When Religion Goes Rogue

Column by Rev. Gretta Vosper on July, 15 2021

In Canada, it wasn’t just the Roman Catholic Church involved. Both the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church also participated in the residential schools program which, for decades, forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families for the purpose of educating them into the dominant white, Christian culture of the country.

The Mother Religion

Column by Rev. Lauren Van Ham on July, 8 2021

In Her 4.5 billion years of being a planet, Earth has known great drama illustrated in superfluous gestures of creativity and supreme acts of destruction.  If we used only this as our backdrop for religion what would our religion consist of? 

Beautifully Entangled

Column by Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin on June, 24 2021

Could it be, as some psychologists suggest, that ‘pure’ altruism doesn’t exist? According to them, when we help strangers, there is always some benefit to us personally, even if we’re not aware of it. This could include gaining respect from others, helping us feel good about ourselves, or for some Christians it could increase our chances of getting into heaven.

Welcome to Virtual Reality

Column by Rev. Brandan Robertson on June, 3 2021

In this moment of history everything has changed. Over the course of a few months, most of us went from living hybrid virtual lives to almost completely virtual lives. Church services moved online for both megachurches and churches of twelve, giving equal access to the masses to churches, regardless of their size.

Big Change

Column by Dr. Carl Krieg on May, 20 2021

In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in 1945 that the Western world was on the precipice of a new era, an era without religion. God, as the “answer” to unsolvable questions, was continually being put out of a job as science continually extended the boundaries of human knowledge.

Divine Mother Letting Go

Column by Rev. Deshna Charron Shine on May, 13 2021

I think about Mother Mary and her pride alongside her anguish as her son became more and more himself. A self that threatened the powers that be. A self that would hang for being who he was.  What must she have felt when he told her, I must go out into the world and share these teachings. I must share with the world this great love I have experienced. 

We Must Call Out Hate

Column by Rev. Irene Monroe on April, 8 2021

Entertaining Long’s sexual addiction as a believable explanation for the killings diverts attention from his acts of intentional xenophobia and racialized misogyny. The fetishization of Asian American and Pacific Island women has constantly made their lives expendable to sex traffickers and men’s violent fantasies.

Otherdoxy: A Questionable of Faith

Column by Rev. Jim Burklo on April, 1 2021

There are many questions that mainstream science can’t answer, at least at the moment.  Ethical and moral questions, such as: who should get the Covid vaccine first?  And how can such a prioritization be made understandable and acceptable to the public?  Science provides data upon which such judgments can be made, but ultimately we can’t trust science itself to sort them out. 

The Soul of Progressive Christianity

Column by Rev. Roger Wolsey on March, 11 2021

Lent is a time where we’re invited to engage in deepened soul-searching. I’ve been feeling called to search the soul of progressive Christianity.