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Personal reflection on Point #2 from the 8 Points of progressive Christianity.

Are there any fun theology books written with today’s reader in mind? Contemporary Christian thought leader Phyllis Tickle says “imaginative theologically and charming as well as rigorous, Bound, an Earth Walker’s Handbook is the best example I have ever seen of riveting and holy fun.”

In “Where Have All the Flowers Gone? A Singer’s Stories Songs Seeds & Robberies” Pete Seeger reports that the words to this iconic union anthem were printed in the preamble to the constitution of an early coal miner’s union. In 1948, Pete set the words to an Irish tune from the 1840s, “The Praties they grow small.” Looking back over the past 50 years to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (“The Great March on Washington”) while progress seems to have been made, for 245 years (716 if we start with Magna Carta in 1297) the struggle for human rights – meaning equality under the law, and access to food, clothing, shelter, and education for all – has been raging, and shows no signs of abating any time soon.

These are Study and Discussion Questions that can be used with SOULJOURN, By Jim Burklo Find the book here Have you ever had an out-of-ego experience? How can religion and spirituality help to get you out of …

More progressive expressions of Christianity emphasize more inclusive versions of the kingdom of God. In Colossians 3, after admonishing his readers to clothe themselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, and forgiveness, the writer says: “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (3:14).

There’s a line in a popular Christian song that makes me cry every time: “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. And we pray that all unity may one day be restored.” It makes me question my attachment to labeling myself a Christian Progressive or a Christian liberal.

As we celebrate today our American Declaration of Independence (signed in 1776), we also affirm our fundamental Interdependence with fellow citizens of our community, our country and the planet. The firstDeclaration of Interdependence was written by Will Durant in 1944, and since then there have been many versions offered by different people and organizations.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

These grand words are etched in the American consciousness, and serve as a preamble of sorts to the Constitution’s subsequent ideal goal of “a more perfect union.” With the recent split Supreme Court decisions over voting rights and marriage equality, along with and passage of an immigration reform bill in the Senate that naysayers declare is DOA in the House of Representatives, it would appear that while progress has been made, we clearly remain a work in progress, as well.

As we prepare to celebrate our Independence Day holiday this year the fireworks have been set off a little early with the debate over the intelligence surveillance practices of the so-called Patriot Act by a government that was established of, by and for the people. Call them heroes or traitors, whistleblowers or hack-tivists, there are also a growing number of anti-authoritarian tech geeks who claim to be motivated less by notoriety than a certain principled conscience to which they claim to have pledged a higher allegiance.

So, what is the nature of “natural” or “divinely-bestowed” rights? What of human conscience, earthly authority, and more? And – for those of us who might consider ourselves both a red-blooded American and Christian of one sort or other — what might constitute a “Christian” conscience, based on a Jesus life-ethic?

You can find the latest commentary Here.

Published on Jun 30, 2013 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described the Supreme Court’s 5-4 majority decision to remove vital Voting Rights Act provisions as moving against Martin Luther King Jr’s famous claim that the arc of time is …

  One of my favorite books from the 1970’s is To Have or To Be, by Eric Fromm in which he describes a significant change in how we use language. He explains, for example that people once would …

Today, there’s an entire orchestra of assembled instruments, now called The Recycled Orchestra.

“This book sees Eve as the mythic heroine, rather than the villain, of the human adventure. The biblical story then takes on a whole new shape and meaning. The path from the innocence of the Garden of …

In this fresh and creative musical, author and composer make available a more comprehensive range of biblical images, celebrating both God and humanity in language that has been too long neglected. In doing so, they have helped to prepare the children who perform it and the audiences who attend it for greater appreciation and understanding of the images they will encounter in much new hymnody.

A typical interpretation when reading the Book of Revelation is John’s attempt to answer the interminable question: How exactly will God, once and for all, set things right? When will the “sorrow and weeping be no more,” and the “tear wiped from every eye?” After reinterpreting over and over again the imminent end that has been repeatedly put on indefinite hold, it merely begs the question, why the postponement?

When Revelation is instead understood to be political commentary spun in the form of a fantastic allegorical tale that can be reinterpreted and applied again and again, the question in each succeeding era has more to do with asking the question: Who is the Whore of Babylon, and all she represents? How can we be so easily seduced? And have the words and life of the Galilean sage been lost, even from the time John had his nightmarish vision to our own succumbing today? Read more.