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Sebastian Job on a vision for a generous America.

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Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right, Harper, 2006

In the USA, Republican presidencies are now inconceivable without the votes of those millions who take their guidance from the religious right. It is the alliance with Christian fundamentalism that gets corporate fundamentalism over the electoral line.

The ironies of this alliance have not escaped Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. Somehow the humdrum ruthlessness required in the pursuit of a career have nothing to do with the ethical rudderlessness of American life. Bowing and curtseying to employers who hold all the cards, or painting on smiles for the customer who is always right, never alienates you from your fellow humans. And although you drive through a cultural flatland of materialistic values evermore akin to a Wal-Mart parking lot, you never bring any of this home with you. No, the sins of the culture all come down to liberal permissiveness, homosexuality and the killing of the unborn child.

But ironising has its limits. The real question is whether the hypocrisy of the religious right presents an opening for other forces. This is Lerner's wager. A rabbi and the editor of Tikkun magazine, for many years he has been seeking a way out for American society. Princeton University's Cornel West describes him as 'the most significant prophetic public intellectual and...

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