America's investment in race and racial oppression was central to its early years as a nation - a theme that dates back to Europe's earliest colonial efforts in the Western Hemisphere.

Every so often, I put out a "musing" that is a guide to my writings and videos. It's that time when churches make plans for their program year, so this is a good moment to share links to my materials for worship, study, and spiritual practice.  Use freely.  All I ask is attribution!

Publications from "Progressive" Australian and New Zealand Authors

Rev. Dr. John R. Mabry can help. He has been a spiritual director for nearly twenty years, and is the director of the interfaith spiritual direction certificate program at the Chaplaincy Institute in Berkeley, California. Starting Spiritual Direction is one of the first books on spiritual direction written for people who are receiving spiritual direction, rather than giving it. In a friendly, easy-to-read style, Dr. Mabry tells you everything you need to know to make your spiritual direction sessions a sacred and fruitful time.

“A unique and valuable; resource for Christians (and others) engaged in interfaith dialogue” – reviewed by D. Anderw Kille, May 27, 2016 “Inevitably, profound questions arise out of respectful encounters with people of religions other than our own. Many who have been involved in cooperative engagements with people of other faith traditions discover that it is often easier to talk with people of a different religion than it is with the person sitting next to you in your own congregation. For others, the struggle is within, as in the case of Elsie L., a parishioner in Buffalo. After a church session in which a Hindu woman active in interfaith activities had spoken to the group, Elsie spoke to Pastor Strouse. “If I accept the Hindu path as equal to Christianity,” she said, “I’m worried that I’m betraying Jesus.”

This groundbreaking and moving book gathers responses from leaders of diverse spiritual and religious traditions ranging from Buddhism to Islam to Christianity, as well as those who do not claim one or any particular walk of faith. Contributors include Brother David Steindl-Rast, Matthew Fox, James O'Dea, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Tessa Bielecki, Lama Surya Das, Hank Wesselman, Father Bede Griffiths, Byron Katie, Joan Halifax, Normandi Ellis, Andrew Harvey, Dan Millman, Kristena Prater, Nicki Scully, Mirabai Starr, and more.

In this profound work, bestselling author and the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark John Shelby Spong offers a radical new way to look at the gospels today. Pulling back the layers of misunderstanding created over the centuries by Gentile ignorance of things Jewish, he reveals how a literal reading of the Bible is so far removed from the original intent of the Jewish authors of the gospels that it has become an act of heresy.

Decline and Dysfunction in the American Church, addresses the unprecedented and devastating decrease in membership, financial resources, respect and ministry suffered by congregations and judicatories throughout the nation and offers an explanation that has not yet been considered.

n this book you will find a profile of what Jesus may have been like within the context of Second Temple Judaism. This is set alongside selected aspects of the Jesus tradition as preserved in the earliest Christian writings. Neither is ascribed primacy over the other, but each casts light on the other and both inform the final part of the book that traces some of the ways in which Jesus communities now might shape their collective and individual lives.

Chuck Queen explores the following themes from a distinctly progressive Christian viewpoint: Scripture, faith, Christianity, salvation, discipleship, and the Beatitudes. Each chapter consists of seven reflections; each reflection is followed by questions that probe deeper into the topic and facilitate group discussion.

Drawing on a lifetime of wisdom, New York Times bestselling author and controversial religious leader John Shelby Spong continues to challenge traditional Christian theology inEternal Life: A New Vision. In this remarkable spiritual autobiography about his lifelong struggle with the questions of God and death, he reveals how he ultimately came to believe in eternal life.

“A clear and intelligent presentation displaying a linguist’s understanding without the linguist’s jargon. Our online Biblical Greek Forum treasures this work enough that its members have labored at digitizing it and making it available to the scholarly community. We are delighted to see it back in print.” —Carl Conrad, Washington University emeritus

The church sign can be easily read by anyone driving by: “You can’t be a devoted follower of Jesus unless you are part of a local church.” Does the church that posts this sign not trust the people with Jesus’s message? What is the meaning of “incarnation” if not “embodiment” by individual persons of the spirit of the Christ? Is the “Body of Christ” for members only? The Apostle Paul created the metaphor of the “Body of Christ” as the community of followers. In 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, he explains the meaning of the ritually-shared meal: “The cup of God’s gracious benefits that we consecrate means that we are involved in the blood of the Anointed, doesn’t it? The bread that we break means that we are involved in the body of the Anointed, doesn’t it? That there is one loaf means that we who are many constitute one body, because we all partake of the one loaf.” In Romans 12:5 he says, “Just as each of us has one body with many parts that do not all have the same function, so although there are many of us, we are the Anointed’s body, interrelated with one another.”

The political, social, spiritual, and economic history of most of the Western world has been defined by the belief articulated in the literal application of John’s gospel to personal and social piety. If Christianity is to survive with any relevance to postmodern, twenty-first century realities, the theology of condemnation and substitutionary atonement associated with the fourth gospel has to be scrapped. Not only is the future of Christianity at stake. This theology threatens the further evolution of human consciousness, and life as humanity has known it thus far on Planet Earth.

To create this New New Testament, Hal Taussig called together a council of scholars and spiritual leaders to discuss and reconsider which books belong in the New Testament. They talked about these recently found documents, the lessons therein, and how they inform the previously bound books. They voted on which should be added, choosing ten new books to include in A New New Testament.

More timely and necessary than ever in the wake of recent calamities like Hurricane Katrina and the Republican war against the environment, The Lost Gospel of the Earth is legendary activist Tom Hayden’s eco-spiritual call for revamping traditional religious doctrine to reflect a greater environmental consciousness, which he believes is the only way to save the planet from catastrophe.

Of the many recent books on the historical Jesus, none has explored what the latest biblical scholarship means for personal faith. Now, in

Top Jesus scholars Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan join together to reveal a radical and little-known Jesus. As both authors reacted

In this groundbreaking work, John Hick refutes the traditional Christian understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, the divine incarnation, he explains, is best understood metaphorically.

The New American Bible revised edition is more than a mere Bible translation. Authorized by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine and approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the New American Bible seeks to provide the best resource for understanding the church's sacred Scripture.

The Phoenix Affirmations, named for the town in which the principles were created and the mythological bird adopted by ancient Christians as a symbol of resurrection, offers disillusioned and spiritually homeless Christians and others a sense of hope and a more tolerant, joyful, and compassionate message than those we often hear from the media and some Christian leaders.

The Complete Gospels is the first publication ever to collect the canonical gospels and their extracanonical counterpoints under one cover. The selected extracanonical gospels date from the first and second centuries, are independent of the canonical gospels, and significantly contribute to our understanding of the developments in the Jesus tradition leading up to and surrounding the New Testament gospels.

Bridging the God Gap: Finding Common Ground Among Believers, Atheists and Agnostics shows how to build mutual understanding between seemingly irreconcilable religious viewpoints.

My First Introduction to the New Testament is for young readers of middle school age who may cherish the presentation Bibles given to them when they were younger but wonder just how to engage with biblical literature. Church school teachers may want to use it for a yearlong class because most chapters can be covered in one session. College students and even graduate students will find this book an easy way to refresh and review.

The first fruits of this scholarly collaboration are gathered together in this excellent anthology, which will be a welcome addition to the libraries of anyone with an interest in Christian origins.

Scientific knowledge has stripped Christianity of the mythical matrix in which the creeds were conceived. The historical study of the Bible and the quest for the historical Jesus have raised the future of the faith to crisis level. At its Once & Future Faith conference in March 2001, four world class thinkers - Don Cupitt, Karen Armstrong, John Shelby Spong, and Lloyd Geering - joined Robert Funk and the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar to sort through the issues and attempt to form an agenda for the reinvention of Christianity. Their suggestions - on questions such as life after death, the meaning of God, apocalypticism, and the significance of Jesus' death - fill the pages of this book.

Review “This book could start a revolution. Borg cracks open the encrusted words of faith and pops them into fresh language that people

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).