This interview with leading American Jewish social activist and writer, Rabbi Michael Lerner, continues the series recorded for Eureka Street at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne in December 2009. It is sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Centre for Inter-Religious Dialogue at the Australian Catholic University.
He speaks about the importance of interfaith forums like the Parliament, and the Network of Spiritual Progressives which he founded in 2005. He co-chairs the Network with Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister and Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Cornel West.
Lerner is perhaps the most controversial Jewish activist in the US. (Continues below)
He's been attacked from the right — even to the extent of receiving death threats — for his outspoken advocacy for the rights of Palestinians in Israel, and from the left for his critique of the anti-religious and anti-spiritual stance of secular progressives.
One of his central causes is to convince American progressives that they shouldn't let conservatives take the running on religion. They need to address a crisis of meaning, a national spiritual crisis, as well as the material needs of the population.
Lerner was born and brought up in New Jersey on the US east coast. After school, he studied simultaneously at New York's Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He graduated from Columbia with an Arts degree in English Literature and Philosophy, but he left the seminary after realising it was not in tune with his attraction to social engagement and Jewish mysticism.
In the mid-1960s he went to the west coast and started post-graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, earning his PhD in philosophy in 1972. In 1974, he started another doctorate at the Wright Institute of Psychology, also in Berkeley, and in 1977 received a PhD in Clinical and Social Psychology.
In California, Lerner became involved in student politics and the peace movement. He gained prominence as leader and spokesman for a number of student groups, and in 1968 helped organise an anti-war demonstration that became one of the biggest ever seen in Seattle. When it turned violent, he was arrested, along with a number of other leaders, and ended up spending several months in prison.
He was described by J. Edgar Hoover at that time as 'one of the most dangerous criminals in America'.
Lerner has lectured in a philosophy and psychology at a number of universities and colleges around the US,