About the Author: James Burklo

Rev. Jim Burklo is the Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at the University of Southern California. An ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of seven published books on progressive Christianity, his latest book is "Tenderly Calling: An Invitation to the Way of Jesus "(St Johann Press, 2021). His weekly blog, “Musings”, has a global readership. He serves on the board of ProgressiveChristiansUniting.org and is an honorary advisor and frequent content contributor for ProgressiveChristianity.org.
  • - an imagined conversation -

    By Published On: September 2, 2024

    Step back a bit and think about it.  Neither you nor I, as believers in law and order, want to see an innocent man put to death.  Let’s put the blame for this miscarriage of justice where it belongs – on people’s belief in God!  Let the people deal with the consequences of their primitive ideas. 

  • By Published On: August 4, 2024

    What if the shooter whose bullet grazed Donald Trump's ear had no motive but the urge to have fun?

  • By Published On: May 9, 2024

    A key term coined by Tom underlies this and his other books: God is amipotent – love + power - attracting all toward goodness and creativity, and not omnipotent – directing and controlling the cosmos. 

  • By Published On: April 8, 2024

    When he preached, he spontaneously broke into rhyme.  Not just with his own words, but with the souls of his congregation, with the hearts of the people in the community he served.

  • By Published On: March 22, 2024

    Words:  Jim Burklo Tune:  Christ the Lord is Risen Today – Easter Hymn 7.7.7.7.

  • By Published On: February 12, 2024

    At a party, when a woman, without giving notice, anointed Jesus with perfumed oil,

  • By Published On: January 15, 2024

    There’s no such thing as a nobody. That’s the message of Mary. Until her immaculate conception, until she howled out the Magnificat, she had become accustomed to being treated as a nobody.

  • By Published On: November 22, 2023

    So why do we persist in comparing ourselves to others? And suffering the frustration that results?

  • By Published On: September 22, 2023

    So it was a great irony that some of the most homeful people in Palo Alto were the houseless.  And some of the most homeless people in Silicon Valley were the housed. 

  • Meeting the Moment for Progressive Christianity

    By Published On: September 16, 2023

    There’s a lot of criticism about Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Business.  And there’s been plenty of talk for decades about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. What about Big Fundy? We should name it for what it is: the fundamentalist-industrial complex.

  • By Published On: August 17, 2023

    And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved,[e] with whom I am well pleased.”

  • By Published On: August 12, 2023

    Watch Jim Burklo talk about his history with Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism and how he changed over the years to Progressive Christianity.

  • By Published On: June 10, 2023

    The early Christians looked to Abraham as their progenitor – even if they weren’t Jewish Christians.  They remembered the words attributed to John the Baptist:  “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. “  (Matt 3: 9)

  • By Published On: May 29, 2023

    The non-religious are by far the fastest-growing religious demographic in America.  So how shall we who are progressive Christians talk about our faith with them, when the appropriate occasions arise?

  • By Published On: April 21, 2023

    Justin James Sinclair is a young man on a mission.  He made retreats at the St Andrew’s Abbey and New Camaldoli monasteries in California, where, to his astonishment, he discovered a strand of Christianity that no one in the evangelical churches he attended, nor at Biola University where he studied, had revealed to him before. 

  • By Published On: April 13, 2023

    The sacred myth tells us that Jesus rose from death after three days - what transformation happened in that tomb? Jim Burklo connects the story with our gestation of fear into faith, victimhood into victory, harmful theology into healthy spirituality.

  • By Published On: April 4, 2023

    "People will see through who's behind it. They'll see what their real agenda is, set that aside, and we can have a deeper  conversation about who Jesus was, what he was about and what we’re about as his followers today," Burklo said. 

  • By Published On: March 25, 2023

    Keller apparently has no awareness of the spiritual renewal going on right now in progressive Christian churches that embrace the contemplative, mystical tradition of the faith, which evangelicals would do well to discover and practice if they’re interested in renewal. 

  • By Published On: February 17, 2023

    I'm inviting folks to engage with 14 of the questions that Jesus asked his followers during his ministry.  From Ash Wednesday, 2/22, through Easter

  • By Published On: January 7, 2023

    Years ago, my dear wife, Roberta Maran, came up with an idea at Christmas that enchanted me.  “In addition to other presents, let’s give people Christmas boxes that have nothing inside of them – except messages that are deep and pithy!”

  • By Published On: December 19, 2022

    Christmas is a season of lights... And a season to become enlightened…. To notice and amplify the light that shines within us all, revealing inner wisdom and guidance for our lives. 

  • By Published On: September 22, 2022

      A little Episcopal church on Martha's Vineyard flipped the anti-immigrant scripts of Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis by embracing, with open doors

  • By Published On: September 9, 2022

    I have lived long enough to see some patterns that I fear are being repeated.  I came of age in a time when my generation wanted to turn the world upside down – and for good reason.

  • By Published On: July 22, 2022

    Let us celebrate this wondrous thing called love.  The kind of love Jesus was talking about in his Sermon on the Mount was agape – unconditional love.