“I have spoken to many Christian Americans who have no idea that we believe in Jesus and that we believe he is the savior. We believe will come back and unite everyone together…”

It is inevitable that Christians who would now be described as “liberal” will be the overwhelming majority of Christians in America. That sea change, the waters of which we already feel swelling everywhere around us, can no sooner be stopped than can the moon passing across the night sky. 

As ubiquitous as this concern for other peoples’ salvation is, however, is it wise? I believe such questions betray a Christian myopia that can prove humorous (at best) and insulting (at worst) to people of other faith traditions. 

In our “adolescence” as a species (which was a threshold crossed as the modern era swept the globe), we began to question the beliefs, interpretations, and meanings we had inherited. The birth of this new form of collective intelligence, global collective intelligence, occurred when access to powerful new technologies (beginning with the telescope) ramped up our ability to discern how things are. 

Regarding Heaven and Hell; Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? – Robert Browning. An evangelical pastor of a mega-church, Rob Bell, creates a stir when he writes a little book, suggesting when it comes to a place called heaven, there’s room for everyone. What the hell?

Ehrman’s Forged delivers a stunning explication of one of the most substantial yet least discussed problems confronting the world of biblical scholarship.

Our contemporary culture is dominated by two extremes — relativism and fundamentalism.

Thatcher’s Jesus, The Voice, and the Text is a commentary on Werner Kelber’s milestone work, The Oral and the Written Gospel (1983). 

I had the opportunity to do some extra reading this summer and I want to recommend three books that I found uniquely helpful and interesting.  Two of these are big picture kinds of books and the other is a more scholarly but still a relatively easy read and simply fascinating.  

The term “resurrection” has come to stand for what Christianity is all about. But a close look reveals that it should not be understood monolithically, but rather as a pluralistic and diverse phenomenon.

The world has grown too small and the stakes for mankind have grown too high for any of us to engage our faithas if our understanding of God represents the only way God s presence may be known in the world.

The Christianized Jesus – the turning of a radical into a conservative shadow of his former self – explains our problem of establishing and celebrating freedom fighters today.

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

I reject the virgin birth, sinless life, divinity, and physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  And that’s just a short list of the traditional Christian doctrines that I don’t buy into. There are a lot of open-minded, …

After sixty years of unprecedented growth and development, nearly every meaningful social and economic indicator in the United States is shifting.

Thinking about Beck’s advice, I asked myself, WWJD, “What Would Jesus Do?” and immediately wondered WWLD, or “What Would Lucifer Do?”…what does the Lucifer Effect tell us about Christianity and social justice?