believe what Spong was referring to was the idea that the most profound way we can be in relationship with God (the Divine, Great Mystery, Nameless One) is to love one another and to love deeply.

Preeminent German hymn writer Philipp Nicolai was a Lutheran pastor whose small town, Unna, was devastated by the plague during the winter of 1597-8 with over 1300 deaths.  He officiated at many funerals, as many as 30 a day.

Writing in response to our current “constitutional crisis,” New York Times bestselling author and Christian activist Jim Wallis urges America to return to the tenets of Jesus once again as the means to save us from the polarizing bitterness and anger of our tribal nation.

  There are literally hundreds of compelling public-policy based reasons for voting for Joe Biden and the Democrats in the upcoming election. But there is one reason that stands out far, far beyond all others: Donald J. …

For the past four years, I have prayed daily for compassion within our nation’s leadership. So it’s high time I read the only Henri Nouwen book I don’t recall reading, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, co-authored in 1982 with Donald P. McNeill and Douglas A. Morrison.

Debo and Catherine Young sit down with Dr. Stephen Farrow, Executive Director of the National Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute of Mississippi (NDORI), to discuss health as a justice issue and how social factors like income and education impact health. Mississippi has the highest rate of obesity and childhood obesity in the United States, and 1 out of 3 people in Mississippi are considered obese.

While protests verge on becoming riots in our city streets in response to multiple murders of unarmed black men at the hands of our cities’ police, we must focus on how to pull racism out of our culture by the roots.

As this book affirms, God continues to be the great conundrum, the great mystery, the great challenge of human existence. Paradoxically, while people have long claimed to doubt the existence of God, God is still the most important reality in the world.

Let us use our moral imaginations to try to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt (just as we should do with each other in our daily lives). We all know that there are those who are poor and suffering who still side with the wealthy and healthy rather than with their own people. It is ironic, but we see such things common even in our own time.

After reading near death experience reports, and the all-encompassing love that seems to accompany folks in a near death experience, I am wondering why we need a savior.

Retribution as a form of deterrence is like a fixed action pattern in humanity… We do not worship the Christian God when we do this.

Communities of Hope is a film born from a quest to discover a regenerative culture. It is an invitation to discover a new way of life. A way of life measured by the rhythms of nature, the depth of human connection, the vast horizon of human potential. It’s the way of life in ecovillages.

Christianity has a long history of meditation that for many has been lost. All too often our faith is a series of bible stories and Sunday services and a notion of God taken for granted. Or we find we approach faith as an argument in which we pit ancient wisdom against post-enlightenment philosophy that insists that only things that are verifiably true have value.

Labor Day is an American substitute for the International Workers Day, celebrated on May 1. Americans of the early 20th century associated organize labor with communism and sought to suppress union organizing while applauding the contributions of laborers to our country.

As the Pope writes in his message, “In some ways, the current pandemic has led us to rediscover simpler and sustainable lifestyles. The crisis, in a sense, has given us a chance to develop new ways of living. Already we can see how the earth can recover if we allow it to rest: the air becomes cleaner, the waters clearer, and animals have returned to many places from where they had previously disappeared.

In this election season, let us pray that our candidates speak in the rhetoric of this spiritual humility – for a change. America has a soul. Our nation’s heart is still burning to express our transcendent values through the structures of our society.

What is spirituality? How does it differ from religion? And what role does it play in this modern life?

With a group of extended family members, all white, I’m in a book study group focused on “Me and White Racism” by Layla Saad. Together we’re reflecting on the ways we are personally implicated. It’s not a wallow in white guilt, but rather a bracing, clarifying look at what is, so that we can begin to see what could be.