The common dream most people have of one day having more than they already have seems to have remained as fleeting and elusive as ever. Meanwhile, the gross disparity and widening gap in this country between the haves and the have-nots has reached a point where an oligarchy of corporate interests posing as individuals shape public opinion and outspend each other as never before in partisan attempts to buy an election.

Simone Weil was a Jewish philosopher from France who was hungry for God, and found God through Christianity – even though she never became a Christian…For her, being hungry for God was the way to have God. Yearning for God was her experience of God.

TJ Dawe speaks about the goals of his organization, Beams and Struts, and an ideology of compassionate cooperation.

Why would a Jewish American doctor risk serving the medical needs of Palestinian children in the occupied territories of the West Bank?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.