the church is failing its men—especially young men. There are a many young men who are aimless, uncertain and who feel something is lacking. They are looking for meaning and purpose in life. They may not even know they are searching. Doesn’t this describe each of us at some point in our lives?

I’m just saying that if a politician decides to utilize Christianity for their own good, they need to be called out when they forget or misconstrue what Christianity is all about.

There’s no cookie-cutter answer to that question. There’s no one “secret sauce” to sprinkle on a church to bring it alive. But from each other, churches can discover ingredients for the recipes for vitality that will work for them. 

Just as the term “believer” means very different things to those who use it, so do to does the word “atheist” include a wide set of definitions.

Toward Decentering the New Testament is the first introductory text to the New Testament written by an African American woman biblical scholar and an Asian-American male biblical scholar. This text privileges the voices, scholarship, and concerns of minoritized nonwhite peoples and communities.

Why are some Christian Churches growing in numbers and outreach? Is there any room to find agreement and move on with the work of Jesus Christ ? 

Racism is discrimination with systemic, social power behind it. Racism is more than just one individual rejecting another based on superficial criteria.

A few weeks ago, I stood on a hill in Edinburgh, Scotland, at sunset. Somewhere on that mound, one of my ancestors was burned as a heretic by the Catholic Church and died as martyr to the new Protestant faith. As the sun fell toward the horizon, the sky turned red – a fitting fiery tribute – and through the blazing clouds a double rainbow formed. A sort of divine apology for whole mess? I couldn’t help but wonder.

I Found God in Me is the first womanist biblical hermeneutics reader. In it readers have access, in one volume, to articles on womanist interpretative theories and theology as well as cutting-edge womanist readings of biblical texts by womanist biblical scholars.

In an age in which women’s reproductive rights are increasingly under attack, a minister and ethicist offers a stirring argument that abortion can be a moral good

The Center for Open and Relational Theology exists to promote… open and relational thinking, networking among like-minded people, projects that build upon or advance open and relational ideas, announce news, and provide open and relational theology resources.

Womanist Sass and Talk Back is a contextual resistance text for readers interested in social (in)justice. Smith raises our consciousness about pressing contemporary social (in)justice issues that impact communities of color and the larger society. Systemic or structural oppression and injustices, police profiling and brutality, oppressive pedagogy, and gendered violence are placed in dialogue with sacred (con)texts.

Building on the enthusiastic reception of and critical acclaim for The Peoples’ Bible, hailed as “a rich resource” (Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza) that “will empower people to reclaim the Bible as a multicultural, dialogical, and living tradition” (Kwok Pui-lan), this colorful and engaging biblical textbook brings those same new perspectives in biblical studies to the college classroom.

“Ingenuity” introduces a theology and practice of preaching that emerges from the faith and wisdom of black women. Preaching has been resourced and taught from a narrow field of cultural or gendered experiences, historically. Without much support from established channels, black women are left to “figure it out” on their own, and others discern how to preach from a limiting scope.

A school district in Pennsylvania, in attempt to collect about $20,000 (against an $8 million budget) of unpaid lunch room bills, sent letters to parents with accounts in arrears threatening to have their children placed in foster care if they did not pay. It forces us to wonder how people whose careers are in the care and nurture of children could become so callous and lost?

For Jesus, for Gandhi, for Dr. King, for the 3.4 billion people who participated in non-violent resistance in the 20th century, pacifism isn’t… well, passive. It is active and creative and frequently uses systems of domination against themselves. Those of us who wish to follow the teachings of Jesus should look to the early church and their non-violent practices and then spend more time understanding how this works and then, ultimately, replicate it in our lives.

Americans have been losing confidence in our political and religious institutions since the 1960s. The fundamental reason is well-founded suspicions of dishonesty among political and religious leaders. Outright lying was not always the problem, rather it was failure of courage to acknowledge political and religious truths that became increasingly obvious despite efforts to deny or obfuscate.

What is “evidence based faith” and how does it inform the progressive faith movement? This important lecture was delivered in April at the Anderson SC Progressive Theology Forum and in June at the Secular Liturgies Conference in Exeter, England. This recording was made at the Annual Conference of the Emerging Church in Springfield, MO.