Inner Vision: Spiritually Speaking

Radio for Spiritually Inclined Liberals

by Julia Taylor and photographs by Barbar Strnadova, December 27, 2006

Rena Blumenthal, Dave Belden, and I got to know each other with hands curled around mugs of tea and shoes kicked off, nestled in comfy couches in the Bayit, Vassar College’s Jewish student center. Our conversation drifted from the culture of religion to the politics of religion and back again. It’s that kind of cozy exploration that sets the tone for “Spiritually Speaking,” a radio show about religion and politics that Blumenthal and Belden cohost along with Reverend Jim Bridges on Vassar’s radio station, WVKR. Blumenthal, Belden, and Bridges hadn’t met until they started “Spiritually Speaking” last summer. A colleague from the local chapter of Spiritual Progressives came up with the concept for the radio show. Spiritual Progressives, in which each of the hosts participates, is a nationwide interfaith organization that promotes social change based on a moral agenda other than that of the Christian right. That colleague connected the three to make her idea a reality. Each week the show brings on a different guest, picking and choosing from a variety of religious bents. The hosts chat with the guest for a full hour, trying to get at the guest’s belief system and how it informs his or her life. The show’s target audience is liberals who are having a hard time reconciling political and spiritual ideas. In essence, the hosts are reaching out to people like themselves. Each was raised in organized religion, but then stayed away from religious communities for the first 20-some years of adulthood. And each has since returned to explore spirituality in a serious way—while maintaining liberal political views. Blumenthal grew up in an orthodox Jewish family. At the age of 17, she decided she didn’t believe in God. Over the next two decades she became a psychologist, helping her patients without tapping into spirituality. But when she was 39, Blumenthal started thinking in religious terms again. “What had turned me away from religion was [in fact] alienating me from something that felt essential and starved,” Blumenthal said. To appease her spiritual hunger, Blumenthal went back to school—rabbinical school. She joined Reconstructionist Judaism, a modern movement within the religion. Now, she has developed her faith as a rabbi and counsels Jewish students at Vassar College.