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This book will help you examine your beliefs–where they came from, whether they are still applicable today, how they have changed over the years–and decide what new directions you might want to pursue.

This study guide can be used for small group study, intentional communities, conferences, or any group who would like to delve more deeply into the history and the process of living out the core teachings of Jesus. There are discussion questions and space after each point for groups to come up with their own thoughts and ideas.

The faith of Christians,  all too often, is approached  on the basis of “Here it is, take it or leave it.” Frequently, it seems that the mind of the church has been eternally established,  that Chris­tians have all the answers and thus need face no more questions.

The word matrix can bring to mind science fiction images of living in a web of illusion, but my intent here is quite the opposite, not fiction, but reality.

The word matrix can bring to mind science fiction images of living in a web of illusion, but my intent here is quite the opposite, not fiction, but reality.

Offering practical, intelligent, loving, spirit-filled wisdom rooted in the joy and deep love of the Christian faith as well as developmental psychology, this book includes personal reflections, suggestions for family faith practices, reflections on biblical passages, ideas for family holiday activities, and original music.

This book seeks  primarily  to  deal  with  the  questions  which any thinking person  must  raise  about  Christian  faith.

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.

This resource follows the Revised Common Lectionary with text selections for Years A, B and C. There are 53 lessons for each volume offering users a bonus lesson for each of the three lectionary years.

This resource follows the Revised Common Lectionary with text selections for Years A, B and C. There are 53 lessons for each volume offering users a bonus lesson for each of the three lectionary years.

This resource follows the Revised Common Lectionary with text selections for Years A, B and C. There are 53 lessons for each volume offering users a bonus lesson for each of the three lectionary years.

This resource follows the Revised Common Lectionary with text selections for Years A, B and C. There are 53 lessons for each volume offering users a bonus lesson for each of the three lectionary years.

An unprecedented look inside the battle for religion in America, Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right is Hijacking Mainstream Religion exposes how a strident theocratic minority is attacking—or “steeplejacking”—mainstream churches in order to eliminate progressive voices and take control of America’s historic mainline denominations.

A 95-page, full color collection of art, essays, questions and practices to liberate our spiritual imaginations. On this global pilgrimage, you will encounter ten ancient images (reimagined by one of Christena’s favorite modern artists) of the Black female Divine ranging from She Who Clears Our Path to She Who Declares that You are Enough to She Who is Unapologetically Black — and beyond!

In this volume of essays, I turn toward images of Christ on the cross. As I continue my exploration of the wholly holy female face of God, I ask a deeper question. What does God’s femaleness and blackness practically mean for my particular black female experience?

Dr. Rick Herrick’s work reconsiders foreign policy from the perspective of Christianity. It considers all the issues concerned with foreign policy through a religious frame of reference.

Scholarship and determined exploration of ancient sources for the canonical gospel of Mark has brought great rewards for the writer and readers of The Ending of Mark’s Gospel.

“Something new to say” is a collection of liturgy resources for the season of Advent and Christmas. Author Bronwyn White lives in Aotearoa New Zealand, where Christmas comes at summertime.

Writing on conscious aging, Dr. John Robinson, 74-year-old psychologist, minister, teacher and author, contributed his decades of experience to guiding the 65+ demographic through these tumultuous times.

God didn’t create us to sit around waiting to die so we can leave planet Earth and go to Heaven. God created in each of us a unique God-dream for getting more heaven into planet Earth. We need to, in Rebekah Simon-Peter’s words, “Dream like Jesus.”

Neil Douglas-Klotz offers a radical new translation of the words of Jesus Christ with Prayers of the Cosmos. Reinterpreting the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes from the vantage of Middle Eastern mysticism.

This book analyzes Luther’s treatise On Christian Freedom and its revolutionary re-definition of what it means to be Christian as one freed by Christ from sin, the accusation of God’s law, and death in order to be bound or bonded to the neighbor.

In this controversial and thought-provoking book, McLaren explores the questions that will determine the shape of Christianity for the next 500 years.

So much of popular religion is simply a collection of ancient superstitions and old campfire stories. Even Pope Francis has told the Church that God is not a ‘wizard.’ God is not our ever-present nanny or ‘fairy godmother’ whose task it is to comfort and protect us, and to shield us from any danger, discomfort, or disappointment.

Beautifully exploring the theme that ‘only those who see the invisible can do the impossible,’ this exciting, lucid, and often heartbreaking collection of poems tracks the life and consciousness of the great Liberator Simon Bolivar.

In this groundbreaking, inspiring book, Robin R. Meyers, the senior minister of Oklahoma City’s Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ, shows how readers can move from a theology of obedience to one of consequence.

This 6 week study includes Lent 1 – Palm/Passion Sunday and follows the Revised Common Lectionary (YEAR A, B or C) text selections.

Utilizing the TeenText method this four-week resource explores the Book of Genesis through open ended questions and activities.

Written by RBTL Founding Editor Bill Dols, this primer explains the Maueitic (midwife) Method of The Educational Center and provides a learning experience that explores “the student is the curriculum.”

500 Years of Reform: A fervor for reformation had been stirring with ebbs and flows for centuries and would see the crumbling of the structures of the Medieval Church.

Reading Between The Lines (RBTL) of the European Reformation is an opportunity to examine some of the original documents of key leaders of the movement and to explore the events that propelled this period of dramatic realignment.

“Praying a New Story” offers a way of seeing and being in the presence of an “everywhere” God” – in all, through all, never absent, always nears.

Introducing Bishop Spong’s landmark series on the Origin of the Bible covering both Old and New Testaments.

His scholarly analysis and signature insights breakdown the past, present and future of these sacred texts.

Can we learn to take the Bible seriously without taking it literally, to be honest about its historical, literary and religious character? Can the Bible serve as a source of faith, hope, and wisdom? In this book, academic theologians engage in a public conversation about the kind of Bible we have. This is not a book of answers, but a dialogue about topics such as the relationship between science and religion, the authority of scripture, and the impact of critical biblical scholarship on liturgy.

Kissing Fish presents a postmodern systematic theology of Progressive Christianity, a growing movement that reclaims the radical message of the Gospel.

When a middle-aged clinical psychologist begins working with a client describing bizarre mystical experiences, his own world changes radically.

The Mystic Bible is perfectly balanced on the progressive spectrum, meaningful for people who are deeply connected to the stories of the Bible, mystical and poetic, and yet innovative and theologically progressive.

There are three parts to this little book. The first takes a new look at who Jesus was and what he did. The second describes four characteristics of human life. The third considers some of the perplexing questions of theology. Taken together, they represent an integrated attempt to understand our common humanity as children of God and are offered as a contribution to the on-going dialogue.

From a rich lode of speeches, articles in eBulletins, and numerous publications, Fred Plumer has mined those that define the Progressive Christianity movement as it evolves to meet new challenges in a rapidly changing world.

In this profound work, bestselling author and the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark John Shelby Spong offers a radical new way to look at the gospels today. Pulling back the layers of misunderstanding created over the centuries by Gentile ignorance of things Jewish, he reveals how a literal reading of the Bible is so far removed from the original intent of the Jewish authors of the gospels that it has become an act of heresy.

Fostering Spiritual Depth in a Busy World

• Small group materials help your members embed greater meaning in their lives.
• Your participants quickly make deep connections with each other.
• Proven materials and techniques help you lead your small group through transformation.

While Luke’s narrative, the most detailed account of the birth of Jesus, is lyrical and inspiring, in the Birth of Jesus, Spong persuasively demonstrates it is allegory. Layer by layer, Spong weighs every element of the New Testament stories against Old Testament legends building a convincing case. Spong’s essays step backward and forward through the scriptures demonstrating why each element was chosen by the early CE writers to establish Jesus’ lineage and divinity. It is a fascinating and persuasive journey and a remarkable illustration of Biblical scholarship.

In So You Think You’re Not Religious, James Adams sets himself a formidable task: asserting the value of Christian faith and practice to skeptics, and overcoming their very reasonable objections. It’s perhaps in his favor that he’s an extremely reasonable man, and that many of these objections were his own, at other times in his life. A powerful and practical introduction to the church for newcomers and old-timers alike. Topics include belief, the creed, sacraments, prayer, and belonging.

Progressive Christianity is not new. It has been around for two hundred years or more. But the anger and disappointment of those who have encountered it only recently is palpable: “Why weren’t we told?” This international collection of cameos and articles on the themes and issues addressed by progressive Christianity is a response to that cry.

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

The books of the New Testament are not the infallible words of God. The texts were in a state of flux during the faith s early centuries. We can and should build on that flexible tradition.

Gregory C. Jenks latest book, The Once and Future Bible, offers lessons on making the bible relevant for today’s progressive believers.

This is a masterful and engaging account of how humans through centuries and cultures have engaged and experienced the divine. Webb includes her own experiences, both personal and observed from travel in fifty countries, as well as centuries of theology, literature and travel writing. She meanders along winding trails, talk over the fence and drink wine with a stranger, literally and figuratively. To engage the larger-than-description Sacred, we need all the stories we can find, even if only to remind us the distance still to go and the limitless (sometimes unsuccessful) journey. As a teacher of world religions and art, and an artist, this will not be a string of anecdotes, but a woven together, reader-friendly, vividly painted, theologically reflective whole.

Author Schaeffer (Keeping Faith) adopts a feisty tone in this essay about evangelical Christianity and aggressive atheism. In the first half of the book, he rebuts justifications from both sides, taking aim at the ideas of such celebrity atheists as Richard Dawkins as well as religious leaders like Rick Warren. Schaeffer asks each side to allow for an evolving religion in which allegory takes precedence over literalism. In the second half, he gives space for his own memories, recalling moments that led him to a middle path of “hopeful uncertainty.”

In Brenda Peterson’s unusual memoir, fundamentalism meets deep ecology. The author’s childhood in the high Sierra with her forest ranger father led her to embrace the entire natural world, while her Southern Baptist relatives prepared eagerly and busily to leave this world. Peterson survived fierce sword drill competitions demanding total recall of the Scriptures and awkward dinner table questions (Will Rapture take the cat, too?) only to find that environmentalists with prophecies of doom can also be Endtimers. Peterson paints such a hilarious, loving portrait of each world that the reader, too, may want to be Left Behind. Her clever take on the “Left Behind” phenomenon in the book’s title isn’t just a gentle refutation of an escapist religious prophecy. It’s an appeal for something more inclusive than the idea that true believers will one day be swept up midair and whisked off to an eternal paradise, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

Morwood’s books have been especially insightful and helpful to adults struggling with prayer and ritual while radically reconstructing their Christian faith.  This book is for adult Christians engaged in this shift, now asking the vital questions: How do we educate children into this new faith perspective?  How do we pray with them if prayer is not about addressing an external, listening Deity?

In Jesus Reconsidered, readers will hear the diverse voices of pioneering scholars, some of whom put their reputations and careers on the line when, in 1985, they chose to go public with scholarship that had been common knowledge in scholarly circles for more than a hundred years.