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Humanity’s Team Focuses on Establishing a
New Spirituality Community

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Last month issue featured Guy Spiro’s interview with Neale Donald Walsch. The interview was intriguing for anyone interested in spirituality and the Internet. Walsch outlined three projects that he founded: Humanity’s Team, the Messenger Circle, and Part of the Change. The web was integral to each of them.

     The one that especially caught my eye and plucked my heartstrings was Humanity’s Team. According to Walsch, Humanity’s Team is a civil rights movement designed to promote the New Spirituality and free humanity from the oppression of its beliefs in a violent, angry, vindictive, punishing, and angry God. Walsch stated that there are already 10,000 members in 96 countries and there are country coordinators at work in 47 of those countries. “The movement itself,” said Walsch, “is now putting together a skeletal structure.”

     Humanity’s Team resonated with me on two levels. First, anything that creates more love and less fear in the world is sterling in my book. Second, this sounds like the first steps in creating a community of faith and therefore a structured place where people of like mind can come together and nourish each other. Many are searching for this type of community. In the mid-1990s, I found myself in a similar situation. For me, the answer came in the form of Spiritualism and a little church at 2651 N. Central Park called the Church of the Spirit. For others, the answer has been the Unity churches. Still others have found solace in the Goddess Movement within the Unitarian Church. Humanity’s Team could provide another choice for those who are seeking community,

     With that in mind, I decided to check out the Humanity’s Team website (www.HumanitysTeam.com). The homepage features a marvelous flash movie that gives you a tantalizing view some of the Humanity’s Team core values. Lovely photos of a bridge over water, nature scenes and people from around the world are underscored by a message that reads in part like this: “When you awaken to the wonder of life ... You see the world in a new way. Suddenly, there is beauty everywhere. As if you were seeing it for the first time. You not only see humanity in a new way. You actually SEE.”

     Enter the site and you are welcomed with the question, “Truth, Joy, Love ... Do these words touch your heart? This question is followed by several others: Would you like to live in a world in which those words also touch the hearts of people around the globe? A world that is truly at peace? A world in which people emphasize Life Itself as the prime value? In which humanity truly experiences unity and oneness?

     The welcome message gives you an overview of Humanity’s Team. That overview includes:

     A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul: This section states that Humanity’s Team was founded by Conversations With God author Neale Donald Walsch in 2003. Humanity’s Team is described as a bridge-building organization that seeks to produce a climate in which humanity can create an emancipating New Spirituality.

     A New Spirituality, Not a New Religion: There is a difference between the New Spiritual and religion. Humanity’s Team is not a rejection or abandonment of present spiritual beliefs, but an expansion of them. I’m reminded of what happens when you activate the refresh function in your browser. Suddenly, the old page reappears with new information. For Humanity’s Team, this means expanding our present theologies. It is: “an updating of them; a refreshing of them, rendering all of our current sacred teachings even more relevant to our present day and time.” According to the folks at Humanity’s Team, the New Spirituality empowers each of us to find our own unique way. It offers equality. It is diverse, appreciating the full spectrum of wisdom traditions. It honors that many paths lead to the mountaintop ... The New Spirituality focuses more on a patient process of inner transformation than on a rote enactment of prescribed do’s and don’ts ... It encourages spiritual truths to be made real, in the flesh of daily life, and not just spoken about once a week from a pulpit.

     If the New Spirituality sounds good to you, you are invited to join Humanity’s Team. Click on that link and you are introduced to Nexus, a service that helps Humanity’s TeamMates connect with each other. Registration is easy enough and it’s free. You are asked to submit a screen name and a password that allows you access to the Connector section. Another part of the site features detailed information on how you can become a leader in the movement and create a Humanity’s Team group in your area.

     The pluses and minuses: Let’s start with the minuses. Walsch’s description of Humanity’s Team’s organization as skeletal is accurate. For example, the site states that many of the Nexus features including a searchable database of teammates, an interactive events calendar, classified ads and a way for you to register for events sponsored by Humanity’s Team have not been activated yet. That is certainly the case. In fact, much of the “current” information on the site dates back to 2004 or early 2005. Finding a group to join at this point also isn’t very doable. The Groups Section contains the caveat: “In the coming weeks, this page will offer a centralized location for Teammates to find information about Humanity’s Team Groups operating in their local area.” In addition, the site if far more usable to high speed Internet users than those with dial-up connections. For example, the flash movie is a breeze to see via DSL, but a drag via dial-up. And a lot of the more in-depth information must be downloaded as PDFs, which can take a considerable amount of time via dial-up.

     On the plus side, Humanity’s Team is a great idea and a wonderful possibility of creating a workable organization that can nourish and connect many souls throughout the planet. This is a ground floor opportunity for new spirituality-minded folks who want to take on the challenge of fleshing out that skeleton and creating a Humanity’s Team organization that makes the New Spirituality movement a viable and refreshing force in the world.

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Mary Montgomery-Clifford is a certified web author and developer. Her company, Montgomery Media Enterprises ("Freelancing with Finesse!"), specializes in public relations, events, promotions, writing project and web authoring, development and publicity. Ms. Montgomery-Clifford has a Master's Degree in religious studies from Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) in June 2002 and is working on a Ph.D. with a focus on the new scholarship of Unlimited Love and the Other Regarding Virtues in the Fall of 2002. She is also in the process of completing the Morris Pratt Institute Course on Modern Spiritualism. Contact her via e-mail at Monty764@aol.com, by phone at
773-235-8821 or at her web site at www.montymedia.com.

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