Letting Go (Death) is Hard but Practice Makes it (a Little) Easier

Column by Rev. Deshna Charron Shine on January, 11 2024

When I think about my parents dying, emotions are quick to the surface, tears arise, and my heart squeezes. Death is one thing we all experience, and yet, it is the scariest, most traumatic thing we face as humans.

Holy Envy

Column by Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers on December, 1 2022

For the last six weeks, my congregation in Norman, Oklahoma, has been reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s wonderful book, Holy Envy:  Finding God in the Faith of Others.

Common Ground

Column by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. on July, 9 2020

A democracy is only able to function and prosper if its diverse citizenry shares a common sense of what is good. A political common good, however, is made possible by the presence of common ground; this ground is the Reality of Being, the Essence of all that is. Without spiritual common ground, which is Being, the fragile political common good is a chimera, evident in the cultural blindness to and destruction of the beauty of George Floyd.

To Be and Not To Be:   Wrestling with the Christian “I Am” and the Buddhist “I Am Not”

Column by Joran Slane Oppelt on February, 20 2020

Modern scientists have discovered what the mystics have known to be true for centuries. Reality is an illusion. Atoms are primarily made of vast regions of empty space, objects are fundamentally non-objects but rather waves and shadow, and there is a continuous energetic exchange happening between you and those around you at all times.

Calling on Warriors for Beauty

Column by Jennifer Berit and Skylar Wilson on September, 19 2019

So what does it mean to be a warrior for beauty? In order to understand it, we must first look at what beauty is, and then we must turn toward what it means to be a warrior.

Love, America and The Middle Way

Column by Joran Slane Oppelt on April, 4 2019

A teenager in a red “Make America Great Again” hat, face-to-face with a drumming Native American elder on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial…

For all the coverage and commentary we now have of the Lincoln Memorial encounter, there are many moments we’re not shown. We will never see what was moving in the hearts of those two men as they faced one another, waiting for the other to back down, watching their expressions melt and change while feeling the heat and pressure of the mob at their back.

Christianity as a Nondual Spiritual Path

Column by Kevin G. Thew Forrester, Ph.D. on April, 5 2018

As Moses climbs the mountain, he arrives at his soul’s summit out of breath, bone-weary, and hungry; hungry to know the truth of what it is he searches for. He is an embodiment of humanity’s search for the truth of its Being.

Where the Rubber Hits the Road

Column by Rev. Roger Wolsey on September, 7 2017

Progressive Christianity intentionally seeks to evolve and adapt with the times so that the faith can continue to be sensible, relevant, and meaningful in the lives of people. As part of this, we tend to believe that Christianity isn’t the “best,” “only,” “right,” and/or “true,” religion or way that God is at work in the world. We honor that the Divine is fully at work in all of the major world religions – and beyond.

Is Jesus the Only Way?

Column by Rev. Roger Wolsey on April, 27 2017

As a progressive Christian pastor and author I frequently receive critical pushback from conservative and fundamentalist Christians who adamantly declare that the only way to experience salvation is by giving intellectual assent to certain specific truth claims about the life of Jesus. Scratch that, they don’t generally care about his life, their focus is primarily upon Jesus’ death and his resurrection. Their message boils down to “Unless you believe that Jesus died for your sins and that he physically rose from the grave, you are a heretic, and will go to hell when you die.”

Japan’s 18th-Century Pioneer of Historical Consciousness

Column by Cassandra Farrin on February, 9 2017

Martin Scorsese recently released a film adaptation of the 1966 novel “Silence” by Shusaku Endo that traces the persecution of Christians in 17th-century Japan. As a long-time admirer and friend of the Japanese people, I am understandably nervous about how this new film will affect Western perceptions of a country I hold dear, so I looked into the history of religious persecution in Japan to help put the film in context. Ironically, the best book I found on the subject wasn’t on Christianity at all, but on Buddhism: Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution by James Edward Ketelaar.