Peacebuilding

edited by Robert J. Schreiter, R. Scott Appleby, and Gerard F. Powers

Spring 2011 Table of Contents

Volume 26, Issue 2
Letters to the Editor
Editorials
Tunisia, Egypt, and Israel
U.S. policy in the Middle East keeps opting for stability over morality—and so ends up with neither. A Progressive Strategy for 2011-2012
Primaries are the one way we the people can still bring our concerns into national politics. Rethinking Religion
Truth, Illumination, and Nuclear Weapons
by JONATHAN GRANOFF
The highest spiritual truths include this one: Don’t Kill Everybody. Another Word on “God and the Twenty-First Century”
by MICHAEL BENEDIKT
What if God emerges from and evolves with us? Politics & Society
Overcoming Despair as the Republicans Take Over: A Conversation with Noam Chomsky
by MICHAEL LERNER
How are national initiatives built locally?

The State of the Spirit, 2011

Human beings share a deep yearning to live in communities that provide a sense of purpose to their lives. And we have an irrepressible instinct to seek freedom; creativity; artistic expression; higher and higher levels of understanding and consciousness; love and caring for others; the creation and enjoyment of beauty and pleasure; and both joyous celebration of and awe-filled responses to all the wonders of life in this universe.

Do Not Hold Back: Notes from a Gay Congregation

As queer and trans Jews, as Jews of color, as working-class Jews, we have often had experiences within Jewish communities that amplify that distrust, pushing us out of communities and into isolation. Too many Jewish communities across the country are moving further to the right in their politics, and those of us on the left are feeling the danger of this shift.

The Master’s Mehserle Can Never Dismantle the Master’s House

The emphasis on the conviction and sentencing of Johannes Mehserle, the BART police officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, in Oakland on New Year’s morning, 2009, is actively preventing us from addressing the real systemic sickness that led to this death and many millions gone.

The Nature of Evil

So why is evil so sexy, and so profoundly glamorous? And why does virtue seem so boring? Why is it that when I told my thirteen-year-old son I was writing a book on evil, he replied “Wicked!”?

Psychedelics, Spirituality, and Transformation

Without intending to reify, or circumscribe, I will present a taxonomy of experience that reflects my personal history and observations over forty-seven years, since I and a small group of new friends just commencing medical school in New York City dropped acid (LSD).

Truth

When I began living as a woman, my children’s world split open. As the truth of my gender collided with the truth of their pain at losing the man they loved, it seemed there was no world we could inhabit together — until love taught us that no matter what gender I expressed, I would always be their father.