The following is Part 1 of two columns drawn from an interview with Rachel Laser, President of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, December 1st, 2022. It has been edited for length and focus.
What such people meant by this is that they feared that the era of privilege and power for straight, white, wealthy, capitalist men might soon pass unless it becomes vigorously defended.
When I first read Harry Emerson Fosdick’s Shall the Fundamentalists Win?, it changed my life. In disbelief, I read portions of it over and over again and looked at the date. I read it AGAIN and thought, “What?” How in the world could he have preached this in 1922 and it STILL be controversial?!
In two previous columns: How I Got Here and What Am I Now?, I shared a bit about my own backstory and where I am now as a progressive Christian. In this third column, I’d like to share a bit about what I see and hope for progressive Christianity looking forward.
The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. Recorded at his home in Richmond, Virginia, it has been edited for length and thematic focus.
Have you ever wondered why the work of Charles Darwin has been so threatening to traditional Christians and to institutional Christianity? In fundamentalist and Bible belt regions of the …
Luke concludes his birth story with a series of episodes designed to point to the story of the adult Jesus. First, in Luke’s story, the shepherds depart, while …
The Third Annual John Shelby Spong Lecture was held at St. Peter’s Church, Morristown, New Jersey, near the end of April. A crowd of people, numbering around 400, according …
The way Christians have told the Christ story, beginning with Augustine in the fourth century and continuing through Anselm in the twelfth century, is to postulate an original and …
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 …