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How can we re-use, re-purpose, recycle, reduce, and even compost the incidents and memories and experiences and trajectories of our lives into a new narrative that serves us and others better?

As human consciousness slowly developed over its evolutionary period, a high level of perception was the result but there remained a deficiency. That level of perception was incomplete. Humans were left unable to comprehend certain realities. One was the importance of their relationship to the biosphere of the planet. Within that biosphere there is a layer that allows all life to exist. Another; it did not provide comprehension of the importance of their relationship to planetary nonlife. The Abrahamic religions in their time attempted to address these issues. Care for the earth as a provider, care for each other, and an Apocalypse at the end well served their purpose. We now find that this religious understanding was far too simplistic and that the Abrahamic simplicity is coming back to haunt us. The reality is that we are facing the possibility of a Sixth Extinction. It is a reality of our own doing. Planet Earth is under siege. Judaism, Christianity and Islam urgently need to address this human consciousness deficit issue. The time has come for them come together with an intra religious configuration wherein all life and non-life on Planet Earth is able to find its universal meaning.

Democratic Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg, 68, looked heartbroken, shocked and devastated during an impromptu press conference outside of his office at the State House where he publicly addressed allegations that his spouse, Bryon Hefner, 38, groped and assaulted four men who do business before the Senate.

Due to an unexpected flight cancelation, Roger Ray was not able to get to Springfield to deliver this sermon so he asked his friend and associate pastor to deliver it in his absence. The content addresses the religious and philosophical acceptance of mortality rather than asserting the existence of a personal and individual afterlife. This message is not going to be easy for everyone to hear but it deserves to be considered by both progressive people of faith and those who hold to more traditional beliefs.

In recent years biosphere degradation has been forcing many scientists and nonscientists to focus
attention on the interacting dangers within the relationship between our human species and this
planet. Many are concluding that we humans have become an ecological force contrary to
biosphere stabilization and that this is so serious it could lead to our extinction. Renowned
physicist, Stephen Hawking is now sounding the alarm. He has even predicted that we have
less than 600 years before the planet turns into, as he describes it; “a sizzling fireball.”

From the perspective of political theology, the issues of climate change and gun control are related in two ways. The first linkage is that progressive Christians need no promptings on these issues. By massive numbers they know that God is calling on them to enact laws to control guns and to take actions that help to wean the country away from carbon producing energy.

These issues also tell us something important about how many Conservative Christians think about political issues.

It’s that old approach that St Anselm wrote about in the 11th c, fides quarens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. It’s important to distinguish faith and belief. Faith is an attitude of trust, and belief is trying to make sense of that attitude. What you believe is serious, but not too serious. Karl Barth, who wrote many, many books, including his voluminous Church Dogmatics, once commented that the angels would have a good laugh when they saw him pushing a wheelbarrow full of his books through the pearly gate. That we all agree in our belief is not the point. Each of us is seeking understanding. Agreement is not the point. Openness and respect is.

The starting point for understanding how religion relates to politics is to determine how God functions in the world. Like many of you, I attribute the word God to experiences of beauty, love, and goodness that have no logical explanation. These encounters have depth. The reality of the experience is so much greater than the parts making it up.

We are living in a time of unprecedented evil, yet we don’t see it; we can’t see it. Not only has industrial civilization lost the ability to distinguish good and evil, we typically confuse the two and casually treat things that are downright anti-future as good.

As fires rage in California and hurricanes menace the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, hosts Ann Phelps and Debo Dykes talk with guest Frederica Helmiere about the environment and what lessons Christians can learn from their interaction with the natural world.

More than 40 Catholic institutions are to announce the largest ever faith-based divestment from fossil fuels, on the anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi.

Interview with Robin Meyers: Do you have a message for progressive Christians?

M. Scott Peck writes in the Road Less Traveled that there are four basic tools of discipline that allow a person to live a problem solving life rather than a life problem avoiding (which argues leads not only to sorrow but also to mental illness). This sermon addresses the first two of those four: the ability to delay gratification and acceptance of responsibility. While most of this channel’s material addresses systemic injustice this sermon and the one that will follow next week are more personally focused on how we avoid “renting space in our skull” to the painful challenges of life.

Our love can create miracles and magic in every moment. Our love can speak to the spirit of the ancient stones and trees. Our love can sing light into the darkest of days, be a voice of answered prayer, or an unexpected gift in a moment of great need.

The problem with the Christian church in Western Europe is that it has little or no impact on the society at large. You can’t have an impact if the pews are empty. With the possible exception of Evangelical Protestants, the same trend is occurring in America, though at a slower rate. Museums are in our future too. Millennials are abandoning Christianity in record numbers. Like the people I spoke to in Denmark, they do not reject God but rather Christian doctrine.

Externally, we must also support the brave dissidents who found themselves trapped within the confines of committed Islam. They find themselves in the position that Galileo was in, centuries ago – facing a clerical system that would not listen and would not tolerate. Arabic thought brought back Greek philosophy to the West through the translation movement that started in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Greek philosophical works were translated into Arabic, and were subsequently augmented with Islamic science and philosophy. With the Christian conquest of Spain, Sicily and Jerusalem, in the 11th century, these writings were translated into Latin and found their way into European cultures. Let us now “return the favour” and deliver Humanism and Progressive thought to the East, because both our civilisations depend on it.

So here we are: the summer of 2017 with the arctic ice melting, the temperatures rising, the oceans rising and acidifying…. From the beginning of known human history, we wanted better lives, longer lives, happier lives. We used our gifts to reach for what we wanted, like toddlers, with no sense of the bigger world around us, no notion of the consequences of our actions. No awareness of the unfathomable complexity and the perfection of balance represented by the environment we inhabit.