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Dr. Roger Ray (a pastor) and Dr. Paul Thomlinson (a psychologist) team up in this message to talk about the root causes of addiction, depression, and suicide and to discuss best practices (and some of the worst practices) in treatment.

The most effective treatment for depression or addiction, the best way to prevent suicide, is to strengthen a person’s connections to people, meaningful work, and nature.

This sermon invites listeners to see the families seeking asylum, not as illegal immigrants but as fully human people who deserve our respect and compassion. These brown children forced into cages are the princes and princesses of Central America.

A Scripture reading from Matthew 5: 13 & a special guest sermon by Bishop Yvette Flunder.

Corporate media and political parties try to reduce the election process into identity politics which has more to do with a beauty contest or a horse race than it does a deliberative choice of policies and values.

Missouri, in an attempt to make obtaining an abortions more difficult, expensive, and humiliating, recently required a medically unnecessary second pelvic exam for all women who sought to obtain an abortion. This inexcusable and invasive addition of a medically meaningless invasive exam can only be called sexual assault, made much worse because it is mandated by the state government.

During the early 1980’s, when AIDS was first discovered, the Regan administration not only did virtually nothing in response, but when asked about it in press briefings, the response was laughter and gay bashing jokes.

The mortality rate is 100% and while traditional religions often offer unverifiable assurance that death is not final, this progressive message seeks to take reality on in honest acceptance. From this perspective, death does not call for either denial or the anesthesia of false hope. Rather, it asks us to cherish those whom we love and to make the most of the life that is known to us.

In the horrible crucible of the Civil War and the Indian Wars, Walt Whitman, in the Leaves of Grass, attempted to describe American greatness, not in our legislatures or executives, but in the inherent goodness of individual Americans. Many of us have lately been humiliated by the juvenile tweets of our chief executive and the morally bankrupt race in several southern states to take away women’s rights, but, as Frankel said, no one can take away from us our ability to decide how we will react to what they do. We get to choose who we are and to reject being defined by the racism, sexism, misogyny, classism, and xenophobia of our current political environment.

Nearly a century has passed since the Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed. Every other western democracy’s constitution includes a statement regarding gender equality but in the USA, we still need one more state to approve this long over due change. Women still earn significantly less than men and women of color earn even less. Sure, get your mom and card and flowers for Mothers’ Day but realize this: what she really wants is equal rights!

The Green New Deal proposes a set of goals that enumerates the changes necessary to simultaneously save our environment while transforming our economic system. We have already started the 6th period of mass extinction in earth’s history and to avoid a repeat of “the Great Dying” of 250 million years ago, the changes recommended in the Green New Deal are not radical, they are, realistically, necessary.

    May Day is recognized as a workers’ holiday in 66 nations but not in the USA. In America, May Day has been too closely associated with communism and labor unions and so, from the 1950’s, …

Dr. Flunder is an American singer and Senior Pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland, California and Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. She was born in San Francisco, California and raised in the Church of God in Christ.

Inspired by a couplet written by the Greek poet, Dinos Christianopoulos, the rock group, Violet and the Undercurrents, wrote a song entitled “They Tried to Bury Us,” and Dr. Ray based an interactive Easter sermon on the music of Violet and the Undercurrents to produce a sermon about a revolutionary way to think about resurrection. Violet and the Undercurrents performed life in this service but we used their YouTube versions of their songs because of the quality of their professional recording.

Sermon by Rev. Elizabeth Durant delivered on June 18, 2018 at First Congregational UCC Portland.

The world is not short on hostile insults and senseless arguments, but the world is quite bereft of kindness. Much of the social hostility we encounter comes from the pain that people have experienced that we know nothing about. We are surrounded by the walking wounded who do not need to discover how quick we can be with an eviscerating retort. What they need from us is kindness . . . undeserved, perhaps, but we can help the world to become more deserving if we will scatter seeds of kindness.

Six days after the attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand has outlawed military style weapons. Australia had done the same thing just 12 days after the Port Arthur massacre. From Columbine to the present, we have had more than 50 well publicized mass murders. While we can be frustrated by a government that ignores the fact that 75% of Americans want more sensible gun laws but what can we say about the silence of 400,000 churches in the face of this crazy situation?

While there are many factors that lead up to tragedy like the mass murders in mosques in New Zealand