Many Christians I know vote based on a single issue, usually abortion. Now I don’t want to get into the pro-choice, anti-abortion, debate. I understand that if the point of conception is the beginning of life, pro-choice does not feel like a viable option. But I believe that the question for a Christian-motivated voter is not as simple as a candidate’s stance on abortion. The question should be: How Christ-like is my candidate?

Never forget that you are amazing, just as you are. And so is everyone else.

For Whitehead and Hartshorne, the indeterminacy of subatomic events suggests that freedom, and the creativity that flows from it, are ubiquitous in the universe. Even electrons make choices. According to process thought, we’re so free that even God can’t know the future, since all entities have the God-given ability to behave unpredictably.

In July, Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay, posted on his website his experience of being a Christian, a  musician, and why he finds it hard–maybe more than just “hard”–to do that within the world of evangelicalism. The band’s in a studio …

This past Sunday in worship we handed out Soulful Travel Kits to everyone who came.

Yes, I’m a progressive Christian, but I’m not a Democrat. I happen to be registered as an Independent/Unaffiliated, and I’ve met quite a few people who are fellow progressive Christians but who are registered Republicans and/or are conservative politically. Just because someone’s equally okay with referring to God as “She,” “Father,” “Mother,” “Om,” “the Ground of All Being,” or “Allah” — or just because they believe that there’s no need to convert their Buddhist neighbors — doesn’t mean that they’ll be voting for Obama in November.

Isaiah, the prophet, who said “… seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1: 17) This passage is a key to the whole scripture; It’s what led Jesus to say three times to his disciple Peter, after Jesus’ resurrection: if you love me, feed my sheep. All my sheep.

I am a quasi retired Spiritual Director and Church Consultant within the United Church of Christ (UCC). I am deeply concerned with the fetters of 4th Century “packaging” of Divinity related to the religious challenges of the 21st Century.

I try to carry God into all I do including parenting. This does not translate into threats or punishment about God watching but into teaching about kindness and love.

It does mean that each gender should recognize that their opposite may have a naturally different way of perceiving and weighing things and not label it as either inferior or superior but as something to be understood and learned from. This, I believe, provides one of many good reasons for society and its institutions, including religions, to actively seek ways to include women at all levels of leadership and decision-making.

Jesus chose the Twelve and others to help spread the word that God was working in the world uniquely through him. After his death and resurrection, local communities of believers formed; and within them leaders emerged or were chosen.

Into that fraught landscape came the news earlier this week that Karen L. King, a Harvard Divinity School church historian and expert on the controversial biblical figure, Mary Magdalene, had been given access to a papyrus fragment held by a private collector.

I like to think that my job at our Office of Religious Life at the University of Southern California is to facilitate the experience of goosebumps, when students discover how all things fit together into the Holy Whole. Sometimes, of course, religion itself gets in the way of this experience. Denial of science and common sense by dogmatic theology is a sure way to dull the kind of glow that illuminated Nicolas of Cusa’s face in 1464, and prevent the kind of tingle that went up my back in calculus class in 1975. Happily, within religion there are cures to be found for religion’s diseases.

I think the problem is exactly the opposite of the one Romney suggests. Americans aren’t as dependent on their government as they should be. If Tom Paine’s plan had prevailed in 1797, if the principle of universal income had become integral to the culture of this country from its founding, a whole range of problems we suffer in America today would not
exist.

Progressive Christianity aspires toward a lively inclusiveness that transforms opposites into contrasts as it looks for holiness everywhere. The postmodern project challenged all universal narratives, philosophical systems, and theological doctrines. Postmodernism affirms the importance of personal, communal, and tribal narratives as windows into understanding the universe. No story encompasses everyone but the sharing of many stories provides great insights into the nature of the human adventure and the ambient universe.

I am writing this article at the end of a two week vacation on the lovely Hawaiian island, Maui. My wife and I have tried to plan a trip to Hawaii every year for over 25 years …

Biblical scholarship is an academic discipline, taught and studied at universities, colleges and divinity schools all around the world. So it should be no surprise that biblical scholars run in all shapes, sizes, colors and denominations. What would surprise many people, though, is that a very large number of us love Jesus and the church, and we spend hours upon hours communicating the love and wonder we experience with the Bible.

First, read the book, the whole Bible. I quote studies that show if you actually read the Bible outside of the church it turns you liberal. Also, get a New Revised Standard version. There is a conservative Bible project that is cutting out passages considered too liberal, so get a whole Bible.