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As one of the behind the scenes helpers of Big Tent Christianity, I can honestly say that I feel like last week’s Phoenix event was very successful.

Looking over a mountain toward an unknown future can be both exhilarating and scary. That’s where I’ve been for the past 72 hours in Phoenix at the Big Tent Christianity event: exhilarated and a little bit scared – but hopeful.

I’d like to make something clear upfront, here. I’m not completely orthodox. I have some beliefs that don’t mix well with older forms of Christian thought, even if they’re often times congruent with some of the oldest forms (for instance, I’m a universalist). I’m not saying this, however, in order to earn your accolades; I’m saying it because, generally, if I want much of today’s American church–at least Mainline and Emergent–to take me seriously, I feel I have to make such a profession of heresy. Heresy has become the new orthodoxy.

This service was created by Gretta Vosper from the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity
The service can be led by one person but is richer with a diversity of voices. In some places, options for Reader 1 and Reader 2 are marked to suggest a particular flow.  Leaders are urged to work out who is responsible for what and use the options provided only as guidelines.
The space is prepared for the service with an easily accessible table, cloaked in dark cloth, with baskets of tea lights set upon smaller tables or stands at each end. The table may be decorated with a sprinkling of silvery or translucent glitter or cut out stars. Silver-covered boxes of various heights might offer different places for people to set tea lights and offer visual interest

Sea Raven’s inspired historical-critical reading of Jesus’ thought welcomes us into the past and present struggle to bring about a divine commonwealth. 

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.

Religious, national, and market fundamentalisms are frightening, but they may turn out to be less dangerous than our society’s technological fundamentalism.

I have lost most of the fundamentalist Christian doctrines I was taught in my younger days in order to find a more inclusive, compassionate, and transformational Christian faith. “Losing” unhealthy beliefs so more life-enhancing ones can emerge is part of the conversion process. 

This author discusses his experience with the pursuit of critical questioning of historic religious texts.

For us Christianity provides a framework of values, ideas and practices that nurture our ability to create a meaningful path of life and define ourselves as persons.

The conservative right-wing have taken over the interpretation of the teachings of the Christ, however, as a progressive of his time, Jesus would object to the workings and beliefs of the Republican party if he were on earth today.

This article reflects upon the ways of the strengths and weaknesses of orthodoxy.

God is not a spectator in our suffering, but rather, an active participant in the ebb and flow of both the good and bad in our lives. Our experience, rapturously joyful or horrendously painful, or anywhere in between, becomes part of God’s experience.

Now that Christmas is over, it is time to look within and seek creative and innovative ideas about how to use the precious gifts we have to make a real difference in the part of the country we inhabit.

‘The Powers That Be’ is an unusually engaging, credible exploration of nonviolence as the most adequate depiction of what Jesus meant by being peacemakers and reconcilers. By nonviolence, is meant not submissiveness and passivity, but disciplined, effective struggle for justice and peace along the lines of what Gandhi, King, Day, Soelle, and others taught and modeled. Its effectiveness is hinted at by the fact that by far the majority of successful toppling of oppressive regimes in the 20th century were by nonviolent means. Walter Wink offers a new and eye-opening understanding of passages like ‘turn the other cheek, walk the second mile….’ I taught it in college course and was told that student evaluations named it the most popular text of the semester in any subject area.

I share these familiar family stories because I wonder as we approach this Christmas “holy day,” if we have lost our ability as a society to look for, to wait for, to anticipate those magical moments in life. Have we become so materialistic, so rational, so cynical that we no longer see the magical, majestic, the mystical, the mystery?

A vast segment of humanity has been telling itself this same story of a baby born in a manger in Bethlehem for many centuries now; peace and goodwill towards all the clan of Homo sapiens. But nothing has changed. Bethlehem itself has become synonymous with violence. Just now, as the Christmas fervor is being driven towards its annual climax, once-Christian nations are waging war against other countries.  What is the deeper story that has somehow been twisted wholly out of shape and so layered over with trite or fraudulent wrappings that the real gift is rarely ever envisioned let alone observed and gratefully received? Is there, was there ever some precious thing of matchless beauty, power and grace at the very heart of Christmas- something with flaming potency to transform our lives, our world?

With scriptural wisdom, theological reflection, and pastoral insight, Chuck invites the reader to encounter Advent as a transformative experience. He utilizes film, literature, and contemporary experience to draw readers into spiritual reflection on the Christian’s sacred story, exploring the redemptive possibilities of the Christmas season.
Chuck writes in the introduction: “It is my hope that amide all the glitter, glamor, gladness, and grief of the Christmas season, you will find some shimmers of light in these spiritual reflections that will enlarge your vision of God’s kingdom, expand your love for all persons, and evoke your creative participation with God’s project to heal and transform our world.”