Issues of faith redefined

Published 4:00 pm Saturday, August 19, 2006

They don’t seek to reclaim the moral high ground so much as redefine it.

That’s the sense one gets from a group calling itself the Network of Spiritual Progressives, a loose coalition of left-leaning church-goers operating in the Bainbridge/North Kitsap area these days. The band hosted a get-together with U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee on Thursday evening; a full sanctuary (including a handful of islanders) greeted the Bainbridge Democrat at the Suquamish Church of Christ.

The discussion was billed as “Restoring Heartfelt American Values,” the premise being that contrary to the view from the other end of the spectrum, no single party or sect has cornered the market on morality in our sociopolitical arena. The Spiritual Progressives hope to expand the national “values” debate – currently defined by abortion and gay rights, but little else – to include health care, education funding, environmental stewardship and the innate dignity of all humankind.

They appeared to find a kindred soul in Inslee, currently seeking a fourth term representing the 1st District.

While cautioning that not every issue can or should be argued in moral terms, Inslee did lament what he sees as the manichean tone favored by the White House and its allies in Congress. “Their language is, ‘if you don’t follow me on this policy issue, you’re truly evil,’” he said.

He also suggested that political liberals have their own issues with self-righteousness that can be just as off-putting to those they hope to sway; better, Inslee said, to look for areas of agreement among creeds and beliefs, and opportunities to set a leadership example locally, than to resent opponents and count on distant politicians to divine a wise path. Among the five principles chiseled into the House of Representatives rostrum – liberty, unity, peace, justice and tolerance – Inslee highlighted the last.

But he also cited several recent instances in which overt and passionately moral arguments carried the day in Congress – specifically, with extension of the Voting Rights Act, and defeat of a bill that would have hurt many minimum wage earners while giving huge and senseless tax breaks to the wealthy.

Inslee conceded that on some matters (presumably abortion and gay rights) many Americans simply may never come to accord. But there is a whole range of national challenges, from health care to living-wage jobs to energy independence to stewarding the natural creation handed down by God or Darwin (or both), on which folks should be looking for common ground instead of being wedged apart.

Interestingly, given that it was a meeting with church folk, Inslee was somewhat demure about the specifics of his own beliefs, citing his discomfiture at the overt commingling of faith and politics. Along with freedom of speech, the congressman hailed that church/state divide as the founders’ greatest gift.

It has been argued that proclaiming God is exclusively on your side doesn’t really elevate you so much as diminish the deity; Thursday’s gathering of North Kitsap’s Spiritual Progressives served notice – not often acknowledged in the national discourse – that citizens of all political stripes can lay honest claim to faith and moral values.

In a nation with precious little unity, such an inclusive,

transcendent civic dialog can only help.

May it contiue to find its voice.

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Correction

• David Lewis of Little and Lewis gardens was misidentified in the photo cutline on Wednesday’s front page.