DECEMBER 4, 2012 BY BRUCE SANGUIN Visit Bruce’s Site Here We tend to associate Advent with a season of waiting for the birth of the baby Jesus. Yet on the first Sunday of Advent, year after year, …
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The issue of the gods we believe in made headlines this week when Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party Republican candidate for US Senate in Indiana, stated that pregnancies stemming from rape, however horrible, are “something God intended to happen.”[1] While Mourdock has sought to soften the impact of his statement, I believe that his words reflected his – and many other Christians – understand of God’s presence in the world.
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Jesus’ parables tell us how use our creativity to subvert the putative rulers of Earth. Jesus got into trouble for suggesting that the way to assure that all of the people have food to eat is to share whatever they have. And don’t assume that your traditional enemy has no soul. The very powers that are supposed to have your best interest at heart will pass you by on the other side of the road while you die in the ditch (“The Good Samaritan” Luke 10:30-35). To love your enemies is to have no enemies.
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In Darwin and Divinity…, Sanguin has provided a new and exciting paradigm for thinking Christians and spiritual seekers alike. He has provided a basis for a deep theological shift, a fresh cosmology and a new way of perceiving our reality based on excellent scholarship, both scientific and biblical. And he has done that in a very readable way that is open to anyone who yearns to learn. It is on top of our recommended reading list. ~Fred C. Plumer President
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“Sin” is not about sex, or petty transgression. “Sin” is about the seduction of power-over others; of the gratification of having what others cannot have.
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Anne Primavesi looks at ways that the Christian inheritance has contributed to or limited respect for biodiversity.
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This article explores the way in which beliefs can be reactionary and rigidly define one’s path as opposed to faith-based thinking.
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PHOENIX, AZ ; More than 300 participants;some self-identified as Progressive Christians, others as Emergent Christians gathered Feb. 10-11 to meet one another for the first time in an event termed “Big Tent Christianity.”
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Climate change promises monumental changes to human and other planetary life in the next generations. Yet government, business, and individuals have been largely in denial of the possibility that global warming may put our species on the road to extinction. Further, says Sallie McFague, we have failed to see the real root of our behavioral troubles in an economic model that actually reflects distorted religious views of the person. At its heart, she maintains, global warming occurs because we lack an appropriate understanding of ourselves as inextricably bound to the planet and its systems.
A New Climate for Theology not only traces the distorted notion of unlimited desire that fuels our market system; it also paints an alternative idea of what being human means and what a just and sustainable economy might mean. Convincing, specific, and wise, McFague argues for an alternative economic order and for our relational identity as part of an unfolding universe that expresses divine love and human freedom. It is a view that can inspire real change, an altered lifestyle, and a form of Christian discipleship and desire appropriate to who we really are.
