To know how to live do we need God and religion, or, does religion only produce wars, hatred, intolerance and unhappiness? Does giving up God mean giving up morality, or, can we finally live a peaceful and fulfilling life as atheists by following science and reason instead? The anthropologist Christopher Hallpike has spent a lifetime’s research on the morality and religion of different cultures around the world, and shows that trying to base a moral life on atheism and science actually has some very nasty surprises in store for us.
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You may think you are an ally, but you are wrong. You cannot be an ally. You can only act in allying ways, or you can avoid doing so. There is a big problem in progressive circles; often, you see people prioritize being seen as an ally more than acting like one. This is only possible when we misconstrue the word “ally” into an identity.
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“The Spiritual task today is to discover the infinite in the life of the finite. I seek oneness with God, not magical intervention by God.” ~Bishop John Shelby Spong
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Do not let the Christian doctrine of the Trinity alienate you from the oneness of God; for God is both the many and the one.
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In less than 3 months (as of July 2015) Actor / Filmmaker Matthew Cooke’s social justice commentaries have been viewed over 46 million times on FaceBook — shared by the ACLU, Huffington Post, World Star Hip Hop, Adrian Grenier, RYOT.org, FilmingCops.org, The Anti-Media, The Free Thought Project, and many more.
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If you’re ready to wake up, you’re going to wake up and if you’re not ready, you’re going to stay pretending that you’re just “poor little me” … sincere you are ready to wake up. So then, when you’re in the way of waking up and finding out who you really are, what you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now. Alan Watts
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Being at dis-ease with injustice is why progressive Christianity seeks to be engaged in the world in order to transform it. “Accepting what is” may be a generic spiritual value, but moral quietude is not a Christian value.
That said, progressive Christians would do well to be a LOT more discerning about what we choose to be outraged about. Over the past week, the progressive Christian vanguard reacted in hyper-vigilant lock-step as they expressed their collective outcry against the *idea* that conservative Christians in the U.S. were *apparently* in a dither about Starbucks simple red coffee cups for this year’s holiday season. We got hot and bothered, red in the face, and showed-off the twitching veins in our faces to each other — to point out how “we’re not like *those* sorts of Christians!”
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Asking the question about how to be “church” to the Millennials, however, presents somewhat of a conundrum. How is one “church” to those who are not religious? After twenty years of working with and ministering to the needs of this audience, I believe there is a solution. I have learned that in order to support the spiritual needs of the Millennials, benefit from their inherent gifts, and prevent the ultimate demise of the Church’s mission, we need to think outside the box of traditional religiosity. Instead of expecting them to seek us out, we are invited to meet them where they are at.
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The pursuit of science is a path on which even our ancestors excitedly trod
Supplementing holy scriptures, maybe closer to knowing the “mind of God”
Thanksgiving is a time for counting blessings. Sometimes, when we look back into the past we see hard times, or lean times, and we tend to wax poetic about how great life was even though we didn’t have much money.
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“Jesus matters for Christians because he was for us the decisive disclosure of God.” | “The notion of Jesus’ death as a substitute for our sins was not found in the first 1000 years of Christianity.” Just two quotes from an extraordinary “Lent Event” Forum with Jesus scholar Marcus Borg.
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What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery? Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.
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What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery? Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.
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What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery?
Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.
Let me tell you a classic Thanksgiving story created by the brilliant Garrison Keillor, which takes place on the outskirts of Lake Wobegon, where “All the women are smart. The men are good looking. And the children are above average.”
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In thanksgiving for the life, ministry, and writings of body theologian James B. Nelson. For posts on this blog that reference his insights, click here and scroll down. The following is excerpted and adapted from a …
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José Mujica, nicknamed Pepe Mujica, was President of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. A former Tupamaros freedom fighter in the 60s and the 70s, he was detained, like a hostage by the dictatorship between 1973 and 1985. He advocates a philosophy of life focused on sobriety: learn to live with what is necessary and fairest.
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