Dr. Roger Lee Ray

Though Gandhi and MLK are lauded as great social heroes in our day, during their lifetimes they were often put in jail and were regarded as enemies of the state. To be honest about some of the people currently regarded in the USA as being traitors or at least being guilty of espionage, we should wonder if they will one day be regarded as heroic whistleblowers?

The laudable stated goal of the new Biden administration to bring unity to the red and the blue factions of America is obviously necessary, but it is a steep hill to climb.

America is horrified and embarrassed but not many of us are shocked. The failed insurrection that took place on Wednesday, January 6th, was planned, orchestrated, inspired, and incited by our president who recently lost re-election and who has been desperate to hold onto power even if he had to destroy democracy to do so.

The promise of new technologies is huge but the risk of lapsing into a world dominated by the few who are wealthy while most are relegated to a peasant class similar to the Dark Ages is very real.

I have two points to make today. The first is very practical and the second is deeply philosophical.

The late Marcus Borg is credited with describing the historical Jesus as being the teacher of radical compassion. In this time when it appears, as Paul Krugman has recently published, our culture of selfishness is killing us, it is vital that we take up that mission of teaching radical compassion.

Economists are predicting that one in six restaurants will be permanently closed as a result of the pandemic. Sadly, when progressive congregations emerge from our current sabbatical or at least our retreat to online only services, the casualty rate may be much higher than what has hit the restaurant business.

How did wearing a mask to avoid spreading the Covid virus become a politically partisan issue? It has become apparent that one of the most difficult tasks ahead of the USA is learning again how to disagree without dividing the nation.

At the end of World War I, there was a hope that this had been the “war to end all wars.” Armistice Day was established to celebrate the agreements that they hoped would lead to an eternity of peace on the planet earth. It was only 30 years before the world was plunged into another global conflict that claimed even more lives.

Now is not only a moment to celebrate, but a moment to rededicate ourselves to creating a future where kindness and compassion, justice and wisdom, are not only possible, but real.

The directors of the FBI and DHS have warned Congress that white supremacist, anarchist, and other armed militias pose a significant threat to American security. Our nation, unlike our peers in western democracies, has been held hostage to the gun industry which appears to be motivated by profits to the exclusion of concern about human life. It is up to us to reverse that priority and stem the accelerating rate of gun deaths in America.

Power begets power and institutions that are rife with power will increasingly resist change, reform, or moral responsibility. An excellent example of this is the perception that protesting police killings and violence as being inherently “anti-police” just as protesting the Catholic Church’s history of hiding pedophilia as well as the rape and forced abortions common among nuns in their relationships with priests is decried as being “anti-Catholic.”

A civilization’s shared myths account for why things are the way they are. They can bolster loyalty to a religion or a nation, and they can excuse class and race privilege.

Faith is typically based on “belief” and science is based on objective research and analysis. In this address, written for the Malvern (United Kingdom) Science and Faith conference, Dr. Ray discusses the concept of “evidence based faith,” attempting to rank our beliefs based on Bayes’ Theorem of probability analysis.

The late Congressman John Lewis wrote what could be his own eulogy in the essay he wrote to be published posthumously in the New York Times. He called on “ordinary people” to be willing to get into “good trouble.” Of course, the sins of racism, oppression, and enslavement were not creations of black culture.

Politics and profit have tremendous influence over which foods we eat, especially the poor because almost all government agricultural subsidies go to beef, dairy, and grain production and less than 1% supports growing green vegetables and fruits.

While protests verge on becoming riots in our city streets in response to multiple murders of unarmed black men at the hands of our cities' police, we must focus on how to pull racism out of our culture by the roots.

170 Danish scholars from 5 universities came together to consider how the world needs to change post covid-19. They make five crucial suggestions:

Wwe have to make choices to be more “human” as we care for those who are physically at risk, those who are unemployed, impoverished, and without either shelter or access to healthcare. Evolution didn’t happen once thousands of years ago, it is something that must be renewed daily or we are in danger of slipping back into more primitive if not reptilian ways of thinking.

We really are not in the same boat but we surely are in the same storm. The pandemic is very inconvenient for the people who get to keep their jobs, income, health insurance, and home. But those who are now unemployed, uninsured, evicted or facing foreclosure are in another kind of boat and it is in danger of sinking.

Opioid overdoses increased by 18% in March, 29% in April, and 42% in May making addiction and overdose deaths a silent pandemic within the viral pandemic. To respond to this crisis, today’s message is a panel presentation from our pastor, a physician who is an addiction specialist, and a psychologist who specializes in suicide prevention and addiction.

When we begin to give up the formal, creedal faith of our youth, accepting that no religion is entirely true and no sacred text was actually written by God, many people will abandon the journey of faith entirely.

The anti-mask vs pro-mask divide in this stage of the global pandemic becomes an interesting litmus test for either an empathetic world view or a kind of apologetic for being something of a sociopath.

Far too often, patriotism is expressed as enthusiasm for wars as if the battlefield was the only way to become a hero or to find virtue when, in almost every case, the opposite is true.