 | The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right Michael Lerner Date: 07 February, 2006 — $15.72 — Book Rating: |
I wanted to like this book, I really did. Thought the author has some good ideas, he ruined the book with a repetitious and rambling writing style that made it very hard for me to wade through this wordy morass and actually finish it.
The author, a rabbi, challenges the idea that religious conservatives have the corner on spiritual values that are relevant to politics. Religious conservative ideas, which conform to the financial bottom line, are what Lerner calls the "Right Hand of God". He asserts that liberals should not abandon the spiritual perspective on politics to the right wing, and they should reclaim the ethical high ground that religious liberals in the past, such as Martin Luther King, espoused.
Most of his ideas I agree with, such as restructuring the workplace so that we work to live rather than live to work, universal health care, legislation that would compel corporations to operate more responsibly in regards to the environment and in relation with their employees, and so on. And, interestingly enough, Rabbi Lerner agrees with me that the government should get out of the marriage business, though I found his solution of turning legal marriage into "civil unions" for everyone, while "marriage" would be a private, religious matter to be only a partial answer. Still, however, it is a step in the right direction.
Lerner has some good ideas if you don't mind cutting through all the verbosity -- this book could have been edited to one third its length and still retained all the important points. However, I highly recommend that readers pass on buying it and get it from the library instead.
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