We are considering how Courage, like Joy, is one of the signs of holiness in our time.  In yesterday’s meditation, Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that we “must love something more than the fear of death” if we are to live. 

Today’s “Ask a Progressive Christian” with ProgressiveChristianity.org Board Member Rev. Roger Wolsey explores the question: “What is Salvation?”

  The Easter experience is about the birth of a new consciousness.  It is a consciousness that burst upon the followers of Jesus through his suffering unto death on the cross.  In many ways, Jesus’ followers, and …

Today’s “Ask a Progressive Christian” with ProgressiveChristianity.org Board Member Rev. Roger Wolsey Q: Does Hell Exist?

I am writing this because I have an uncommon employment history that has provided me with a very unique skill-set and perspective when it comes to making difficult and challenging hospital, hospice or nursing facility visits.

As our world faces the spectacle of Russia still harming civilians while it rampages through Ukraine, we re-visit our award-winning series, “The Power of Nonviolence”. The focus is to tell poignant stories about alternatives to military destruction and other violence, and to illustrate that there are more humane and saner ways to resolve conflict — a theme urgently needed now.

I cannot tell you how furious I am with the politicians in our country, in both chambers (mostly Republicans), who stubbornly (thinking only of themselves) refuse to enact significant gun reform legislation. 

Revisioning ancient faith for the modern world is not an easy task. No simple answers exist. The process will be long, complicated, conflicted, and uncertain.

So, if thoughts and prayers (of petition or intercession) cannot produce any salvific change when uttered to an imagined divine – who for anyone with eyes to see, or ears to hear is too deaf, indifferent or impotent to intercede — then with whom can we bargain, or utter any plea for help?

Sacred Sendoffs explores human relationships with beloved pets, wild creatures, animal astronauts, marine life, farmed animals, and other sentient beings.

My cousin is pressuring me to become “Born Again.” She says that it’s the only way to guarantee not being punished in hell for all eternity. That seems like a pretty harsh consequence for not uttering what seems like “magic words.”

America is not a gun. We’re a lot better than that. We prove it every day by loving our neighbors (even ones we don’t particularly like), campaigning for sensible gun laws, taking care of people in need in our communities.

Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.

What are your thoughts on the existence, activity and power of the individual soul/spirit after death?

The other day I was talking with a friend and jokingly he said, “Well you know, sometimes love lives in the hallway cupboard, in the dark.” We both chuckled for a moment, as we thought about the people who are hard to love and the times you just can’t summon the requisite “love” needed for the moment.

The practice of contemplating the Stations of the Cross, depicting the final hours of Jesus’ life, is a very old one. Many Catholic churches have gardens or sanctuaries in which the stations are situated.  Each of the 14 stations marks a point along the way to Jesus’ death.

Almost two decades ago, during a combined Holy Thursday/Good Friday worship service, I told a true story from the Holocaust. The story involved a Polish army sergeant named Franciszek Gajowniczek and a Franciscan priest named Maximilian Kolbe.

If Jesus did not die on a cross to cover our sin, then what was the purpose of him dying? What was the purpose of his life? Was it to show us how to simply be “good people?”