The debate is often about using the power of government to enable one point of view to work over another. In fact, people often push for political solutions precisely because they want the big stick of government to get other people to do something that they cannot convince them to do in other ways — and this is true in all political camps.
Second, and more important for this discussion, I suspect that most of the people who are strongly exercised by a political issue see it through their own values and priorities (“it’s just the right thing to do”). Where the political heat (but not light) comes in is when we are so convinced of the moral certainty of our own values and priorities that we argue that anyone who differs is flat out wrong — and that’s if we admit they have any values of relevance at all or that their views have come from a place that we understand, even if we disagree. There is no room for a conversation when that happens, just two or more monologues of increasing volume and harshness.
In fact, we see this in this article. When David Alexander finishes his comment with the words “End of story”, I’m not seeing someone say “I understand others have different values than mine and while I respect that and have a sense of love towards them as I do all people, I believe deeply in mine and they lead me here, as I hope they will lead you too.” “End of story” sounds like “I am completely right and you are not only unbelievably wrong but are probably a bad human being too.”
I have often heard people say, “Why can’t politicians just do the right thing” on this or that issue. Well, it’s not just because of evil lobbyists or evil campaign funding or that they are just plain evil. It’s because your version of “the right thing” is not everyone else’s. This isn’t a good or bad thing. It is simply how we are — and that diversity of views and values is where the challenge starts.
Hi Chris,
I’m going to agree with your larger point and (respectfully) disagree with your application of these ideas to this particular instance.
Teel and Alexander are making a rights based argument. The US Bill of Rights represents a group of principles that we set above the political fray. In that sense, and given a definition of politics as partisan political wrangling, they are correct to say they are not making a political argument. Plus their position is somewhat on defense on the word “political” since there are strict rules here about churches not engaging in partisan politics. That, and as Teel noted, people criticizing them for being “political” instead of spiritual shepherds when Oneness and equality are core spiritual principles for New Thought. It is in that context Alexander says “end of story.”
To your second point I absolutely agree that politics is often too narrowly defined and I would extend it to relationships between citizens. I often challenge my students to find something on their person government has not had a hand in and it is nearly impossible.
Holding society together given pluralistic deeply held values is one of the great unanswered questions in political theory. But there has been a sea change in US public attitudes on this particular issue and it is much a more a question of age than it whether one is left or right.
When is there room for the kind of conversation you describe? In some instances certainly yes, we need to turn down the volume and listen to each other (and in the context of the full interviews both these guys address that.) And there are rare remarkable instances of that (including pro-life and pro-choice advocates listening and talking). But what does one do with, say, segregationists who root their prejudice in an interpretation of religion? Can we say that’s your value and I have mine? Can’t we say that a more inclusive value is better than a less inclusive one? Granted definitions of the “right thing” vary, but there are times and places such as the US civil rights movement and recent gains for the LGBTQ community where reaching out to the least tolerant may not be the best strategy. At least in the US the notion has been that you are free to be as prejudiced as you want to be in the confines of your home or with friends, but when you come out to play in public rules about tolerance are required. Ideally changing hearts and minds in the way you describe is best, but how are rights guaranteed until those hearts and mind are changed? Prior to the US Supreme Court Brown v. Board decision a majority of the US public supported segregation. After the decision there was a shift the other direction because government chose one position over the other.
Well I knew that would kick start a conversation. I’m going to leave the conversation on the arcane world of US constitutional law for others and swing back to my main point which had nothing to do with same sex marriage, where I can say with pleasure that we’ve had it for more than a decade and people now wonder just what the fuss was about.
I agree completely that none of us should ever be afraid to say that we believe strongly in what our values tell us in terms of addressing whatever issue matters to us. No disagreement there or in promoting them as passionately as we must. My point is more akin to the old “hate the sin but love the sinner” mantra. It doesn’t mean that you have to accept every random LGBTQ-ophobe or racist or whatever-ist with a cheery la-di-da. It does mean that if you are actually, sincerely really all about the universal love that is central to New Thought, then it follows that you take a step back and avoid being “holier than thou” both literally and verbally in your interactions with even the grossest of haters — not because you really expect to bring them over to your side right now but because you have no reason to indulge their fears.
In my experience with nutballs, and I say that with love, having met my share, I find that these seem to be people whose world is defined by fear. Those fears are easily transformed into hate. Screaming back at them is a poor strategy to help the love in them (hidden as it may be) come out.
I’ll close this out with a line in a speech I wrote years ago. “I’m not saying he’s evil but I am saying that he is really, really wrong on this issue.”
To my way of thinking, the pulpit is no place for politics.
This exchange reflects the best of New Thought’s radical tradition. No New Thought church or conference ever had to a pass a “resolution” on LGBT rights — or anyone’s rights. The movement has always been on the side of honoring the individual and venerating human potential. New Thought quietly ranks next to Quakerism for its history of radicalism. Let’s be a little less quiet about it.
“The movement has always been on the side of honoring the individual” .. and the simple reasoning for this is that [if] we are all a unique divine expression of the One life, call it God, Universe, whatever; any “against” energy, is also against me. If I love myself, and I love life, I naturally have a love of others. This may seem woo-woo to some, but being truly grounded in New Thought principles is a grounding in love for all of life.
Amen, James. And, so far as I’m concerned, bring on the “woo woo.” I think we have to stand up proudly, as you have here, and extol our values. I venerate the term New Age as generally referencing the culture of therapeutic and radically ecumenical spirituality. (At times I’m critical of that culture, too.) I encourage people not to cede these terms — if someone wants to call me New Age or woo-woo, as you’ve ably defined it, well, guilty as charged. Very best, m
I heard a Unity minister at an INTA Congress say that you can always tell the New Agers. they come in and look around and ask, “Where’s your stuff?” (Meaning crystals, cards, etc.)
We don’t put any faith in the stuff per se, but in the power of each individual to choose his or her life. New Agers tend to put power in the “stuff” — which is just as external as the traditional God “out there”.
Roger Teel is absolutely right on this point. Many people politicize the movement, insisting that we must all agree on political issues (sometimes without realizing that they are doing so), and are quite willing to purge those who do not agree.
This reduces us from a spiritual movement to a political one, and it narrows our reach.
I remember some years ago discussing potential outreach for our center. (This was prior to the mass digitalization of information.) We were talking about advertising in one of the local metropolitan dailies. I suggested that we advertise in both. Now, in our area we have one identifiably “liberal” paper and one identifiably “conservative” paper.
One of the practitioners (who later entered ministerial school) said we would not be well served to advertise in the more conservative paper (whose religion writer gave us much more attention and coverage than the other paper’s religion writer did) because people who read it would not be attracted to us, and added, “Who’d want them anyway?” I found that exclusionary to the point of being offensive.
In another case, I know of a person who was in practitioner training (year two) and his minister told him he could not qualify to be a practitioner because he was “pro-life”.
Now, I find both of these exclusionary and not supportive of a world that works for everyone. yet these attitudes and attitudes like these are much more common in the New thought community than one would think. (I know; I interact with a lot of my fellow New Thoughters on social media.)