Monday, February 18, 2008 - RABBI MICHAEL LERNER, Controversial Speaker, Author, and Spiritual Leader Visits New Orleans

The D’Orlando lecture is free and open to the public. Rabbi Lerner will be speaking on Monday, February 18, 2008 at 7:00 pm at First Church. A reception in honor of Rabbi Lerner will follow the lecture.
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Dubbed the “guru of the White House” when Hillary Clinton adopted his notion of “the politics of meaning,” and author of the controversial book “The Left Hand of God”, Rabbi Michael Lerner is a fascinating speaker with intriguing ideas. Coinciding with the election year, he will be the speaker at the 2008 D’Orlando Lecture; his subject will be “The Role of Spirituality in the 2008 Election: A Strategy of Generosity vs. the Strategy of Domination.” He maintains that there is a spiritual hunger in Americans that must be addressed, a hunger as equally important as their material needs. He calls this a hunger for ‘meaning.’

Michael Lerner began his political activities as a graduate student at UC Berkeley where he was involved in the Free Speech Movement and Students for a Democratic Society. Later, as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Washington in Seattle, he was involved in a large anti-war demonstration during which, when it became a riot, he was arrested and went to trial with the Seattle Seven and served several months in prison. As a result of this act, he became recognized as a significant leader of the anti-war movement.

In 2002, Rabbi Lerner created The Tikkun Community, an interfaith organization dedicated to peace, justice, non-violence, generosity, caring, and compassion that has grown to more than 100,000 members and encompasses The Network of Spiritual Progressives. As founder and editor of Tikkun, an acclaimed intellectual/cultural magazine highly respected in the Jewish world that is also controversial because of its stand in favor of the rights of Palestinians, many consider him a leader and prominent U.S. spokesman for Jewish supporters of the Israeli peace movement. You can learn more about the Tikkun Community and Rabbi Michael Lerner at http://www.tikkun.org/, or at http://www.spiritualprogressives.org./

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The First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans is proud to host Rabbi Lerner at the Tenth Annual D’Orlando Lecture on Social Justice. The Albert D’Orlando Lectureship on Social Justice was established by FUUNO in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the Rev. D’Orlando’s ordination. During his long tenure as minister of FUUNO, the Rev. D’Orlando tirelessly fought for social justice. In the 1950s and 1960s he actively supported desegregation in the schools and all other public places and as a result both his home and church were firebombed. He was a founding member of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and received the ACLU’s Ben Smith Award for his contribution to civil liberties. The Rev. Albert D’Orlando died in 1998. - by Veleja Christos and Charles Foster, submitted by Vicky Marshall-Beasley