The level of insanity and chaos is so widespread out there, and getting worse I felt I needed to address a pressing issue.

The issue is: the notion that the U.S of A. is a Christian nation, or was a Christian nation, or should be, a Christian nation, is pure propaganda; not to mention unconstitutional. As Christians, we should stop trying to pretend otherwise. Unfortunately, White Christian Nationalism is rearing its ugly head, mostly due to white Christian evangelicals. Some background history.

With thousands of subscribers around the globe, Progressing Spirit is the world’s leading outlet for an intelligent, inclusive, and pioneering exploration of today’s theological, spiritual, and social advancements.

From his saying “This is my body” when breaking bread and “This is my blood” when pouring wine at what has since been referenced as The Last Supper with his disciples (see Matthew 26), it is clear that Jesus rationally grasped as well as mystically (that is, transpersonally) identified with the Oneness of Creation. If what he meant to communicate by way of such sayings had been truly apprehended, such utterances may indeed have been foundational in establishing an ecologically sane, holistically Lifeaugmentative civilization.

  The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ (Matthew 13:13)   Has overt Christian involvement in politics made public …

In this fresh creative approach to theology, Elizabeth Johnson asks how we can understand cosmic redemption in a time of advancing ecological devastation. In effect, how can we extend the core Christian belief in salvation to include all created beings? Immediately this question runs into a formidable obstacle: the idea that Jesus’s death on the cross was required as atonement for human sin– a theology laid out by the eleventh-century theologian St. Anselm.

Last week, a group of Progressive Christian leaders (including “Royal Wedding” homilist, Bishop Michael Curry, and Fr. Richard Rohr) lead a candlelight vigil and protest in front of the White House, expressing their concerns about the moral state of our nation.

Watch as Rev. Salvatore Sapienza, pastor of Douglas Congregational United Church of Christ, talks about how the Christian Left is “Reclaiming Jesus.”

  Dear Progressive Christian Friends and Allies:   Recently, I created a curriculum for churches to use for adult education about faith and health care in America:  Samaritan Care.  I hope you’ll use it freely – adapting it …

Mixing politics and religion is far more than tampering with a combustible concoction. Because politics and religion both attempt to address the same needs, dreams and desires, values and principles – they are essentially synonymous terms.

While visiting Jerusalem in November 2017, I attended an interfaith book launch for a book written by a Palestinian Arab Christian. At the reception, I spoke with an Evangelical Lutheran pastor about her church in Jerusalem and asked how Jews, Christians and Muslims treated the LGBTQUI community in the Holy Lands. She told me that many of the people in her congregation had “bound consciences.” She then explained that those two words meant the church members were working out how to accept the gay community in both their personal and their church lives. Huh?

This handbook is perfect for clergy, healers, therapists, interfaith ministers, as well as those interested in developing their own spiritual practice or starting their own home church, study group or community using integral frameworks.

I have a lot of respect for the non-literal interpretation of the New and Old Testament, but there are certain parts that I cannot see any metaphorical value in.
 My stumbling blocks are these:


1. What is the metaphorical message given by the genealogy found in genesis and in the gospels? It is the former that precisely gives young earth creationists their earth age.


2. What is the metaphorical value of the various horrific laws laid down in Deuteronomy or Leviticus? I can’t see a non-literal interpretation of telling us to destroy people who have sex if a woman is on her period.

“in all things God works for the good.”

“Jesus is a magisterial distillation of Crossan’s lifelong work on the gospels and Jesus. It deserves careful and extended consideration by everyone seriously interested in the enigmatic sage from Galilee. With his work on Jesus, Crossan joins the ranks of the truly great biblical scholars of the twentieth century. His ‘revolutionary biography’ is the biography of a revolutionary: the book and its subject are rebels in the cause of truth.”– Robert W. Funk, editor of “The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus” and cofounder of the Jesus Seminar”Crossan paints his Jesus with great warmth and power. He achieves a portrait that both takes in the contemporary background yet accounts for Jesus’ distinctiveness…This Jesus is a Jewish peasant, with a direct sense of God’s immediacy, who shatters all social restraints.” — “New York Times Book Review””This is an extremely interesting, erudite, informative, must-read for anyone interested in the New Testament…Read it.” — “National Catholic Reporter”

This sermon was preached in 2015 upon my return from Belfast. I went off script for this one. So, the manuscript does not adequately reflect what was actually preached. I went off on a tangent using Robin Meyers’ observation that our historical creeds reduce Jesus life to a comma!

In a recent post (3/16/18) on Progressive Christianity, Cap Kaylor asked: “Is Quakerism Becoming a Christianity Without Christ?” He is worried that Quakerism is in a serious decline and is in danger of withering away. He says, “I have come to share the now widely held conclusion that unless the current trajectory is reversed, liberal Quakerism is headed for extinction.” I should note that Kaylor is writing from the perspective of an unprogrammed (silent worship, no ministers) Quaker and not a programmed (speaking, music, and minsters) Quaker. Worldwide only 11% of Quaker Meetings are unprogrammed.

Morwood goes beyond “devotion and spiritual practice” in “Prayers for Progressive Christians, A New Template”. In the first part of the book he summaries the key theological shifts that necessitate changes to liturgical, group and personal prayer. In the second part he demonstrates how these major shifts in theological thinking can be incorporated into a new template for meaningful, contemporary prayer.

For eons, humans have viewed God as a huge, external, and all-knowing human-like figure who rewards some, punishes others, and ignores many, and whose actions in the world often seem mysterious and inexplicable. This is the projection model of God: we humans unconsciously created the figure of God in our own image and projected this image “out there.” Worse, this belief assigns the responsibility for change onto a fictional character to whom we keep praying, hoping that this “God” will someday hear us, or do what we ask, or show us why things are the way they are, or something.

After retiring as bishop, John Shelby Spong told us Why Christianity Must Change or Die, speaking as someone in exile from a church that was alienated from modern reality. I would like to add “Why is change so difficult?” and answer from the perspective of history in combination with science.