To be a progressive, one must have the ability to think for oneself, to examine what they have been told and what they read. To be a progressive Christian means we find the courage to both question and to find our own authentic answer. And that takes bravery. Let’s celebrate our bravery together!
When I first called myself a Christian I was in 7th grade. On my first visit to a small church I accepted Christ as my savior. I’m sure I had no idea what that meant, but it felt like the right thing to do in my 13 year old mind and heart. I spent the rest of middle school and high school so devoted to Jesus that I was at church almost as often as I was at school. I went to learn how to trust my new savior. I went to learn how to surrender successfully. I went to relinquish all sin, back sliding, laziness – parts of the genuine human experience I wanted to lay at the foot of the cross, walk away, and never have to pick them up again.
Everywhere one looks in the Christian religion, one discovers the mentality of “Atonement Theology.” In the church a fetish has developed about the “cleansing power of the blood of …
“Atonement Theology, especially in its most bizarre form, which we call ‘substitutionary atonement,’ presents us with a God who is barbaric, a Jesus who is a victim and …
On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a solitary monk named Martin Luther approached the great doors of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on which he planned to post …
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 …
The primary Christian mantra incorporated into our hymns, prayers and sermons is some variation of the phrase: “Jesus died for my sins!” It comes out of a Christian definition …
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 …
In the beginning all was good, said the oldest biblical story of creation (Gen. 2:4b-3:24). That goodness was symbolized by the portrait of life in …
In this series we have looked at the changing understanding of God throughout human history. We have tried to separate the God experience of transcendence, wonder and awe from …