In President Obama’s recent nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be the ninth justice on the Supreme Court, a new reality forced its way into our consciousness. With …
It is time that we as a nation stop pretending and face the facts as they are. The evidence is overwhelming. Despite concentrated efforts to perfume intolerance under code …
Attila the None – The headlines are pretty clear. Both Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute have told us that people, especially young people, aren’t so much avoiding church as not even thinking it is relevant. In this American election year, those who identify as the Nones – people who state on census forms that they have no religious affiliation – have been declared the largest “religious” voting bloc in the country. Those seated in the pews of mainline, Protestant America can no longer assume they have the strong political voice they once did.
I need to speak candidly with you about hospitality, perhaps the most iconic of Christian values and one of the easiest to go on attributing to the historical Jesus in spite of how much else has been stripped away from his biography. We need to discuss this because of the scary things people have been saying about refugees, about Black men, about what can be done to women. Because of the people who are bleeding in the streets.
I am really not comfortable writing this article. There is a sense I am writing an obituary and nothing could be further from the truth. Bishop Spong is a beloved friend and he is apparently doing well in his recovery. I suppose I am a little nervous knowing that he will be reading what I write and we already have a history about this. For those who do not know, I am the President of ProgressiveChristianity.org. and we have been publishing Bishop Spong’s weekly articles for over six years now. About a two years ago I had dropped him a line indicating that his contract was running out and wondered what his plans were. Be assured, I wanted him to extend the contract but we needed to know. I do not remember exactly what I wrote but I may have written something like, “Jack, I know you are approaching your 85th birthday, but thought we should get this cleared up.”
He was seated in the VIP box at the Democratic National Convention, held during the last week of July, 2016, in Philadelphia. He was surrounded in that reserved and exclusive …
He changed the conscience of the entire world, yet he never held a public office. Even Nelson Mandela, perhaps the only other 20th century figure to move the world …
They gathered at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Chicago, some 500 delegates strong. They came from all across the United States and abroad with the Netherlands, in particular, being …
It had the nature of a tribal gathering, or perhaps of “old-timers day” at Yankee Stadium. People came from across the nation and throughout the Diocese of Newark, which …
In the light of our expanded knowledge, God, understood theistically, turned out to be our own creation in which we human beings tried to fit God into words that …