By Rabbi Michael Lerner, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2019
Reviewed by J. Alfred Smith Sr.
After reading reviews of Revolutionary Love by celebrated scholars and review critics I had serious reservations about honoring Michael Lerner’s request to write my own review. In fact he asked me twice to do so.
I thought that any book authored by Lerner and published by the University of California Press at Berkeley would automatically grab the eye and attract the attention of thoughtful readers. The book title, Revolutionary Love, written for this era that is dusty and dry with hate and societal death is more than adequate in assisting readers who have the life urge for healing. None is more qualified than Michael Lerner whose entire professional life and practice is committed to healing the fractures of society even at a great personal cost, including the risk of limb and life.
Unlike the philosophical writers from Plato to Descartes who address the human condition in essential terms, Lerner speaks pragmatically in relational language that is fully human. Love is relational and is the sine qua non for recognizing the intrinsic value of human life.
Extrinsic perspectives on the worth and value of life dehumanize and commodify humans to be things to be exploited and used as means for gratifying the ends of immoral power. In contrast, Revolutionary Love boldly refuses to be paralyzed by death-urge activists who promote racism, xenophobia, classism, consumerism, materialism, militarism, sexism, ageism, and all other isms that divide and destroy life on the planet and even the planet itself.
Revolutionary Love is a sane invitation to implement strategies for building in the 21st century a caring society with love, justice and trustworthiness. Without trustworthiness there can be no safety or security for any of us.
We all can use this book. Trust me.
— J. Alfred Smith Sr. is Emeritus Pastor of Oakland, California’s Allen Temple Baptist Church, where he was first called as Senior Pastor in 1971. He retired as Senior Pastor in 2009 and is widely known and revered as a prophetic preacher and writer, a mentor to many, and a significant influence on the church.
