Armed with fifteen years of exposure to critical contemporary Christian scholarship, the congregation’s leaders, rather than fire me, embraced the opportunity to explore what church beyond belief might look like. It has been a bumpy ride at times; there is no doubt about that. Still, the work was important, and we have proven that a church built on the values of liberal Christianity neither undermines nor requires belief in a supernatural, interventionist, theistic god called God.
Science and Spirituality need each other. This has always been the case—from Aristotle (who concludes his classic work on Physics with positing an Unmoved Mover) to Aquinas (who fought the fundamentalists of his day about the value of bringing science, namely Aristotle, and the scientific method of his day, namely scholasticism, into the world of faith).
It’s been four years since I decided to publicly identify as an atheist. After the manner of time’s calming influence upon things about which we were once so passionate, my perspective on the wisdom of the decision has altered. And as we so often do, I revisit that decision from time to time and wonder if, given the opportunity to relive those days, I would make it again.
Evolution shaped our brains to take shortcuts. Our senses relay to the brain a ceaseless, torrential downpour of stimulus and information, and so our neurons team up to sort and sift this stream into higher-order abstractions–mainly categorizations in the form of either/or classifications.
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.
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 …
Dear Moderator Cantwell,
I write with some alarm at what is happening in the United Church of Canada, a church that I have long admired. I recall your history. …
Before proceeding with this series, I want to return to my theme of last week and examine the concept of theism more closely. In so doing, I run the …
A recent letter from an Anglican priest in Canada revealed what this priest believes to be the dire straits into which Christianity has fallen in that gentle land to our north.
I recently read Walter Isaacson’s provocative and fascinating biography of Steve Jobs, the founder of the Apple Corporation. He was innovative, iconoclastic, weird and a genius. He built …