“Unbelievable” began its life years ago when my daughter, Jaquelin, who owns a Ph.D. degree in physics from Stanford University said to me: “Dad, the questions the church keeps trying to answer we don’t even ask anymore!” She was not hostile. It was just a matter of fact statement. The church keeps posing issues that the secular world has settled, or at least has decided to ignore. Questions such as: Who or what is God? What does original sin mean? What does it mean to say that Jesus died for my sins? Can one really believe in life after death? What does it mean to be born again? Why do we not try to grow up?
First there was the revolution in astrophysics led by Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. In that revolution, the comfortable assumption that God lived just above the sky, watching over us, …
In the growth in knowledge about the shape and size of the universe, God was dislodged from the realm we called heaven and in that process God was rendered …
I made my second trip in the last two years behind what was once known as the Iron Curtain recently. There I saw the impact of communism that had …
Writing about the Theological School at Drew University this past week caused me to think about theological education in general and my own theological education in particular. I loved …
Sometimes, as one goes about the normal duties of one’s professional life, a pattern of activity slowly becomes visible until one wonders why this had not been seen before. …
Perhaps it takes a political campaign to reveal the fault lines in both our nation and in institutional religion. At least that is what appears to be happening in …
His name was David Watt Yates. As an Episcopal priest he fought for the integration of the races in North Carolina in the 1940’s! He was a conscientious objector …
On November 8, 2011, my publisher, Harper-Collins, released my newest book under the title Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. The date of a book’s release is …
To come to Scotland is to come to that mysterious land of clans with their identifying tartans and clan warfare; to a nation that forced the English to build …