Religious leaders should be held accountable when their irrational ideas turn harmful.

It is 2011 and gays and lesbians can serve in the military and in the Presbyterian Church USA. My prayer is that my GLBTQ sisters and brothers…will celebrate these victories.

The American clergy is suffering from burnout [and]…there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.

After decades of debate, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on Tuesday struck down a barrier to ordaining gays, ratifying a proposal that removes the celibacy requirement for unmarried clergy, in the latest mainline Protestant move toward accepting gay relationships.

The Sexual Believer is intended for adults who have grown up with traditional religious teaching about sexual morality.

Jesus is seriously dead.  None of the rest of it makes any sense otherwise.

Sea Raven details how the Gosepl of Jesus relates to the current debate over worker’s rights.

The integral worldview represents the next crucial step in the development of our civilization.

With so many unfortunate world tragedies occurring, compassion should be our goal as human beings. This article reminds us that compassion is what can lead us toward the triumph of peace and justice our world.

Bruce Epperly gives us the bullet points on how Progressive Christians have left go of traditionally negative images of heaven and hell in favor of a more loving, honest and transcendent vision of everlasting life.

Yoga- a beneficial practice or the work of the devil? The increasing popularity of yoga in the United States has sparked controversy among evangelical Christians and fundamentalist Hindus. In this article, Jain reports the view points of several Christian and Hindu figures, who criticize the practice of yoga in America, and provides counter arguments to the monolithic views on the ancient practice.
 

Is it ever too late to say thank you?  Yes, and no.  Here’s an idea for observing the Thanksgiving holiday in a less traditional way this year.

Written with David Paul. Souls in the Hands of a Tender God follows the path of healing and the way of companionship to build communities of caring that welcome and include our most fragile and troubled neighbors. With gentleness and grace, solid knowledge and wisdom, Rennebohm lays down the foundations of healing communities in which all may have a home, safely rest, and be well.

Get an inside look at heaven through the eyes of Dr. Reece Manley, and see for yourself how lovable and loved you really are! See that you can become whole now, get beyond your nemesis now, be all that you were meant to be in the Spirit–NOW. I highly recommend the Spirit Thinking workbook for anyone who desires real and lasting change from the inside out.” …Freda Chaney, D.D.

Based upon the author’s twenty years of classroom and clinical study, Slaves of Faith explores and explains the emotionally laden dynamic at work in the fundamentalist mind. As Dr. Mercer posits, the fundamentalist is fundamentally driven by anxiety layered over a fragile sense of self-identity constructed upon a system of beliefs that is both logically inconsistent and highly suspect in light of modern science. As a result, the fundamentalist completely rejects modernity while battling mightily in the arena of national politics and culture to bring about a world that aligns more closely with the fundamentalist worldview.

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.

In Coming Back to Earth, Geering concludes that the most credible scenario for Christianity s future depends on accepting the Gaia concept as a powerful modern myth that will sustain individual humans spiritually, and our planetary home ecologically.

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.