"Love the sinner, but hate the sin." This phrase has been used countless times by some Christians to pretend to offer welcome to LGBT people while condemning the natural consequence of the way God made them. It speaks for a shallow kind of love at most: one that claims to be okay with a person's same-sex orientation while stigmatizing its fulfillment. This noxious phrase also summarizes the underlying attitude of many people of other religions towards sexual minorities. It is a phrase whose time has come - and gone. More than ever, it needs to be excised from the vocabulary of faith, once and for all, as it pertains to homosexuality.

Like the black girl in search of God, this gay red-headed boy’s search has been convoluted and risky. ... The gay red-headed boy, in his search for God, now encountered a gay pioneer, who was also, as it turns out, a Hindu scholar. God is good—and full of surprises.

Somewhere down where we don't like to go, is a place where racism lives. It's automatic and hidden. Binding and resistant to change. No matter how well-meaning we are, no matter how open-minded. Like the "root kit" on a computer, racism is hidden and operating without our knowledge.

It's been in the news. Now it has been confirmed. As of this past weekend, Raymond Leo Burke, America's highest-ranking cardinal at the Vatican, was officially removed from the Vatican's Supreme Court, and demoted to chaplain of the Knights of Malta, where he will reign with much less responsibility.

The Pope Effect brought throngs of Catholics and admirers out to see him wave to them from his Pope-mobile and to hear him celebrate Mass. And his effect not only brought Republican John Boehner of Ohio to tears, but it also brought Boehner to the realization he should step down as House Speaker. However, for many religious conservatives the Pontiff’s remarks and actions during his visit were viewed as heretical, desecrating century-old church doctrine, and diminishing his authority as the head of the church.

We know what to do. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins: “Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.” Unitarian Universalists claim the “inherent worth and dignity of all humanity.” Christians claim the Apostle Paul’s ecstatic revelation that “You are no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or freeborn, no longer ‘male and female.’ Instead you all have the same status in the service of God’s anointed Jesus.” Leviticus 19:18 says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said, “Love your enemies.”

It was a very good week for our nation. I rejoice in it, welcome it and give thanks to God for it. The world and the church have the opportunity today to be more profoundly Christian than we were able to be just last week. That is a powerful and a welcomed realization. John Shelby Spong

It’s a confusing world out there if you’re attempting to discern what a supernatural, divine being is trying to do and say in this world. Between, on the one hand, the millions of Seventh Day Adventists meeting to argue over whether the Bible permits or disallows the ordination of women, and, on the other, the Archbishop of Canterbury trying to placate his riven bishops after a vote to allow priests to perform same-sex marriages was passed at the Episcopal General Convention in Salt Lake City, the deity’s message is mixed, to say the least. On any given day, thousands of rival decisions made by the myriad arms of the Christian church are reported on around the globe. Add all the other religions and their interpretations of what morality and ethics mean in the twenty-first century, and you’ve got a lot of deity decisions, many of them contradictory, being shared.

Religious Liberty In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision broadening the understanding of marriage, those who have fought same-gender marriage now express fears that they will be called upon to do things their consciences will not permit and are clamoring for “religious liberty.”

  "If faith communities lead the way in honoring the reality of same-sex marriage, the law will eventually follow." -- Jim Burklo, BIRDLIKE

Liberty and Freedom: People – especially politicians, it seems – frequently use the two terms interchangeably, as if they were the same thing. But while civil liberties can be legislated and personal freedoms can be infringed upon, there is something autonomous about personal choices and actions that can never ultimately be denied or encumbered. “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given,” the late author and civil rights activist, James Baldwin, once said. “Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.” An earlier commentary considered the two ideas of conscience and consciousness as a spiritual component and practice of human experience. These comments are written as we approach our nation’s annual observance of the Independence Day holiday; exploring what might constitute a progressive Christian perspective of a kind of liberating “freedom” that is comprised of loosing the bonds of all the little deaths we die, and binding oneself to that which can irrepressibly spring once more to life.

In my pocket, all my waking day, I carry a device that enables me to communicate instantly with practically anyone around the globe. I'm a cog in a vast international system of manufacturing, trade, and consumption. Sure, we're all connected in these ways. But in our face-to-face encounters with other people, or when we walk in wilderness and commune personally with other living beings, we sense this connection in a much deeper way.

Rachel Held Evans has been called “the most polarizing woman in Evangelicalism.” She is a New York Times bestselling author of three books and a popular blog in which she wrestles honestly with the cruelties and contradictions in her Christian tradition from the standpoint of a loving insider on a quest to understand God and goodness more deeply. In this interview by Valerie Tarico, Held Evans discusses both the book and her broader faith journey.

This past Sunday morning in Los Angeles was bright with strong wind blowing clear air over the mountains from the high desert. The palm trees swayed along Highway 10 west into Santa Monica. Two right turns at the Cloverfield exit took me past the garbage company and into the chain-link gate of Bergamot Station, a former warehouse complex turned into dozens of art studios. In the back corner, in a galvanized iron building, is the "Writer's Bootcamp", a complex with offices and meeting spaces, where I found Thad's.

Between sex as sin and sex as sport is an embrace of sexuality as a good gift. Between the teachings of "just say

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." These grand words are etched in the American consciousness, and serve as a preamble of sorts to the Constitution’s subsequent ideal goal of “a more perfect union.” With the recent split Supreme Court decisions over voting rights and marriage equality, along with and passage of an immigration reform bill in the Senate that naysayers declare is DOA in the House of Representatives, it would appear that while progress has been made, we clearly remain a work in progress, as well. As we prepare to celebrate our Independence Day holiday this year the fireworks have been set off a little early with the debate over the intelligence surveillance practices of the so-called Patriot Act by a government that was established of, by and for the people. Call them heroes or traitors, whistleblowers or hack-tivists, there are also a growing number of anti-authoritarian tech geeks who claim to be motivated less by notoriety than a certain principled conscience to which they claim to have pledged a higher allegiance. So, what is the nature of “natural” or “divinely-bestowed” rights? What of human conscience, earthly authority, and more? And – for those of us who might consider ourselves both a red-blooded American and Christian of one sort or other -- what might constitute a “Christian” conscience, based on a Jesus life-ethic? You can find the latest commentary Here.

Whatever paradigm a community may favor (or more than one among community members), the core of Christian faith and what Jesus emphasized — the centrality of love in action — can be the community emphasis as well.

This report examines an American religious movement called progressive Christianity and what it can tell us about religion in the modern world.