The Measure of a “Genuine” Progressive Christian
Column by Rev. David M. Felten on May, 6 2021So, what’s the measure of a “genuine” progressive Christian? For some, it’s proficiency in some obscure spiritual discipline. For others, it’s engagement in the work of social justice. Whatever we are, the media seems to believe the 2020s may provide a leg-up for those who are advocates and practitioners of a post-modern, post-evangelical, post-liberal, post-Christian approach to Jesus following.
Science, Reductionism, and Faith
Column by Brian McLaren on April, 29 2021Like many, I grew up in a two-tier universe. The lower natural tier was physical, temporal, and ever-changing. The higher supernatural tier was spiritual, eternal, and changeless. God, the Holy Spirit, and human souls or spirits were in the higher tier. Human bodies, all nonhuman creatures, and all matter and energy were in the lower tier.
Habits Can Help or Hurt…
Column by Toni Reynolds on April, 22 2021While I am not personally optimistic about the idea of opening things up with the speed I see in my local community, it is happening. Without much help I find myself questioning if I will be more like the Osprey or the wasp.
Easter People
Column by Rev. Fran Pratt on April, 15 2021This past Lent I practiced lying fallow. I avoided news and social media. I wrote all my Lenten liturgies ahead of time. I gave myself permission to do the bare minimum of work (I’m a pastor and parent, so this part was flexible). I imagined myself as a field, unplanted in a year of Jubilee.
We Must Call Out Hate
Column by Rev. Irene Monroe on April, 8 2021Entertaining Long’s sexual addiction as a believable explanation for the killings diverts attention from his acts of intentional xenophobia and racialized misogyny. The fetishization of Asian American and Pacific Island women has constantly made their lives expendable to sex traffickers and men’s violent fantasies.
Otherdoxy: A Questionable of Faith
Column by Rev. Jim Burklo on April, 1 2021There are many questions that mainstream science can’t answer, at least at the moment. Ethical and moral questions, such as: who should get the Covid vaccine first? And how can such a prioritization be made understandable and acceptable to the public? Science provides data upon which such judgments can be made, but ultimately we can’t trust science itself to sort them out.
We are Wonder-FULL
Column by Rev. Lauren Van Ham on March, 25 2021Why, in all of this relatedness, do we feel so disconnected? Depleted? Empty? Because we mistakenly turn that which is divinely relational, into something inhumanely transactional. And, to make this sin livable, we turn our heads and forget our neoteny. Children don’t allow this sort of behavior. We are born into relatedness and unity.
If Not God, Then What?
Column by Rev. Gretta Vosper on March, 18 2021Using the word “god” to conjure an all-powerful deity with biblically-proportioned prejudices and condemnations is dramatically different from using the word “god” to call us to a “no matter what” sort of love. I talk about this a lot. About ditching archaic language. About reading more than just the Bible or not reading the Bible at all.
The Soul of Progressive Christianity
Column by Rev. Roger Wolsey on March, 11 2021Lent is a time where we’re invited to engage in deepened soul-searching. I’ve been feeling called to search the soul of progressive Christianity.
The Bible is Political
Column by Rev. Mark Sandlin on March, 4 2021The Bible has a political agenda. Even with all the different writers who contributed to different books, there is a clear biblical bias against the powerful using their places of authority to step on those who are already suffering. That’s political.
Saving God From Religion
Column by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers on February, 25 2021Let’s be clear, this is an audacious idea. Writing a book about God is an audacious project. In fact, claiming to know anything about God is more than audacious—it is intellectual blasphemy. So, to begin, let me be clear. I have no idea what I am talking about.
We are the Spacemakers
Column by Rev. Aurelia Dávila Pratt on February, 18 2021Because I choose to remain within the church, I have to ask myself regularly “why do I believe what I believe?” and also “why do I stick around?” Why do I choose to stay put when the church has caused so much harm?
What is Patriarchy, anyway?
Column by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox on February, 11 2021There is – and ought to be – plenty of criticism of Patriarchy at this time in history. But for that very reason there needs to be a critical understanding of what it is – and is not.
America’s Greedy and America’s Gullible: Ezekiel Speaks
Column by Dr. Carl Krieg on February, 4 2021From Ezekiel to Jesus to the voices of the gospels, the proclamation is clear: civilization will not, indeed cannot, survive if wealth and power, and therefore food and shelter, are in the possession of but a few. Equally so, democracy will not and cannot survive if the bullies are allowed free reign.
What Pulls At Your Heart
Column by Rev. Deshna Charron Shine on January, 28 2021My church was my extended family. And in my years of searching, I have yet to find a church like it, although I am sure they are out there. So, why did I feel like, at 29 years old, that I was done with Christianity?
At Cross Purposes
Column by Rev. David M. Felten on January, 21 2021As one who’s had to endure a career in a denomination whose global trademark is a burning cross, it once again raised the question in my mind of how the cross, burning or otherwise, had become a symbol of hate and White Supremacy.
Doubt, Faith, and Why Breaking Up (with Authoritarianism) is Hard to Do
Column by Brian McLaren on January, 14 2021I grew up in a 6-day creation sector of Christianity. Evolution, we were taught, was a Satanic deception to make us lose our faith. It was a banana …
My Penny
Column by Toni Reynolds on January, 7 2021I feel a small bit like the woman who threw her last penny into the offering pot in the temple. This article is my penny, this column is the offering pot, the readership is the Temple. Because this is the most precious penny I have at the moment.
Where Do We Go from Here, Redux
Column by Rev. Irene Monroe on December, 31 2020The year 2020 has been a stressful one. With George Floyd’s death as an inflection point about race and racism in America, an unprecedented presidential election, and social unrest during an ongoing pandemic with a rising death toll, something is deeply broken in America’s body politic.
Just Looking at Christmas
Column by Rev. Jim Burklo on December, 24 2020Such is the looking at the figures in the crèche scene at the birth of Jesus. The crèche is a window into the eternal quality of the now, an icon of the divine point of view. It is the slack-jawed, timeless, aimless, free, worshipful Awe that is Love that is God.
Getting Beyond the Usual: Giving Birth to Jesus in the 2020s
Column by Rev. Lauren Van Ham on December, 17 2020There are 3 parts of Jesus’s birth story that we want to open here, like gifts. There are many parts of this story that, once unwrapped, hold great truth and importance including dreams, angels and what was going on for Joseph.
Except for God… freedom never kneels.
Column by Rev. Gretta Vosper on December, 10 2020It has been a burdensome year and it is likely to get worse before it is over.
Grateful & Communal Creatures: ZOOM & The Dynamic Reality Of Being Saved
Column by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. on December, 3 2020When you gaze up into the night sky, perhaps from the sateen darkness of Glacier National Park, or the cozy vestibule of your backyard, what do you see? Pin-wheeling galaxies? Endless expanse of interstellar space? Familiar special neighbors such as Orion or Ursa Major?
Ball of Confusion
Column by Rev. Roger Wolsey on November, 26 2020“Man [Humankind] can’t become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him of all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.”
A White Man Makes the Case for Reparations, Part III
Column by Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer on November, 19 2020Too many whites argue that slavery is a thing of the past for which present day whites are not responsible. In the previous two essays, I tried to debunk that myth. It is the cause of so much pain today for black and white Americans.