Our 2020 updated version of the 8 Points of progressive Christianity

It is wonderful to find insights and practices like these getting into print. These essays voice for me just the sorts of issues our new and more selective faith(s) should be guiding us toward, climate above all.

Leah Schade and Margaret Bullitt-Jonas gather twenty-one faith leaders, scientists, community organizers, theologians, and grassroots climate activists to offer wisdom for fellow pilgrims grappling with the weight of climate change.

A compilation of modern call and response litanies intended for congregational use. Whether your community is liturgical and looking for fresh language, or contemporary and looking to incorporate liturgical elements, this volume contains relevant, reflective prayers that call congregations deeper into the story of Divine Love.

  Original Sin or Original Reptile? Once upon a reptile, a very long, long time ago in a place not so far away, the human story began. After much fighting for survival, Homo Sapiens came out the …

Three questions need to be clearly explained to the American public. What is Progressive Christianity? Secondly, what does progressive mean in the context of this religious movement? And, why is Progressive Christianity especially needed in our time?

Kaitlin Curtice is a Native American Christian author and speaker. As an enrolled member of the Potawatomi Citizen Band and someone who has grown up in the Christian faith, Kaitlin writes on the intersection of Indigenous spirituality, faith in everyday life, and the church.

Every Shabbat morning a large and enthusiastic group comes together for Torah study. Rabbi Janet Marder teaches this class, which focuses on a thoughtful reading of the entire Torah, exploring the historical, ethical and spiritual questions raised by the text.

This 6 week study includes Lent 1 – Palm/Passion Sunday and follows the Revised Common Lectionary (YEAR A, B or C) text selections.

This 6 week study includes Lent 1 – Palm/Passion Sunday and follows the Revised Common Lectionary (YEAR A, B or C) text selections.

This 6 week study includes Lent 1 – Palm/Passion Sunday and follows the Revised Common Lectionary (YEAR A, B or C) text selections.

TeenText 7 week Study Lent 1- Easter Sunday for Middle School: The Lenten season is rich in sensory exploration and story-based text.

TeenText 7 week Study Lent 1- Easter Sunday for Middle School: The Lenten season is rich in sensory exploration and story-based text.

TeenText 7 week Study Lent 1- Easter Sunday for Middle School: The Lenten season is rich in sensory exploration and story-based text.

TeenText 7 week Study Lent 1- Easter Sunday for Middle or High School: The Lenten season is rich in sensory exploration and story-based text.

TeenText 7 week Study Lent 1- Easter Sunday for Middle or High School: The Lenten season is rich in sensory exploration and story-based text.

TeenText 7 week Study Lent 1- Easter Sunday for Middle or High School: The Lenten season is rich in sensory exploration and story-based text.

Early Sunday morning before Christmas I learned that my first long term partner had died. It took me by surprise and grabbed me in the gut. I wanted to talk to somebody about it, but I didn’t think anyone could understand. So I’m talking about it with you, the reader of this blog.

Paraphrasing St. Oscar Romero, “If a church is not publicly opposed to war, to murder, to political assassination, of what use is that church?” While we may hope that churches will avoid wading into partisan politics, we cannot be tricked into believing that ethics is the same thing as politics. As the USA inches closer to war with Iran and ignores even the executive order of Ronald Regan forbidding political assassination, the prophetic church must now do the one thing for which we exist: speak truth to power.

Secular Consumerists (aka Secular Humanists) have made a cottage industry of bashing the belief system of totally innocuous and even quite benevolent people and they enjoy gleefully pointing to things like the Crusades, the Inquisition or the 30 Years War to, basically, say that Christianity sucks. They feel the Christian religion is impugned by such atrocities.

We must cultivate peace in our own hearts first, allowing the Peace of Christ to root there. This is our work as we pray for peace in the whole earth.

Though most western religious traditions seem to promise some kind of afterlife, what if, as Martin Hägglund articulately argued, our limited mortal life is all there is? Our days, being limited in number, become more valuable, and our work becomes more meaningful. Without eternity, preserving the earth becomes more imperative. Though many spiritual teachers give assurances they cannot support with evidence, this sermon deals with morality in a matter-of-fact manner.

LGBTQ inclusion in the policy and practices of UMC has been a long contentious and exhausting battle- both nationally and globally. The proposed schism to be voted on in May at General Conference in Minneapolis will divide the nation’s third-largest denomination worldwide.

Author Lenny Duncan is the unlikeliest of pastors. Formerly incarcerated and homeless, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Lenny Duncan is the unlikeliest of pastors. Formerly incarcerated, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make all the headlines, but Duncan sees something else at work–drawing a direct line between the church’s lack of diversity and the church’s lack of vitality.

  Negative messages about sex come from all corners of society: from the church, from the media, from our own families. As a result, countless people have suffered pain, guilt, and judgment. In this instant bestseller, Nadia …

As we wrap up our financials for 2019, we’d like to express our gratitude for your support during our Year End Fundraising Campaign! We were able to reach 50% of our year end goal with a total amount of $35,500. You can still help us get closer by donating this month.

Theism, or supernatural theism (for the most part, they bear the same meaning) is a monotheistic conception of God that has been with us since the idea of monotheism first began to emerge in our Judeo-Christian story–after the Exodus (1,200 Before the Common Era), down through the time of the Babylonian Exile (587-538 BCE).

A sermon preached on the Second Sunday after Christmas – the readings for this sermon include: John 1:1-9, The Gospel of Thomas 70; Matthew 2:1-12.

Was Jesus’s treatment of women radical enough to call him a feminist? 

“At the center of the Christmas story is hope…hope which comes to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor baby. A child, not a king, changes the world. God appears to us as a marginalized, Afro-Semitic, Jewish child from Nazareth in Palestine. A child who grows up to teach us to welcome the stranger. How would our world be different if we loved our neighbors as ourselves?” asks the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church.

If we pay attention, the Christmas story is a mirror held up for us to see that we live in a country where the government locks thousands of migrant children into dog cages, sexually abusing some, torturing others, and allowing many to die while the church is largely compliant and silent. And we seriously wonder if this government might actually win election approval from poor church goers in a few months. Merry Christmas?

“Jesus heals not only us as individuals but a savior has been born, one who will heal the world from all its ills.”

Rev. Lines names the immaculate conception as “bad theology” and discusses the power of choosing to love.

In these dark and dreary days each year, our world turns to celebrate another Christmas holiday. Some may do so out of the sheer need to escape, if only for a fleeting while; grasping, once again, at a thin belief in some divine intervention into the human story, with the birth of a savior king. Deeply powerful rituals and traditions are dragged out of the attic and observed; going through the motions for yet another year. Others, however, like myself, may repeat some of the rituals to simply reaffirm one’s belief in the rebirth of “hope”.

We believe in an Ultimate Reality
A Reality beyond our words