In a very general sense, progressivism is a worldview that recognizes the worth of human life and seeks to maximize freedom, opportunity, and fairness in society. Further, it aspires towards improving the well-being of all—via education, the arts, technology, social justice, health care, economic opportunity, et cetera—while also balancing human interests with those of the natural world. A progressive vision, therefore, seeks to enhance the liberty and fulfillment of both individuals and groups while simultaneously cultivating social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Progressives seek to manifest this vision through the promotion of diversity, empathy, pragmatism, critical thinking and debate, innovation, and cultural participation.

The above outline is very broad, but Progressivism can also by applied to religion specifically. There is, of course, a huge amount of information out there regarding progressive spirituality. I agree with the basic outline given by UU theologian James Luther Adams:

(1) Revelation and truth are not closed, but constantly revealed.
(2) All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not coercion.
(3) Affirmation of the moral obligation to direct one’s effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community.
(4) Denial of the immaculate conception of virtue and affirmation of the necessity of social incarnation. Good must be consciously given form and power within history.
(5) The resources (divine and human) that are available for achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate (but not necessarily immediate) optimism. There is hope in the ultimate abundance of the Universe.

I can string these together to say that a progressive spirituality recognizes the emergent nature of reality, promotes liberty and social beneficence, and aspires to meaningful change. At the root of all this is the idea that things can and should improve. While the world will always be imperfect, we have a moral obligation to make it better however we can. Yes, there will always be disagreements about what “better” is exactly and how to get there. But there is nevertheless an underlying agreement that change and improvement is both possible and desirable. Further, I would posit that a progressive vision of spiritual improvement would be a desire not to force a single way of being on everyone, but rather to create the conditions necessary to allow unique personal and cultural differences to thrive.

Now then, I take all this one step closer—I maintain that a progressive spirituality applies equally to the self. As such, I believe that I am an emergent being, flowing from the unchanging source of my being, yet constantly in a state of change (just as the Sacred River is and is not the same river from moment to moment). I have a moral obligation to improve, mature, and grow as a human being. As it happens, I have some firm ideas of what that means.

The first thing is what I call the Three Domains of Health, which include the physical, the psychological, and the characterological. Physical health is pretty straightforward. By psychological health, in broad terms, I mean the development of cognitive coherence and flexibility; adequate emotional self-regulation; the ability to form healthy relationships and experience social attunement; having a stable (but not rigid) sense of self; and the capability to be inwardly and outwardly aware (i.e. mindfulness). As a budding psychotherapist, I of course have more details on this, but will leave it as it stands for the sake of brevity. I have reduced characterological health to what I believe are four irreducible yet interconnected traits: courage, integrity, beneficence, and openness. Every one of these “health domains” are amenable to change and improvement, a goal geared not only to lead to a happy life, but to enable optimal functioning, to become the most you that you can be.

Other areas of improvement include knowledge acquisition (both experiential and didactic), agency (the ability to be effective in the world), and what can be called “mystical attunement” (I dislike this phrase, but lack a better one at the moment), the increased perception of connection/union between one’s deepest self and Nature/God/The All. I will try to explore each of these and other categories in future posts. The takeaway here is that changes in each of these areas do more than add knowledge and abilities—they profoundly change the very nature of the person.

And so we now have a basic spiritual scaffolding consisting of religious naturalism, allegoricalism, and progressivism. The first looks to the natural world and our place in it as the source of understanding reality and developing meaning; the second supports the development and use of religious objects (icons, rituals, texts, etc) while acknowledging that they are ultimately symbols for human ideas, values, principles, experiences, and desires; and the third insists on personal and social evolution by promoting liberty, opportunity, and fairness in society and health, education, agency, and mystical attunement in individuals. There are, of course, as yet unspoken philosophies embedded in this scaffolding, such as emergence theory, sacred humanism, process theology, and so on. But now that we have a basic outline, we can begin to fill in some details. I hope you will continue to join me.

One label for this viewpoint is allegoricalism, where religious objects are not taken as true in and of themselves (i.e. literalism), but are used to represent meaningful ideas, principles, values, experiences, and desires. In fact, human thinking is allegorical by nature—we constantly reduce complex concepts down to simple icons, such as flags, proverbs, logos, and the like. On a cognitive level, we also tend to take multiple memories and nonconsciously combine them into single, highly inaccurate amalgams (or cognitive palimpsests, if you will). It’s just what we do (I won’t bore you with the evolutionary advantages to this function).

Allegoricalism is the key to a liberal religious perspective. Liberal traditions tend to be much more interested in values and principles than in any given manifestation of those things. At the same time, they commonly understand that symbols are important to a spiritual life, and so they will employ things like rituals and sacred texts and icons—even while knowing that no inherent power or truth lies in the objects themselves, only what we project onto them.

Just as our combined memories of childhood are meaningful and satisfying despite their inaccuracies, so are our religious symbols. I know that there doesn’t exist a man with an elephant head and a tiny mouse that he rides around upon—but nevertheless I adore Ganesha. When I tickle his fat belly, I allow myself to imagine his laughter; when I place a grain of rice at his feet, I see him delighting in its taste and nourishment. Doing these things allows me to flex my mind and connect with a reality beyond my daily life, making it a bit more joyous, meaningful, and fulfilling.

As we all know, there are dangers in religious beliefs as well, most especially when they are taken as literal. For example, when such beliefs divide people into value categories, only trouble can come from it—unbelievers, heretics, infidels, sinners, outsiders, troglodytes, apostates…these arbitrary classifications all serve only to create in/out groups, often engendering (or outright encouraging) things like hatred, contempt, and fear. Another dilemma sets in when religious beliefs are used to address pragmatic problems or questions when other, more effective tools are available. An obvious example is using the Bible to determine the age of the Earth instead of empirical science and physical evidence. The world is a complex, infuriating place, and it can be tempting—and often comforting—to use religious models to try to make sense of it. The allegorical position promotes using secular systems and tools that are best qualified to lead to effective outcomes, even if religious models are used in parallel to develop meaning out of it all or to promote comfort and strength to deal with challenges.

In my last post, I talked about Religious Naturalism, which holds that the natural world must be placed at the center of our most significant experiences and understandings. The awe and wonder felt towards that world can find meaningful expression in allegoricalism. This endeavor is fundamentally subjective and individual, since the translation of the world into allegorical form will be unique for each person. At the same time, it is possible to have enough of a shared symbol set—usually rooted in shared principles and values—to allow for religious groups to form and thrive.

A structural benefit to the combination of religious naturalism and allegoricalism is the lack of any need to defend religious objects from empirical criticism since those objects are not held to be intrinsically “real.” Rather, the final argument is whether or not those objects promote well-being and support effective solutions to problems. To return to my personal example, I do not have to defend my reverence of Ganesha because I do not argue for his objective existence, but can say that my “relationship” with him benefits me spiritually without hindering my agency in dealing with life. For example, when roadblocks spring up, I might or might not pray to Ganesha to help remove obstacles (one of his fortes) but I will nevertheless apply real-world, pragmatic solutions.

And so we have two of the three legs of my personal spiritual path—religious naturalism, which “honors the experience and expression of the human emotions of awe, reverence, wonder and gratitude at and for the magnificence of the cosmos and the human possibilities for participation in it,” and allegoricalism, which interprets and employs religious objects as symbols of values, principles, experiences, and desires. The third leg, which I will talk about soon, is Progressivism. Stay tuned.