In the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, Mike Ignatowski, a research engineer with IBM, was feeling "increasingly concerned that a narrow group on the religious right was defining what it meant to be a religious, spiritual, and even a moral person." So he helped organize a group of "spiritual progressives" from the Hudson Valley and New York City who called themselves Interfaith Voices, designed bright yellow T-shirts with symbols of all the major religions, and wore them in a march past the Republican Convention "to promote a positive and compassionate set of moral priorities. Coming together in that was a very encouraging and uplifting experience," he says.

Mike, age 48 and father of two, is an energetic man who lives in Red Hook, evaluates designs for future computer systems in his day job in Poughkeepsie, and chairs one of the area's most active spiritually based social action groups across the river in Kingston. Together, he and I interviewed leaders of a number of progressive religious groups in the Hudson Valley that are promoting social change. We wanted to discover what it means to be both religious (or spiritual) and in favor of the kinds of social justice, peace, and environmental causes associated with the left.

Father Frank Alagna of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Staatsburg has worked for decades for social justice. With members of seven churches in Staatsburg, Hyde Park, and Poughkeepsie, he runs the Justice for All Speakers Forum. He approves of national campaigns by left-wing religious leaders such as Rev. Jim Wallis and Wallis's evangelical Sojourners movement and Call for Renewal, which lobbied Congress last year for "a moral budget." But Alagna feels we need "more powerful prophetic voices in the churches." He says that most Christians see the importance of charitable work for the needy, but do not appreciate that social justice is equally promoted in the scriptures. The Christian Right, he argues, is "a violation of Christianity" for failing to attend to social inequities that nurture poverty.

Veteran TV and movie actor Gerrit Graham volunteered to help with Justice for All after attending two of the forums. "I am not by any sort of normal definition a religious person," he says. "I have a spiritual life, but that's between me and the all-knowing unknowable, and the group doesn't ask." Graham will play God in "J.B.," a Pulitzer-winning play by Archibald MacLeish that will be performed at Rhinebeck's Center for the Performing Arts on April 20-23, as a fundraiser for Justice for All. Satan will be played by Bruce Chilton, who is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College and a priest at The Free Church of St. John in Barrytown. Woodstock poet and Chronogram poetry editor Phillip Levine will play Job. Graham says the play, based on the life of Job, gives a contemporary message of redemption through love. "In the 2000 and 2004 elections, 'liberal' became a devalued and empty term. A by-product of Justice For All's work is that it shows that liberals are not all pointy-headed intellectuals who disdain any notion of the spiritual life."

What does the spiritual life add to secular left politics? Ask Rev. Herbie Rogers of the New Progressive Baptist Church in Kingston and he will tell you stories of working with street people in the roughest parts of Kingston, Newburgh, and Albany, as well as the local prisons. Rogers was once well known on Kingston's streets as the crack addict in a wheelchair. He went to County Jail 86 times until "I went to prison in '95. I hit bottom. I was skinnier than my thumb." In prison he tried the Muslims and the 12-step groups, but it was the Baptists who "quickened my spirit." He found Jesus and turned his life around. Now, in his ministry, he is distressed at how little the government helps people in need. "Coming out of prison, a person gets a $40 check and welfare says it takes 45 days to activate their case. What are they going to do?"

Fr. Daniel Berrigan.

Rogers says that a booklet called Coming Back to Ulster County "has been real helpful to my ministry," because it lists all the available resources for returning prisoners. The booklet was produced by the Restorative Justice group of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Catskills (UUCC) in Kingston. The group has campaigned for many years on criminal justice issues and the booklet was developed as one of several initiatives of the congregation's Social Action Committee (chaired by Mike Ignatowski). Environmental campaigns are another major focus of the Committee.

Intriguingly for the possibilities of religious/secular alliances, Ignatowski has a broad and nontraditional understanding of what "spiritual" means. For him, it "involves a search for meaning and purpose in life, a focus on ethical behavior, and realizing that you are part of something much, much bigger than yourself. Some people expand this definition to include a focus on God or a supernatural force, but it's not a necessary part of being spiritual."

Darlene Kelley, pastor of Kingston's Clinton Avenue United Methodist Church, works with Rev. Rogers on a teen program. "This country is very wealthy and doesn't take care of the poor," she says. "If Jesus was in the flesh today he would certainly not be in Washington having dinner with the Right. He'd be with the least among us." Kelley was a bartender and an actress for many years before studying for the ministry. She likes the work of Rabbi Michael Lerner (of Berkeley, California), whose Network of Spiritual Progressives aims to pull together religious and "spiritual but not religious" people to work for social justice nationally. When she heard that Ignatowski and I were starting a local chapter of the network, she was eager to attend its first meeting on April 26 (see below).

Rev. Richard Witt is also interested in the meeting. He says he is so busy running the interfaith Rural and Migrant Ministries of Poughkeepsie that it's hard to make contacts outside his field. Witt has been working to build a statewide network of faith communities, trade unions, and student groups to support justice for farm workers. In recent years, the campaign has achieved laws to require drinking water and sanitation for workers in the fields, inclusion of farm workers in the minimum wage, and convictions last year of labor contractors for enslaving rural workers. He says he knows he is getting somewhere when a 15-year-old farm worker marching for justice in Albany thinks, "Wow, these gringos are here marching with me." Rural and Migrant Ministries is making this May the first Farmworker Solidarity Month. Local congregations and citizens are invited to pray for farm workers during May and to engage in solidarity vigils, actions, and liturgy with them. The kickoff rally will be in Monticello, April 30 at 2pm.

Citing such examples as these, Ignatowski says, "We have a growing local movement of spiritual progressives that we can be proud of." He found inspiration in the leading role played by local ministers in presiding over same sex marriages, one of which his family attended in New Paltz last year. "This was a wonderful example of a movement completely led at the grassroots level. We're living through some historical times, similar in many ways to the civil rights movement in the 1960s."

A meeting for all those interested in starting a regional network of spiritual progressives will be held in New Paltz Town Hall, April 26 at 7:30pm. For information, e-mail mikeig@yahoo.com or dave@davidbelden.com, or call (845) 687-4699.