By calling ourselves progressive, we mean we are Christians who...
Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us.
Progressive Christianity: Reconstructing Our Theological Witness
By
Delwin Brown
Progressive Christianity has been seriously hampered by at least two illusions. One is that the triumph of progressive ideas is pretty much inevitable. The other is that progressive ideas are inherently persuasively. Neither is true. The progressive Christian witness will not triumph inevitably triumph or under its own power. Convictions prevail when they are part of social movements. Progressive ideas may be intrinsically credible, but they are actually believed only when they are effectively stated and lived, and embedded in alliances of people who act together with informed intentionality.
A Startling Vision for the 21st Century Church
By
Tom Thresher
Tom Thresher makes a powerful argument for a new kind of Christianity that transcends Christianity as we know it today. A fascinating discussion that may and open your eyes to a new vision of Christianity, even startling!
Jesus Through the Eyes of Rumi, a Sufi Mystic
By
Ian Lawton
Occasionally throughout history, someone comes along and moves a religion
from being a pond religion to an ocean religion. Someone comes onto the
scene and blows the lid off the top of religion, reforming it, transforming
it. Jesus was one such figure.
Jesus and Mohammed
By
Jim Burklo In the year 610, a merchant named Mohammed left his home in Mecca
and went up to a desert mountain called Hira and sat in a cave to
meditate. There he experienced the first of a series of revelations given
to him by the Angel Gabriel, the same angel who came to Mary, Jesus’ mother,
six centuries before. Just as Jesus went to the desert to meditate at the
start of his mission, and was visited by angels, Mohammed’s spiritual journey began
in the same way.
This was no accident, because Mohammed was familiar with Christianity and with
Judaism. However, his knowledge of those faiths came to him
third-hand. He heard a jumble of stories from the Bible, alternate
versions of these stories, and folk traditions about them that had been
filtered through multiple cultures. ...
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Jesus and Krishna
By
Jim Burklo
One thing to remember is that there is virtually no basis for the historical
reality of anybody named Krishna. Hindus generally
could care less when or if he was ever born as a real person. They are
much more comfortable with accepting their religious figures as mythical than
are a lot of Christians who want to believe in Jesus’ historical reality.
Christians could learn from the bhakti yoga of India,
and lighten up about expecting people to take the Bible literally. What
matters is the experience of deep bonding and the sometimes ecstatic experience
of devotion itself. Falling in love with Jesus or with Krishna
can usher the bhakti yogi into the presence of the love that is the source and
goal of the universe....
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Washington Post, On Faith. The essence of India is pluralism, the idea of different communities retaining their uniqueness while relating in a way that recognizes they share universal values. More than two thousand years ago, the Indian emperor Ashoka, a Buddhist, said, "Other sects should be duly honored in every way on all occasions." The great poet and contemporary of Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, wrote, that the "idea of India" itself militates "against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one's own people from others."
When Southport United Methodist Church in Indianapolis began promoting The Purpose Driven Life, two men in the pews discovered a purpose for themselves that Rick Warren didn’t recommend. Warren’s facile certitude about faith did not ring true with their own experience and understanding. So they took matters into their own hands and wrote a book that offered an alternative perspective on Christianity.
You Don't Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right, Finding Faith Without Fanaticism
By
Brad Hirschfield Grounded in biblical scholarship and interwoven with personal stories, You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right provides a pragmatic path to peace, understanding, and hope that appeals to the common wisdom of all religions....
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Jesus: The Way That is Open to Other Ways
By
Paul Knitter I am one of those Christians whose faith has been uncomfortably challenged by a reality that has been with us since the dawning of humanity but has become even clearer and more pressing over the last century: that there are many ways to be religious. There are many religions; there always have been; and, despite two millennia of Christian missionary work, it sure seems like there always will be. The manyness, the diversity, of religions is here to stay....
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Soul Sunday Because my husband is Jewish, and I, Christian, we have a special need to explain both our faiths and to help our children develop their own personal identities. One day we hope they are able to find answers to spiritual questions and create a path to God on their own. Soul Sunday grew out of the need to bring us together, as a family, to talk and understand, and to explore our faith. We wanted to create a specific time for questions, discussion, and voicing concerns. The results have been enormously rewarding, as each child has learned about faith, and also about the diversity of the world. Best of all, they have become more self-confident, introspective, and compassionate individuals....
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POST DENOMINATIONAL HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS Change is in the air and the deep rooted change of mind required of us in the present global stress challenges us all to set our own lives in the big picture.......Here is an attempt to make word picture of the mindshift required. I wonder if it would stir creative thoughts among tcpc participants....
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Prayer Given by the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson at the Opening Inaugural Event As many of you know, the Right Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly Gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire , gave the opening prayer at yesterday's Lincoln Memorial event. It was the first event in the inaugural festivities this year. HBO, which had paid for exclusive rights to the event chose not to broadcast Bishop Robinson's prayer. So if you watched there you wouldn't have caught it or even known that it occurred. NPR didn't air it either. There's no record of it in images placed on the sites of Getty Images, New York Times and the Washington Post. It's a complete erasure of his ever having delivered the prayer. Such is the continuing policy of silence and erasure we have to live with from people who should know better. We are used to this. If you know your Gay history this has happened again and again. In fact this little list-serve is really about recovering the truth in our history and celebrating it. So we're going to celebrate it by providing here the full text of Bishop Robinson's prayer....
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Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, The Psychiatrist of Christianity
By
Don Murray The voice I miss in contemporary theological discourse is that of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung.Carl Jung has been called the psychiatrist of Christianity. It is as if he put Christianity on the couch and worked through to an authentic Christian reality that lays a foundation for a whole new understanding of religions in general and Christianity in particular. In the process he became one of the major influences in changing the way the western world thinks. In fact, for me, the two greatest minds of the western world in the twentieth century were Dr. Albert Einstein, who introduced a new understanding of the outer world (the universe) and Dr. Carl Jung, who created a pathway or map into the inner world of the collective unconscious or objective psyche....
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Remarks of President Barak Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast
But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.
The Phoenix Affirmations Full version Phoenix Affirmations full version from CrossWalk America...
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From the Third Floor of the Gargage- The Story of TheOOZE
By
Spencer Burke I used to be a pastor. More than that, I was a pastor at Mariners Church in Irvine, California-a bona fide mega church with a 25-acre property and a $7.8 million dollar budget. For years, I played by the rules and tried hard not to think too much about the lingering questions in my soul. Doubt, after all, was dangerous. Who knew where it might lead?...
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Confessions of a Cowboy Christian and Practicing Buddhist Beyond miles and miles of Sonoran and Chihuahuan desert Criss-crossing the Southwest and Northern Mexico, Where local folks know how to stand "tall in the saddle" as they say Across a landscape that seems to go nigh on to forever Even beyond the Boundlessness of you, O' God, Here imaginations may touch the beauty of all creation And horizons meet the very edge of eternity....
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That is the core truth of Buddhism. We expect things to go well, and when they don’t, we suffer. The truth of Buddhism is that when we drop our desire for life to be different than what it is, at least a lot of our suffering will disappear as well. Drop the attachments, and the suffering will be dropped as well. That’s the way to enlightenment in Buddhism. You hear in the core teachings of Buddhism the bringing together of laughter and suffering, laughter as an image for accepting everything as it is, as perfect just now, and sorrow as an image for wanting it to be more hopeful.
We hold those two things in balance all the time, and I believe the same is true in Christianity. Christianity also is an attempt to hold together laughing and sorrow. I want to suggest that as we move toward Easter that we might see this journey as that balance. You can’t have Good Friday without Easter Sunday. You can’t have Easter Sunday without Good Friday. Christianity at its essence brings together suffering and laughter.
Always A Seeker
By
Fred Plumer Certainly the most influential and helpful reading I had done over the years was in the various Buddhist traditions. It is true that on the surface there are significant differences from the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha. And it seems important to note that the historical Jesus had only three or four years to formulate and articulate his teachings, while the Buddha's teachings evolved over several decades. And certainly these two great teachers were coming out of very different cultures and social settings....
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Mind In The Balance-Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity
By
B. Alan Wallace By establishing a dialogue in which the meditative practices of Buddhism and Christianity speak to the theories of modern philosophy and science, B. Alan Wallace reveals the theoretical similarities underlying these disparate disciplines and their unified approach to making sense of the objective world. "This work is replete with lucid argument and wonderful, (nearly breathtaking) detailed explanation as to the congruencies and parallels between Eastern & Western contemplative traditions and modern, that is to say: quantum physics. Mind in the Balance is now in my top three favorites of all time, easily a must read 5 plus star effort," reviews Matthew J. Schimpf.
From: http://www.religioustolerance.org/envreligion.htm Destruction of nature, whether quick and immediate, like the slash-and-burn agricultural practices, or gradual, such as the destruction of the ozone layer, dulls our sensitivity to the presence of God in the natural world. Religions need to get involved with the development of a more comprehensive worldview and ethics to assist in reversing this trend. Such ideas have been accepted, but apparently without much effect.
Dimensions of Faith By: Philip Sudworth. Considers the different dimensions of faith and the implications for how we respond to the faith of others....
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Here at the University of Southern California, part of my job as Associate Dean of Religious Life is to staff the student Interfaith Council. This group of 15-20 students from many different religious backgrounds gathers every week for an evening of discussion over dinner. The students share about their faith traditions and spiritual journeys, and with fascination learn a great deal from each other. For the past two meetings, for instance, they have been playing their favorite spiritual music to each other on their computers and phones. We’ve listened to black spirituals, Coptic Easter anthems, Arabic Muslim and Indian Sikh chants, and rock tunes in which students find soulful inspiration.
By Rev. Maurisa Brown-Latham. It is truly a blessing and honor to be able to share with everyone present today the meaning of a word that carries such power and potential to enhance and elevate our lives. A word that many people have struggled, over the course of our human existence, to define and invite into their personal space. This mysterious yet profound word has gone by various names over the centuries, but in our era it is commonly known amongst spiritual seekers and masters alike as "Interfaith".
In this invigorating, poetic and imaginative paperback, Morwood shares prayers that can be used in small groups that reflect a fresh and bold reframing of Christian views of God, the universe, Jesus, the Spirit, and holidays such as Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost. Here you will read about an everywhere God instead of an elsewhere God, who is present and active in every corner of the universe and in every dimension of our everyday life.
From History To Mystery, The Life And Teachings Of The Historical Jesus
By
Lisa A Morris
This book explores the quest for the Historical Jesus and seeks to discover the original meanings of his teachings, in particular his kingdom of God teachings. You will learn about the last 200 years of Jesus research, including the Jesus Seminar. The author discusses Gnosticism, The Gospel of Thomas, The Secret Gospel of Mark, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene along with the four canonical gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The author spends much of her time investigating the Parables of Jesus. In the parables, Jesus preaches about "the kingdom of God." This concept is taught by Jesus on two levels. One for the masses and one for his inner circle. The uncovering the "secret teachings" of the parables is very illuminating and inspirational. Whether you are a seminary student, pastor, educator, or layperson; this is a must read on the subject of the historical teachings of Jesus! The book was written by a respected scholar in Historical Christianity, Dr. Lisa Morris.
Is God A Delusion?: A Reply To Religion's Cultured Despisers
By
Eric Reitan
"Is God a Delusion?" addresses the philosophical underpinnings of the recent proliferation of popular books attacking religious beliefs. Focuses primarily on charges leveled by recent critics that belief in God is irrational and that its nature ferments violence Balances philosophical rigor and scholarly care with an engaging, accessible style Offers a direct response to the crop of recent anti-religion bestsellers currently generating considerable public discussion.
Religionless Religion: Beyond Belief to Understanding
In these perilous times when the very survival of the human species is at stake, there is a desperate need for wisdom to provide guidance. The sacred literature of the world's major religious traditions is a source for such wisdom, but it has largely been misinterpreted and misunderstood, and, thus, instead of being a source for wisdom, it has been a source for confusion and conflict. The ancient scriptures, for the most part, were written in a language which is quite different from ordinary language. It is a mythological language, which is symbolic, and therefore its meaning is hidden. In the Bible, for example, there are many narratives that appear to be historical, but they are history that has been mythologized, and therefore their surface meaning is not their real meaning. Clyde Edward Brown clearly illustrates that the correct interpretation of the world's religious texts would lead to a different concept of religion. Instead of belief in the literal truth of texts that have been misinterpreted, the emphasis would be on having those religious values, such as social and economic justice, which are common to all religions.
The Bible and the Church have become more or less irrelevant to the contemporary world. Sadly the message of Jesus, totally relevant to all times, has been ignored and lost because it is seen as being part of the Church that is now rejected with nothing important to say to present-day life. This book deals with the need to move away from structures of traditional beliefs, creeds and doctrines that are outmoded in our contemporary world. It encourages a move into a Church-based environment, living by a set of Jesus values that include compassion, sacrifice and acceptance of difference without having to believe the unbelievable and the unscientific.
I Want to be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth
By
Brenda Peterson
In Brenda Peterson’s unusual memoir, fundamentalism meets deep ecology. The author’s childhood in the high Sierra with her forest ranger father led her to embrace the entire natural world, while her Southern Baptist relatives prepared eagerly and busily to leave this world. Peterson survived fierce “sword drill” competitions demanding total recall of the Scriptures and awkward dinner table questions (“Will Rapture take the cat, too?”) only to find that environmentalists with prophecies of doom can also be Endtimers. Peterson paints such a hilarious, loving portrait of each world that the reader, too, may want to be Left Behind. Her clever take on the "Left Behind" phenomenon in the book's title isn't just a gentle refutation of an escapist religious prophecy. It's an appeal for something more inclusive than the idea that true believers will one day be swept up midair and whisked off to an eternal paradise, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves.
I live in two kingdoms. They occupy the same space and time, but they are very different places. One might think that these two kingdoms would be so at odds with each other that one or another would have prevailed by now. But they remain in an ongoing, dynamic tension in the same fabric of space-time.
I Met God in Bermuda, Faith in the 21st Century
By
Steven Ogden
It is time to challenge traditional understandings of God in order to create a twenty-first century faith. We have to say goodbye to the Sunday school God and find new ways of thinking about God.
This is not an exercise in theory, but an effort to take the practice of life seriously. In fact, a twenty-first century faith is an open, dynamic and courageous attitude toward life. It presumes that God is found not in the sky, but in the midst of life. It begins with experience, our shared experience. While experience is not everything, it is a good starting point. It is what we know.
Interview of Brian McLaren on Patheos.com Challenging the traditional assumptions around core Christian beliefs and advocating a dynamic discipleship that is more about the questions than the answers, this evangelical pastor-turned-author is preaching a compelling message for the future of Christianity that is building bridges across religious divides within the Church and beyond.
Evolutionary Christianity values big history -- the 14-billion-year epic of physical, biological, and cultural evolution -- as divine revelation and as our common creation story. Here are four core tenets of Evolutionary Christianity
Awakening to the Sacred Dimension of Creation
By
Bruce Sanguin
We are facing a planetary crisis that is unparalleled in human history. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that we are at a tipping point. Species extinction is accelerating, global warming is melting the polar icecaps at a rate that exceeds...
The Salvation of Religion: From Beliefs to Knowledge
By
Michael Dowd
The primary cause of the Church’s decline in size and influence in Europe, and now also in America, is this: valuing the Bible as the only scripture while failing to see that today's science, interpreted meaningfully and mythically, reveals God's nature, God’s ways, and God’s guidance in many ways far more accurately than anything the biblical writers could have accessed millennia ago.
Invisioning a future in which the Christian church plays a viable and transformative role in shaping society, Gretta Vosper argues that if the church is to survive at all, the heart of faith must undergo a radical change. Vosper, founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity and a minister in Toronto, believes that what will save the church is an emphasis on just and compassionate living-a new and wholly humanistic approach to religion. Without this reform, the church as we know it faces extinction.
Homodoxuals and Heterodoxuals in the Church
By
Jim Burklo
Lately I've seen many uses of the term "heterodoxy" in my reading about current trends in religion in America, referring to people who mix a variety of religious traditions and beliefs in their spirituality. That got me to thinking about what its opposite would be: "homodoxy". This struck me as an ironic twist in language, since so many "homodoxual" people oppose homosexuality, and so many "heterodoxual" people are open and affirming towards gays and lesbians. This musing resulted from these observations.
Imagining a future for the Bible in tomorrow’s churches and a post-Christian world
By
Gregory C. Jenks
Jack Spong has attempted to rescue the Bible from fundamentalism and Marcus Borg has encouraged us to read the Bible again for the first time. However, the Bible remains a problematic text for religious progressives, including Christians and people from other faith traditions. This presentation will acknowledge the constraints on the capacity of the Bible to function in the post-Christian global era, but also imagine some ways in which the Bible may make a constructive contribution to progressive religious communities in the future.
Stepping out with the Sacred: Progressive engaging the Divine, Part 2
By
Val Webb
Part 2 of the Presentation given by Val Webb at the Common Dreams 2, Melbourne Australia. In progressive religious thinking, old images of God have been retired and new metaphors for the Divine within the universe, whether Energy, Presence, Spirit, Sacred, Ground of Being, Life, have become more authentic for a scientific world. Yet, in a multi-faith world, we cannot speak of the Sacred infusing the universe without recognizing It as that sought and described in all religions. How do we engage this Divine within the world, or the Divine engage us, if at all, in a multi-faith world? How do human beings step out with the Sacred in everyday life across countries, cultures, and religious persuasions?
The Challenge Progressive Thinking Is Making to the Church
By
Gretta Vosper
We come to this moment in time, called by a very long list of voices, and it has been many, many years, decades, even centuries, that those voices have been calling us. Over the course of the next years, we must find again that inspiration that was the spark for what has been an incredible journey toward wholeness but one that has, ironically, continued to fragment and judge, to deny rights and oppress.
'This book... is an alleluia view of every present moment, a view that welcomes its complexity and subjects it to the more lasting view, the long view, of life. To that, alleluia (p. x1).'?
At the recent Southern Baptist Convention which met in Orlando, a theme reiterated throughout the meeting was the “lostness” of the world. Consider the following quotes, taken from an article in the Western Recorder by Editor Todd Deaton titled: SBC takes ‘fresh look’ at nation’s lostness:
The New Atheists are to be commended for demanding that humanity update our maps of reality and that we begin to value and actually use our modern and much enhanced capacities to discern right relationship and to devise age-appropriate ways for psychologically and materially moving in those directions.
The New Atheists as God’s prophets: What a twist! How could we have arrived at such an absurd reversal of who speaks for God?
The Christian Pluralist
You Don't Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right, Finding Faith Without Fanaticism
Soul Sunday
Mind In The Balance-Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity
Praying A New Story
From History To Mystery, The Life And Teachings Of The Historical Jesus
Is God A Delusion?: A Reply To Religion's Cultured Despisers
Religionless Religion: Beyond Belief to Understanding
Setting Jesus Free
I Want to be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth
I Met God in Bermuda, Faith in the 21st Century
With or Without God
Uncommon Gratitude Alleluia For All That is
Well-Fed Spirit Website