****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-THIS WEBSITE IS NO LONGER ACTIVE****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!

Join us by signing the Charter for Compassion!

“The Dandelion Seed” is a story about a seed that is scared to let go, but the wind blows it away. It sees a lot of different things in the world and eventually lands, turns into a dandelion flower, and then casts its own seeds.This popular, simple book is beautiful and touching.

Rev. Jim Burklo is the Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California. An ordained United Church of Christ pastor, he is the author of books on progressive Christianity: OPEN CHRISTIANITY: Home by Another Road and BIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians. His latest book, HITCH-HIKING TO ALASKA: The Way of Soulful Service, will be published late in 2012. You can read his weekly blog, “Musings”, at www.tcpc.blogs.com/musings , and his personal website is www.jimburklo.com .

It was Jesus of Nazareth, not of Nashville, or New York, or…

Inclusive Hymns for Liberating Christians.

Rev. Ernest Harrison begins his provocatively titled third chapter of his 1966 book “A Church Without God” by asking, “If Mother Church is dead, we cannot long delay asking the question: What about God? She offered herself as his one true agent; and we must ask if this God, in whose name she acted, has also died.”

This report examines an American religious movement called progressive Christianity and what it can tell us about religion in the modern world.

An important feature of this study is its investigation of the ways in which certain criticisms and claims from those outside the Christian movement, including both Jews and Gentiles, played a formative role in the composition of the Gospel of Peter and led its author to alter details from previous accounts in an attempt to provide a more compelling demonstration of Christian claims.

The reader of this study will come to appreciate how the irony of the Gospel — a literary feature that is prominent in novelistic literature — is furthered by a novelistic application of the resurrection theme. These observations affirm an identification of the genre of the Gospel as novelistic literature.

The first fruits of this scholarly collaboration are gathered together in this excellent anthology, which will be a welcome addition to the libraries of anyone with an interest in Christian origins.

But Easter invites us to a radical new perspective. What has to die? Everything! Our roles, our identities, all of who we believe we are, personally, culturally, socially, even spiritually. It all has to go!

Scientific knowledge has stripped Christianity of the mythical matrix in which the creeds were conceived. The historical study of the Bible and the quest for the historical Jesus have raised the future of the faith to crisis level. At its Once & Future Faith conference in March 2001, four world class thinkers – Don Cupitt, Karen Armstrong, John Shelby Spong, and Lloyd Geering – joined Robert Funk and the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar to sort through the issues and attempt to form an agenda for the reinvention of Christianity. Their suggestions – on questions such as life after death, the meaning of God, apocalypticism, and the significance of Jesus’ death – fill the pages of this book.

Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox worked out a theology that makes sense for post-modern, 21st century mystics who want to honor the Christ of John’s Gospel without forcing the text into impossible literalism. Fox’s “Cosmic Christ” evokes responsibility for the condition of all forms of life on Planet Earth, and confers the power to carry out the work that arises from that responsibility.

First Presbyterian Church Elizabethton, Tennessee April 6, 2012 Good Friday Mark 15:1-47 A few years ago a poster advertising Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion, featured an image of Christ wearing a crown of thorns. The caption read: Dying …

I went in search of other ways to understand the atonement. This book is what I found. It’s an easy read, written in a way that anyone can understand. I hope it will be helpful to you, as it has been to me, to understand the power of the crucifixion and resurrection.

Paul is not talking about life after death. Paul is talking about embracing the challenge of distributive justice-compassion –“the great work” – here and now. John’s Jesus assures us that “the spirit of truth will testify on my behalf,” not about the insane claim that he was God, nor about the resuscitation of a corpse.