This is the second part of a six-part series about an imaginary journey to an Episcopal seminary where I ask hard questions about Christianity and priesthood. Without twenty-first-century answers, I may have to drop out. You can find Part 1 here. Last week, I attended an imaginary class about prayer and prayer life. I asked … Read more
This is the first part of a six-part series about an imaginary journey to an Episcopal seminary where I ask hard questions about Christianity and priesthood. Without twenty-first-century answers, I might have to drop out. I graduated from seminary fifty-eight years ago in a very different world. I started seminary in 1957, when the church … Read more
“Are you a Christian?” is a question I hear often because I label myself as an a-theist. That means I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic god living in a mansion above a flat earth. My answer to whether I’m a Christian is more complex than a simple yes or no. If someone asked, “Do you … Read more
I have never been poor—short on money, yes. I barely scraped by in college. After college, I enlisted in the Marine Corps, hoping to be selected for the Officers Candidate School. As a private, I made $73 a month, or $2.39 a day. After I was ordained, I worked in the mission field for $2,400 … Read more
Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Or is this a fairy tale? This issue, along with who God is, could keep the twenty-first-century reformation from moving forward. Progressive thinking is often considered heresy because it questions doctrines such as a god living above us or physical resurrections. A dead man coming back to life … Read more
My class is still charting the twenty-first-century reformation. Getting this reformation off the ground isn’t easy. The biggest obstacle is the image of God as a white man sitting on his throne in his mansion above a flat, three-tiered earth, running everything and judging everyone. Even with photos from the Hubble Space Telescope of at … Read more
As reported in last week’s blog post, the people in my Charting the Twenty-First-Century Reformation class and I are combatting the anthropomorphization of God (giving him human qualities) by renaming this power or force Creation or the Ground of All Being or Higher Power. This creates a huge problem for the institutional church, which has … Read more
This summer, I’ve been teaching a series of classes about Progressive Christian thought. One of the courses is called Charting the Twenty-First-Century Reformation. I would like this reformation to start at Irvine United Congregational Church because this Progressive Christian congregation offers what the reformation needs. But the reformation faces a big problem with mainstream Christianity’s … Read more
I subscribe to the Monastic Way, a monthly newsletter published by Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun from Erie, Pennsylvania. Sister Joan is progressive, a writes prolifically, supports prison ministries, and travels around the world making the good news good and women relevant. The July 2018 issue of the Monastic Way was about Mary of … Read more
Sometimes when we read parables in the New Testament, we overreach by looking too deeply for something that is not there or making complex allegories (stories with hidden meanings) out of simple tales. I’ll use the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) as an example. It starts with the words “For the … Read more