Most of us know what it means to act. But what does it mean to act sacredly? According to Oxford-educated author and religious scholar Andrew Harvey, “sacred activism” is social change that comes from the center of your heartbreak. It’s “the fusion of the deepest spiritual knowledge and passion with clear, wise, radical action in all arenas of the world, inner and outer.”
What broke Susanna Kearney’s heart was the prospect of children growing up without a solid understanding of how to protect the earth. After a Harvey workshop last year, she founded the Green Parents Alliance (greenparentsalliance.org) in Brooklyn, which helps families nurture green practices at home, pack waste-free school lunches and purchase carbon offset credits. “I really got in touch with my apathy,” recalls Kearney of Harvey’s workshop, which she claims has enhanced her work as a transformational therapist.
Troubled by the slow pace of the global consciousness movement, Seattleite Victor Bremson applied sacred activist principles to start ForThe GrandChildren, a nonprofit currently working toward creating a shared mission statement among Seattle-area social and environmental organizations. “Sacred activism is about what you’re doing, not what you’re preaching,” says Bremson.
Since 2005, 2000 students have attended Andrew Harvey’s sacred activism workshops, and this year, he launches a new school explicitly dedicated to sacred activist philosophy. For our Earth Day issue, we engaged Harvey in discussion on how the environmental movement might benefit from combining “the mystic’s fire of passion for God with the activist’s fire of passion for justice.”
What distinguishes “sacred activism” from other forms of spiritual environmentalism or any type of activism by spiritual people?
I think sacred activism places the emphasis on the sacred — on the evolution of consciousness attuned through prayer and surrender to the divine. It is my belief that only such a consciousness can provide the wisdom, clarity, passion and energy necessary for the massive restructuring of the world [ahead].
How do you respond to critics who say sacred activism is not enough to transform the world’s destructive power structures?
The kind of activism I am talking about is extremely radical in its understanding of how institutional forms of power keep us oppressed, enslaved and addicted to a disastrously self-destructive capitalistic system. Sacred activism is not in any way a mild, adorable way of being and acting. It is an attempt to bring into the core of human affairs the direct passion of the divine feminine for equality, harmony and justice in every realm and on every level. At its essence, it is revolutionary.
Can sacred activists work with secular activists?
Sacred activists will work with anybody. I don’t think being a sacred activist means belonging to any kind of exclusive club. I deeply admire the work of all kinds of secular activists, many of whom do not believe in God or in any of the religions. I know that a dedicated band of sacred activists can work along side secular activists in an open minded and inspiring way to further change fast. I think hundreds of thousands of people are sacred activists without calling themselves that yet.
Is sacred activism explicitly nonviolent?
I very much hope that a nonviolent movement committed to peaceful resistance and peaceful transformation will be enough to transform the world. But I am under no illusions about the forces that do not want this transformation and are prepared to resist it ruthlessly and may, under extreme circumstances, need to be resisted actively. In very rare and very extreme circumstances violence may be necessary, but only the person trained in nonviolence would ever be able to use violence with the kind of economy, compassion and mercy that could prevent it from spreading unnecessarily.
You speak a lot about the need to “give up” in order to become a sacred activist. Can you explain?
Passivity. Learned helplessness before the problems of the world and our addiction to frivolous diversion and institutional denial. We need also to give up the narcissistic belief that the divine will do everything for us, whatever we do. The divine cannot force us to choose life and hope. I am not at all interested in airy-fairy dissociative spirituality. We have no time for that kind of fancy indulgence now. We have to step up and become spiritual adults and work out with the divine consciously, passionately and humbly. This is a quantum leap and will involve an ending of denial, an acceptance of the need for profound transformation and the willingness to pay the price for that transformation and be responsible to the work in the real world that it demands.
Jamie Friddle lives and writes in Seattle. He discovered Andrew Harvey through Mark Matousek’s Dialogues with a Modern Mystic (1994, Quest Books).