“So what do progressives do about the God thing?”

Sermon by Rev. Rich Lang with University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle on “Marriage Equality As Christian Sacrament” rooted in Matthew 16: 5-19 recorded October 14, 2012.

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 …

Rarely is the Bible perceived as a tool of transformational change; yet it is. As humanity moves deeper into a time of conscious awakening, traditional Bible interpretations become stepping stones illuminating paths of greater understanding. The special guest for this program is Bishop John Shelby Spong.

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.

A pre-eminent voice for liberal Christianity, John Shelby Spong was the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2000. His admirers acclaim his making contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary lay person—he’s considered a champion of an inclusive faith by many both inside and outside the Christian church.

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.

Former fundamentalist evangelical Christian Mark Andrew Alward discusses his religious journey and wishes he was aware of Progressive Christianity before “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

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.

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.

Pluralism is a reality and it always has been. Diversity is built into the nature of life, whether in flora, fauna, or religious experience. Today, the diversity of religious and cultural experience shapes virtually everything we do. Every congregation and Christian lives with diversity: some deny, some evade, some attack, and others embrace the unavoidable and often blessed diversity of life.

So in a round-about way, Gamaliel, as quoted by Luke, is giving us a powerful clue about what kind of literature the Gospels are — a unique mix of a few core historical events with lots of theological overlay, all blended with a good dose of the kinds of stories of miraculous signs that we know were common and sometimes persuasive in that day. And not surprisingly…. They still are today!