Sermon from YearlyKos

I'm an unabashed member of the "Netroots". Yes, I'm a daily visitor of DailyKos.com, the most popular political blog in America. It is a wonderful progressive outlet of information and rant-outlet for me.

As you may or may not be aware, this weekend the Daily Kos blog community held its first national conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference is called "YearlyKos"

Since I was unable to make the trek to Las Vegas, I watched the conference on video at home. It was wonderful. There were so many delicious panels on diverse topics such as the CIA Leak, illegal wiretapping, getting out of Iraq, how progressives can start winning elections again and election reform. Many elected officials attended such as Gov. Howard Dean, Gov. Mark Warner, Senator Harry Reid, and Senator Barbara Boxer - and plenty of 2006 progressive candidates.

Here is some video of several of the speeches.

Anyway one of the spiritually progressives bloggers called Pastor Dan held a session on Religion and Politics and he gave this fascinating speech His blog is called Street Prophets.

I hope you will take a few minutes and read his speech. Here are some powerful highlights:

We need a way to seek the healing of the world.

I mean to suggest, then, that for progressives in 2006, there are a number of questions about religion that we should not be overly concerned with.

We don't need to worry about what we are doing to attract conservative evangelicals.

We don't need to argue for more "God-talk" in political campaigns.

We don't need to fuss and fight about whether or not the Democratic party is "friendly to people of faith."

We don't need to reconcile faith and science: they are separate, but not necessarily antagonistic, realms.

We don't need to seek the conversion of American voters. They're fine the way they are, regardless of what they believe or don't believe.

We sure as shooting don't need to aim for using "Biblical principles" in Democratic political strategy or governance.

What we do need to do is ask some basic questions: what are we after, in the end? And how do we intend to go about getting it, together?

I found his speech particularly useful since it cuts through the media spin and gets at the spiritual and political truths we all need to grapple with.

I am clear on one thing: Reclaiming America requires a long-term committed progressive movement.

And I, like millions of others, have been called to serve.