The Religious Counterculture: An Open Letter to Religious Liberals

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-ana-levylyons/religious-counterculture-religious-liberals_b_4637073.html

Rev. Ana Levy-Lyons
Senior minister, First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn

Posted: 01/24/2014 7:00 am


Robert Churchill via Getty Images

A high school teacher of mine used to entertain his classes by rattling off lists of oxymorons: pretty ugly, jumbo shrimp, constant variable. Sometimes he would take the opportunity to editorialize a little: military intelligence, airplane food, liberal religion. Everybody would smirk and the class would go on. The joke, of course, was that liberal religion couldn't really exist because liberals are not religious and religious people are definitely not liberal. As if everybody knows there's an inverse correlation between religiosity and liberalism: the more liberal you are, the less religious you are... to the vanishing point. I was told recently (not as a joke) about a synagogue here in New York that's so liberal that no one ever goes.

And, of course, as with most jokes and stereotypes, there's some truth to it. If you look at any of the traditional markers of religiosity, we religious liberals are less religious than the conservative or orthodox. Liberal Jews tend to not keep kosher; liberal Muslims tend to not pray five times a day; liberal Christians have been known to have premarital sex. As religions have liberalized and modernized over the years, communal religious practices have fallen away and religious fervor has cooled. This may seem obvious and inevitable, but when you think about it, there is no necessary correlation between the substance of a person's theology and the amplitude of her religiosity. We religious liberals have erroneously forged this correlation and, beyond just making us the butt of jokes, this has really cost us. It has cost us in spiritual integrity, it has cost us in political power, and it has cost us in the number of butts in our pews.

In searching for exemplars of spiritual integrity these days, you might not think to look to the rosters of TV celebrities, but, in fact, at least one stands out as truly glamorous: Mayim Bialik (Amy Farrah Fowler in The Big Bang Theory). She is an observant Jew who keeps Shabbat and keeps kosher. She is a vegan who says that she prepares vegan food for her family to teach her kids to care for the earth. She adheres to Jewish modesty laws in her dress. This is no small feat for a woman who makes a living in Hollywood. The modesty issue came to a head as she prepared to attend the Emmys for the first time a few years ago. She needed to find a dress that covered her elbows and knees and collarbone and was not too tight, and, of course, was gorgeous enough for the red carpet. The quest for this perfect dress became public as she blogged about it, naming it "Operation Hot and Holy."

We may disagree with a tradition that requires this kind of modesty, but you've got to admire someone who takes her religious values so seriously that she is willing to withstand substantial social pressure. If women in our culture normally feel pressure to dress in revealing clothing, the pressure must be a hundredfold at a big Hollywood event like the Emmys. But she did it -- Operation Hot and Holy: mission accomplished -- and afterwards the blogosphere was bursting with women, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, thanking her for her courage in so publicly contesting the cultural rules of how women are supposed to look.

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