****YOU HAVE REACHED THIS WEBSITE IN ERROR
-THIS WEBSITE IS NO LONGER ACTIVE****
PLEASE OPEN A NEW WINDOW
AND GO TO OUR NEW WEBSITE AT

WWW.PROGRESSIVECHRISTIANITY.ORG 
THANK YOU!

The struggle for Black Tulsan survivors and their descendants to receive reparations has been a century-old controversy, one that is a pox on this country’s unwillingness to redress the human rights violation and the generational loss of accumulated wealth.

Christianity before Paul.  In order to explore the question of Paul distorting the message of Jesus, we need to ask the question, What was Christianity like before Paul, which would be in the early decades after Jesus’ death?  Paul wrote his letters from approximately 51-62 CE (Common Era).  Therefore, in the thirties and forties CE, what was the Jesus movement like?

After a yearlong Covid imprisonment, Americans are celebrating liberation over Memorial Day in 2021. Masks are coming off, signs tell us businesses are hiring, and confidence is growing that the emergency is over. We celebrate because we think liberation is upon us—but the party has started before the victory is secure.

What is the grace referred to in the 5th point of Progressive Christianity, which says that Progressive Christians “Find grace in the search for understanding and believe there is more value in questioning with an open mind and open heart, than in absolutes or dogma.

Jim Burklo attunes the reader to Jesus’ voice in “Tenderly Calling”. It is an invitation for those starting the path of Jesus, as well as for those setting out afresh. He invites the reader into the depths of the Bible’s transformative myth and poetry, into the practices of Christian contemplation, and into action, building the kingdom of heaven and earth.

No one doubts that we are living in a time of major transformation. With the environmental crisis, the populist crisis, rampant individualism, a consumer economy, racism, sexism, ageism, a pandemic, and whatever else, the handwriting is on the wall. We are in the midst of a critical time. What we do, or fail to do, as a human species will dictate our future. The question we all must deal with is, “How do you read the handwriting on the wall?” We need to know where we are before we can move forward.

This is the most common question that I am asked when discussing non-theistic options for God.  If God is not a person who can listen and respond to my prayers, then what is the purpose of prayer? 

Women make up over one-half of the world’s population, yet throughout history women have been kept out of power; they have been oppressed and disregarded, and have often had their stories ignored. This is a tragedy not only for women but for all humankind, because we all have much to gain by hearing one another’s stories, and by experiencing one another in all of our rich fullness – not from a preconceived notion that one group or sex is superior to another.

“In these pages, regardless of how the story has been heard before, there is room for seven year olds and 70 year olds to grow and learn. I’m going to use this book with my congregation.”

Behind all the creation stories there is a basic assumption that God was involved; the “how” of it was a secondary concern to the original writers. If you’ve used Donald Schmidt’s “for Progressive Christians” study guides with the adults in your congregation and have wanted to include all ages within your church, now you can! “Creation: Study and Worship for Progressive Churches” makes the vision of whole congregation sharing not only possible, but easy.

The publication of this study guide is timely given the current conversations and warnings around the health of creation and climate change. Although it is not a book about climate change but rather an exploration of five biblical creation stories, this study can help progressive Christians engage these questions.

“Birth of Jesus for Progressive Christians” is a five-session study guide that invites readers to explore the birth of Jesus with a new perspective. This will open up wonderful times of conversation within small groups, but also provides inspiration and guidance to how the birth story of Jesus is still relevant and important in the life of the church and its people today.

Revelation for Progressive Christians is a seven-session study guide that invites readers to explore Revelation as a fun, hope-filled book that contains a lot of fanciful imagery and symbolic references, to be sure, but that at its core, offers words of assurance and hope to the church and its people today.

The Parliament of the World’s Religions is proud to join the global observance of #LaudatoSiWeek with a special Faith for Earth tribute video.

Paul learned from his encounter what it means to be a human being. He was shocked and deeply disturbed when he came to understand the limitations and weaknesses of his human nature. His sense of moral superiority was expunged from his consciousness.

I’m agnostic and if it’s true there is no hell it would be a relief, but this has raised some questions: What about those who have sinned? What happens to those who have broken some of God’s rules or do you not believe in sin either?

This book is not a step-by-step “how to” for the Christian spiritual life. It is a book of spiritual wrestling with God and Scripture, written “from the foxhole” in the clash of faith and doubt.

For the sake of learning, I’d like to ask you to consider the circumstances since the start of 2020 as a grand psychological experiment.

While he was dying of cancer, American poet and short story writer Raymond Carver, penned a poem which, although it is but a fragment of a poem, it has the power to move me into the deepest part of my very self. This poem would eventually be titled, “Late Fragment”

A number of writers have been quietly working behind the scenes on a project called How to Heal Our Divides — where we’re bringing together practitioners of what Brian McLaren calls “un-division” to share their wisdom and stories.

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, also known as the Parable of the Forgiving Father, there is, curiously, no moment in the story when the father forgives his son. When taken as a parable of forgiveness, we may be seeing what we expect to see rather than something even harder to imagine – unwavering compassion, which is even more fundamental to the life of love.  

A remarkable circa 1990 recording of Martin Luther King’s favorite gospel hymn, “Precious Lord,” has been posted on YouTube, accompanied with visuals and quotations from the Civil Rights Era

How important and relevant is the Gospel of Thomas in our continuing search for the real Jesus? How does it help us to interpret his message and mission?

LTQ co-creator David Felten chats with Bishop John Shelby Spong at his home in Richmond, VA

Very little of the 19th century theology and practice, designed precisely for coexisting comfortably with slavery and segregation, has been reformed. From colonial America on, white Christians have literally built – architecturally, culturally and theologically – white supremacy into an American Christianity that held an a priori commitment to slavery and segregation.

I’ve been thinking about sin and evil in recent days.

That’s somewhat unusual for me. But it is difficult to avoid the daily news assault of people treating others badly, political treachery and revenge, random and meaningless gun violence, and racial and ethnic hatreds tearing nations apart. Sin and evil are on full display.

In my studies of the ancient Israelites, I am learning that the Israelites were very possibly Canaanites broken away from the various sites of Canaanite cities and that the DNA test of Canaanites skeletons reveals that the Israelites did not kill off the Canaanites but rather the Canaanites moved to Lebanon.

Listen below to the Eco-Hymn “Come then, fellow travellers” set to the tune of “Onward, Christian soldiers”.

To the tune of Robbie Burns’ famous song ‘My love is like a red red rose’, ‘ONLY NOW is an example of eco-lyrics set to famous, beautiful old tunes. Eco-lyrics by Gaia Dance.

This book demonstrates that there are alternatives for understanding Jesus’ execution that are consistent with the twentieth- and twenty-first-century understanding of our physical world. In fact, the early Christian writers (including the Bible itself) described these alternatives. “Sacrifice” was only one form of the early Christian narrative explaining the death of Jesus.

William Blake had quite the year in his home city of London in 2019.  The Tate Britain Museum had a major exhibition of his extraordinary multifaceted art, something it does every twenty years or so.

The St Thomas Collective provides a safe community for Biola students/alumni who find themselves doubting, frustrated, and spiritually homeless.

Paul and Jesus.  The life, mission, and writings of the Apostle Paul loom large over the Christian Church.  Whatever our personal opinion of Paul, after Jesus, he remains the major personality in the growth and shaping of the early church.  His contribution to Christianity is immeasurable by virtually any standard.

A national list of progressive Christian campus organizations, progressive Christian university chaplains (employed by colleges and universities), and progressive Christian campus ministers.

There are so many theories on who or what god is, or if they even exist. Whether god is in us or around us, separate from us or above us. For me the bottom line is there is more to our existence than can be explained by science.

These three words sum up progressive Christian theology. They represent a turning point in the evolution of human understanding of Ultimate Reality.  The Bible starts with Superman-In-The-Sky and ends with agape – unconditional love – as the identity of the Divine.