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51-75 of 1145 « ‹ Page 3 of 46 › »
  • Infinitely Intimate

    Column by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. on July, 25 2024

    In the life of the soul there is no substitute for direct knowledge. The spiritual journey unfolds in and through our direct personal experiences that is fueled by the soul’s longing. As human beings our longing both to know and to be known is infinite. A challenge for us is the discovery that even if we know ourselves or another directly, the longing remains.

    I have one issue that I do not understand. Most Christians say that Jesus “died for our sins”. However, if that is true, did He eliminate sins up …

    Answered by Rev. Jim Burklo
  • An Alpine Reverie

    Column by Rev. Jim Burklo on July, 18 2024

    And as you adore the people adoring the blessed sacrament around you, you ponder how very many different circumstances brought them here and how many very different experiences they may be having right now. 

    I liked a recent article you wrote about visiting a Mega Church. Do you think one of the draws is that people like the …

    Answered by Dr. Carl Krieg
  • What is Law?

    Column by Dr. Carl Krieg on July, 11 2024

    The laws we have are products of a particular group, not universal truths. The question then becomes: who gets to say what? White land-owning founding fathers? Hateful white nationalist? The majority? A greasy wheel minority? In a sense, every rule or law arises out of a specific context, a given historical situation.

    The country is polarized, so it’s hard to have a conversation about anything. My family is divided, so I make fewer and fewer visits. I ignore many of …

    Answered by Rev. Irene Monroe
  • United Methodist Church now open to LGBTQ+ Methodists

    Column by Rev. Irene Monroe on July, 4 2024

    In June, United Methodist Church delegates voted to repeal its church’s long-held exclusionary stance of its LGBTQ+ Methodists- in church doctrine, polity, and social standing.  The news was received with mixed feelings – cheers and tears. 

    How relevant is the Bible to progressive Christians if it is mostly made-up stories?

    Answered by Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz
  • Rescuing Christianity from the Church

    Column by Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz on June, 27 2024

    Whenever churches focus too much time and energy on church membership, attendance, budget, and endowment, over time, they lose their way.  Churches would be better off focusing on the realization of the church’s mission statement, which has to do with their sense of identity and purpose as communities of faith.

    I know you’d probably never see my emails, so I’ll just keep venting here because my world has turned on its head and is spinning. 

    In …

    Answered by Brian McLaren
  • What Does Progressive Christianity Mean to Me?

    Column by Brian McLaren on June, 20 2024

    After growing up in a Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christian tradition, I have come to identify as a Progressive Christian. I’ve noticed that the term has a lot of different meanings to different people, which makes sense given that relatively few of us started as Progressive Christians. For many of us, Progressive Christianity is like the place we we came to as we escaped from somewhere else. The word “camp” is fitting:. I don’t think of Progressive Christianity as a destination, but rather an ongoing process.

    Watching what is happening in Palestine as well as [the U.S.] border, I’ve been thinking a lot about immigration and Christianity. For U.S. Christians, what do …

    Answered by Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin
  • Christians Caring for Creation

    Column by Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin on June, 13 2024

    There is not much in this world that I would call a miracle, but the world itself definitely is. It’s existence and ability to support and sustain the life that it has is simply improbable. How dare humanity so go about to indifferently as we are destroying a miracle.

    Watching the rise of White Christian Nationalism is alarming, do you see progressive Christian Churches
    adequately rising to meet the challenge of countering that narrative?

    Answered by Rev. Lauren Van Ham
  • Making Room for the Unimaginable

    Column by Rev. Lauren Van Ham on June, 6 2024

    For our entire existence, humans have lived with two realities: the religion of empire and the religion of creation.  The religion of empire is a kingdom, ruled through the lens of Individualism and fueled by the fear of scarcity.  The religion of creation is a kin-dom, ruled through the lens of relatedness and fueled by the generosity that is love. 

    What can progressive Christian Churches actively do to protest the rise in far-right violence against Christian Gays?

    Answered by Rev. Brandan Robertson
  • Christianity Doesn’t Exist

    Column by Rev. Brandan Robertson on May, 30 2024

    Christianity doesn’t exist. Christianity has never existed. These might seem like radical statements, but they are objectively true. For the past 2,000 years, there has never been a singular, united, global religion called “Christianity,” but rather millions of variations of a spirituality rooted in the person of Jesus that most scholars now refer to as “Christianities.”

    Is not Atheism just the rejection of Supernatural Theism or belief in a God in the Sky? Are there not alternatives such as Pantheism or Panentheism, which more …

    Answered by Rev. Roger Wolsey
  • Proclaiming Pronounced Progress in the Progressive Church Family!

    Column by Rev. Roger Wolsey on May, 23 2024

    For decades, the United Methodist Church has been a notable outlier. With 7 million members in the U.S., the UMC is the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination and is by all accounts quite liberal and progressive on most matters – except for the matters concerning homosexuality.

    My neighbor keeps making off-handed comments she knows I find ridiculous—claims about the earth being “only 6,000 years old” and asking, “Why don’t people just read their …

    Answered by Rev. David M. Felten
  • The Tail That Keeps on Flopping

    Column by Rev. David M. Felten on May, 16 2024

    he schism the United Methodist Church has been enduring the last few years, culminating in this Spring’s General Conference in North Carolina, is also a direct result of unresolved Civil War era prejudices.

    Do you think the majority of churches will ever get their act together and come into the 21st century? I am skeptical. Where is the hope?

    Answered by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers
  • Honest To God

    Column by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers on May, 9 2024

    When pastors retire after a lifetime of service to the church, they often preach a last sermon unfettered by concerns for continued employment.  It is the sermon “they always wanted to preach” but were afraid to, lest some big contributor take her money and leave the building.  Clergy are, by and large, not a particularly courageous lot.

    How do I stay grounded and find joy when the world seems to be falling apart?

    Answered by Rev. Deshna Charron Shine
  • Radically You

    Column by Rev. Deshna Charron Shine on May, 2 2024

    Today, I want to talk about one of my modern-day heroes, Alok V. Menon, known as ALOK. ALOK (they/them) is an internationally acclaimed poet, comedian, public speaker, and actor. I’ll add prophet. ALOK speaks brave truth to power and firmly holds themself in compassion and love.

    I feel very confused about letting go of what I believed: that I am a sinner, and unless I believe in a fundamentalist style religion, well… who knows …

    Answered by Rev. Jim Burklo
  • Progressive Christian Visibility Day

    Column by Rev. Jim Burklo on April, 25 2024

    That great defender of the faith, Don Trump, responding in faux outrage to the fact that Trans Visibility Day happened to coincide with Easter this year, declared that Election Day 2024 should be “Christian Visibility Day.” As if Christians have a visibility problem in America today.

    If God doesn't intervene, what is the meaning of intercessory prayer?

    Answered by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
  • The Aquinas Nobody (or Hardly Anybody) Knows

    Column by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox on April, 18 2024

    It has been my privilege to absorb the teachings of Aquinas in my training as a Dominican and in particular with two notable scholars, Father Athanasius Weisheipl, OP (who went from the Dominican House of Studies in River Forest, Illinois to the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto) and the esteemed Aquinas scholar, theologian and historian, Father M. D. Chenu, OP. 

    It seems that Christianity is lost. It is invoked as a justification for tribalism. It is time and again the thinnest of righteous veneers for political activism of …

    Answered by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D.
  • Timeless Womb

    Column by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. on April, 11 2024

    Scholars have debated for decades whether Jesus referred to himself as “the son of God.” I agree with those who conclude no. Jesus, as Walter Wink demonstrates, most likely understood and spoke of himself in the tradition of the prophet Ezekiel, as “the son of man,” or “the human one”.

    When Jesus said, “In my house, there are many mansions,” was he giving legitimacy to the other world religions like Islam and Buddhism?

    Answered by Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz
  • Evangelicals Support of Trump Renders Christianity Unrecognizable

    Column by Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Frantz on April, 4 2024

    Who is Donald Trump?  As our nation prepares for another contentious presidential election seven months from now, the cult and menace of Donald Trump continue to loom large on the horizon.  It would be hard to imagine a more dishonest, corrupt, and unfit candidate for President of the United States. 

    I came across these quotes from the theologian Karl Rahner, which I found very intriguing:
     
    The Christian of the future will be a mystic …

    Answered by Rev. Gretta Vosper
  • Spending Words

    Column by Rev. Gretta Vosper on March, 28 2024

    I doubt anyone who reads Progressing Spirit believes there is a supernatural god called God who hands out parcels of land to this people or that. Yet many continue to use the word “god” to name something they believe in, which is not a supernatural being who hands out parcels of land to this people or that.

    I often worry about how honest my faith in God/Jesus is. I pray, I thank them, I ask them for help. In short, I ‘believe’ in their …

    Answered by Dr. Carl Krieg
  • Holy Week

    Column by Dr. Carl Krieg on March, 21 2024

    The chronology of the week is where the difficulty originates. Most Christians believe that first Jesus was crucified, and then he rose from the dead. The reality is that first came the resurrection and then the crucifixion.  This is crucial.  

    The Cross, an instrument of death, repels me as a barbaric way to symbolize Christianity.  Were a modern-day Jesus or a female equivalent to die from gunfire, would …

    Answered by Rev. Lauren Van Ham
  • Choosing the Kin-dom: Benefits of Relinquishment

    Column by Rev. Lauren Van Ham on March, 14 2024

    A dominant message, at least in Western media, is that we deserve better and we will get there.  For the profanely privileged or perpetually oppressed, modernity and capitalism peddle fixes for all, if we just vote right. 

    What is the view of atonement theology from a Progressive Christianity perspective?

    Answered by Brian McLaren
  • Waking Up in a Shaking Up

    Column by Brian McLaren on March, 7 2024

    When I studied the resurgence of life after the world’s five previous extinction events — the Ordovician-silurian, Devonian, Permian-triassic, Triassic-jurassic, and Cretaceous-tertiary — I felt like I was witnessing an Easter-morning resurrection.

    Why do conservative Christians think that “an open mind is the devil's playground”?

    Answered by Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin
  • Now Is the Time

    Column by Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin on February, 29 2024

    “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” If you did not know already, it will not surprise you to know that quote is from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
     

    “If God loves all of us indiscriminately, why was there no great desire to communicate “His” words to all from the very beginning?”

    Answered by Rev. Irene Monroe
  • Like LGBTQ+ couples was W. E. B. Dubois a romantic at heart?

    Column by Rev. Irene Monroe on February, 22 2024

    This Valentine’s Day, I pay homage to W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1924 novel “Dark Princess” because it highlights the least talked about subject then and now: Black love.

    Being gay and navigating the political issues and candidates for the upcoming election can be a daunting endeavor. What advice would you give people who are struggling to …

    Answered by Rev. Brandan Robertson
  • It’s Time For Us To Be Kind

    Column by Rev. Brandan Robertson on February, 15 2024

    This is an excerpt from my book Dry Bones and Holy Wars released by Orbis Books in 2021.

    Like many, I gave up the grandfatherly-spirit-in-the-sky notion of God along with childhood. The works of Spong, Borg, McLaern, Rohr, Rolheiser, and others have influenced …

    Answered by Rev. Roger Wolsey
  • Zombie Apocalypse and A Call to Authentic Christianity

    Column by Rev. Roger Wolsey on February, 8 2024

    A prominent theme of U.S. American pop culture over the past decade has been fascination with a “zombie apocalypse.”

    Why do otherwise independently minded and educated women stay in churches that treat them like second-class citizens?

    Answered by Rev. David M. Felten
51-75 of 1145 « ‹ Page 3 of 46 › »

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