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By calling ourselves progressive, we mean we are Christians who...

Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty - more value in questioning than in absolutes.

Progressive Christianity: Reconstructing Our Theological Witness
By Delwin Brown

Progressive Christianity has been seriously hampered by at least two illusions.  One is that the triumph of progressive ideas is pretty much inevitable. The other is that progressive ideas are inherently persuasively. Neither is true. The progressive Christian witness will not triumph inevitably triumph or under its own power. Convictions prevail when they are part of social movements. Progressive ideas may be intrinsically credible, but they are actually believed only when they are effectively stated and lived, and embedded in alliances of people who act together with informed intentionality.

So You Think You're Not Religious
By James Rowe Adams
"Many educated people shy away from the church because they cannot believe in these and other aspects of Christian tradition. And yet many of these same people search for what the church can offer: a caring community, supportive during people of grief and times of joy. James Adams reminds us that religious faith is not a matter of the mind, but of the heart."...
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You Don't Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right, Finding Faith Without Fanaticism
By Brad Hirschfield
Grounded in biblical scholarship and interwoven with personal stories, You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right provides a pragmatic path to peace, understanding, and hope that appeals to the common wisdom of all religions....
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Myth-Busting the Christian Right
By Terri Murray
The Christian right's pundits present this set of abstract concepts - moral "values," sanctity of life, and Christianity - as their core values. Over and over again they have successfully framed complex issues as oppositions between these core values and their opponent's position. This has worked partly because, instead of engaging in an analysis of these concepts, they equate them with a set of public policies that are assumed to meet the conditions that define them. Thus it would appear that if you do not support their policies, you cannot support moral values, the sanctity of life, or Christianity. A closer examination of the fallacious reasoning underpinning each of the Christian right's core myths will follow....
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A New Reformation
By Matthew Fox
In Fox's new book called "A New Reformation!" he proclaims that we are in fact confronted with two churches: one expressed by the image of the Punitive Father, personified by a rigidly hierarchical church structure, repression of the feminine, spreading of homophobia and the elimination of internal dissent; and the other expressed by the feminine figure of Wisdom, personified by a Mother/Father God of justice and compassion. It is time for Christians to choose whom it will follow: an angry exclusionary god or the loving open path of wisdom....
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Don't Go There
By Fred Plumer
If we dig deep enough, most of us seem to have a "don't go there" spot in our beliefs and traditions - that place where we lose a little of our otherwise rational thinking. And I suspect that it is often our inability to get past those "don't go there(s)" that holds back our personal growth and change....
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Eckhart Tolle and the Christian Tradition
By Richard Rohr
Although Tolle is not a Christian teacher, we must not assume that makes him
an anti-Christian teacher. Today we need whatever methods or help we can receive
to allow the Christian message to take us to a deeper level of transformation. Our
history, and our guidance of Western history, shows this has clearly not been
happening on any broad scale. This is an opportunity for us to understand our own
message at deeper levels. It would be a shame if we required him to speak our
language and vocabulary before we could critically hear what he is saying-that is true and helpful to our own message....
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Looking Around for God
By James Autry
Autry, writer and poet, business executive, and son and grandson of Mississippi Baptist ministers, thinks that the true message of the old spiritual is not just that God has an eye on the sparrow. It's that God is demonstrating that if these details are worth God's attention, they are certainly worth ours. It may be that we will more readily find God in the details of this world, and of our own lives, than anywhere else. Looking Around for God, Autry's tenth book, is in many ways his most personal, as he considers his unique life of faith and belief in a God often clouded by church convention. In assembling these personal essays, stories and poems, Autry shares how God has been revealed in many different circumstances of his life, and he offers a few ideas for how the Christian church might better serve in making God's love and presence manifest in the world....
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A Spirituality that Transforms
By Ken Wilber
All of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout from the heart-perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable public example-but authenticity always and absolutely carries a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you....
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Reading the lectionary with Scientific Equivalents
Most churches follow the common lectonary. Here's an idea for your writers to pursue. Match every lectionary reading with an equivalent reading from scientific literature....
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Mercy and Truth Will Meet, What It Takes To Be a Movement That Matters
By Peter Laarman
Bill Coffin said, Liberal Christianity, or what we today call progressive Christianity and what some call "seminar room Christianity," has until now had a really unhelpful taint of elitism around it. We need to change that. So let's just agree to get the conversation started. Let's begin to grow in faith. Find strength in one another. See the world more clearly. And in and through all this, liberate ourselves and liberate one another for the sake of social transformation.  If we ourselves can become the first fruits of the change we seek, then change itself-real change-cannot be far behind....
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When Faith Meets Reason
What happens to faith when the creeds and confessions can no longer be squared with historical and empirical evidence? Most critical scholars have wrestled with this question. Some have found ways to reconcile their personal religious belief with the scholarship they practice. Others have chosen to reconstruct their view of religious meaning in light of what they have learned. But most have tended not to share those views in a public forum. And that brings up a second question: at what point does the discrepancy between what I know, or think I know, and what I am willing to say publicly become so acute that my personal integrity is at stake?...
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Imagining a Progressive Revolution
By Ian Lawton
Imagination is your memory of the future, not like a fantasy imagining things there are not really there, but really seeing what was awaiting your attention all along. The soul of the universe is whispering to you through her mythic imagination, calling you to action. Symbols, dreams, myths and stories bubble up in you, often from beyond your conscious awareness, carefree in the face of reason's tight lipped caution. When we meet in this space, the doors of imagination flung wide, we imagine the possibilities for a world filled with peace and justice, and say with clarity and passion, "Why not?" ...
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POST DENOMINATIONAL HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
Change is in the air and the deep rooted change of mind required of us in the present global stress challenges us all to set our own lives in the big picture.......Here is an attempt to make word picture of the mindshift required. I
wonder if it would stir creative thoughts among tcpc participants....
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Claiming the Chaos
A sermon for the Baptism of the Lord Sunday, or for any day dealing with themes of the human place within creation and nurturing our relationship with it.  It rather directly challenges literalist understandings of Scripture, especially the creation myths....
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We Cannot Avoid God's Questions
By Tom Harpur
Since it's almost entirely poetry and "true myth," and since we live in one of the most literal-minded cultures of all time, it's not surprising that the Bible largely remains a closed book. Those who make the loudest claims for its veracity often see its meaning less clearly than many they judge to be total outsiders....
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What's The Word?
By Jim Burklo
Several years ago, my family went through a tough stretch.  I am blessed with a lot of friends, so I found myself telling the story of the crisis to many people.  It took me a few years of reflection and prayerful meditation, and some intense sessions with a therapist, to wake up to the fact that I was telling the story as if I was a victim: "X, Y, and Z happened to me and I suffered as a result."  It took a long while for me to realize that my story, while full of facts, was short on truth....
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Jesus and His Friends of Little Faith
By James Rowe Adams
Then Je­sus says to them: "You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive?" He appears to be irritated because the disciples fail to understand that he is speaking in metaphors and not referring to the fact that they forgot bring any bread to eat on another boat trip. People of little faith need constant reminding that they are not to take religious teaching literally but to look for the symbolic meaning, but they can learn. In fact, Matthew seems to suggest that the people of little faith are the only ones worth teaching....
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The Wisdom Jesus- Transforming Heart and Mind, a New Perspective on Christ and His Message
By Cynthia Bourgeault
If you put aside what you think you know about Jesus and approach the Gospels as though for the first time, something remarkable happens: Jesus emerges as a teacher of the transformation of consciousness. Cynthia Bourgeault is a masterful guide to Jesus's vision and to the traditional contemplative practices you can use to experience the heart of his teachings for yourself....
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Prayer Given by the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson at the Opening Inaugural Event
As many of you know, the Right Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly Gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire , gave the opening prayer at yesterday's Lincoln Memorial event. It was the first event in the inaugural festivities this year. HBO, which had paid for exclusive rights to the event chose not to broadcast Bishop Robinson's prayer. So if you watched there you wouldn't have caught it or even known that it occurred. NPR didn't air it either. There's no record of it in images placed on the sites of Getty Images, New York Times and the Washington Post. It's a complete erasure of his ever having delivered the prayer.  Such is the continuing policy of silence and erasure we have to live with from people who should know better. We are used to this. If you know your Gay history this has happened again and again. In fact this little list-serve is really about recovering the truth in our history and celebrating it. So we're going to celebrate it by providing here the full text of Bishop Robinson's prayer....
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Are We Progressing?
By Fred Plumer
About ten years ago, I attended a two day conference that garnered a lot of anticipation and excitement about the topics, which were: a new way of communicating our religious beliefs and the discussion of postmodern theology. Near the end of the conference, I was ready for it to be over. It had been a good conference. The keynote speakers were well respected and leaders in their fields....
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Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, The Psychiatrist of Christianity
By Don Murray
The voice I miss in contemporary theological discourse is that of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung.Carl Jung has been called the psychiatrist of Christianity. It is as if he put Christianity on the couch and worked through to an authentic Christian reality that lays a foundation for a whole new understanding of religions in general and Christianity in particular. In the process he became one of the major influences in changing the way the western world thinks. In fact, for me, the two greatest minds of the western world in the twentieth century were Dr. Albert Einstein, who introduced a new understanding of the outer world (the universe) and Dr. Carl Jung, who created a pathway or map into the inner world of the collective unconscious or
objective psyche....
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The Times They Are A-Changin’
By Fred Plumer
Two weeks ago I experienced a change I could not have imagined any time in the past. I attended the Earl Lectures at Pacific School of Religion. I have been doing this for over twenty-five years. The lectures were established in 1901 to bring prominent religious leaders to Berkeley's university community. These lectures have featured such internationally known figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Elie Wiesel, Howard Thurman, Maya Angelou, Paul Tillich, Walter Brueggemann, and Alice Walker....
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Coping With Change
By Jerry Stinson
I don't think of God as a supernatural being with a plan for this planet or with the ability to bring difficult times to an end. God for me is that loving eternal presence
underlying and pervading all of life, but not fixing things. So I can't offer you that kind of hope.  Some of you radically disagree with me about that; you do believe in an intervening God, and for you perhaps faith in that God's continuing benevolence is the answer for coping with change.  But what does my faith, without that sense of a supernatural being, say to change? Let me suggest five things my faith calls me to do when I'm in the wilderness, and I hope these five things also speak to those of you with more traditional theological understandings....
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A Word to the Spiritual Seekers
By Don Murray
I believe that the Fundamentalists are fundamentally wrong in looking back and trying to keep alive a pre-scientific understanding of faith. We must embrace, and integrate into our thinking and living, the best available knowledge the world can provide....
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The Phoenix Affirmations Full version
Phoenix Affirmations full version from CrossWalk America...
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Engaging the Recovering Christians
By Fred Plumer
So how do we progressive Christians share our perspective so recovering Christians can hear us and actually get excited about the progressive path of Jesus and what our churches have to offer?...
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Why I Left Christianity
By Steven Locks
I remember feeling that what happened to Jesus was unfair as (so I thought) he just wanted people to be good and to love each other. So he had my support. This was basically my attitude until my late teens. Very simplistic, and not so far particularly damaging! What I believed in from the start and what attracted me to Christianity was a message of love. It was the desire for this that was primal and would become the driving force that took me out later....
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From the Third Floor of the Gargage- The Story of TheOOZE
By Spencer Burke
I used to be a pastor. More than that, I was a pastor at Mariners Church in Irvine, California-a bona fide mega church with a 25-acre property and a $7.8 million dollar budget.  For years, I played by the rules and tried hard not to think too much about the lingering questions in my soul. Doubt, after all, was dangerous. Who knew where it might lead?...
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A Heretics Guide to Eternity
By Spencer Burke
"If Spencer Burke is a heretic, it's not because he's teaching dangerous doctrine, but because he asks the questions about faith that today's sensibilities naturally raise. Spencer is a winsome walking companion for those who find traditional dogma too narrow. It's a thoughtful conversation."  -Marshall Shelley,...
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Integral Life Presents: The Future of Christianity. Featuring Ken Wilber and Father Thomas Keating
Here is an exciting new resource for churches and individuals that are trying to sort out where they are in relationship to their understanding of the Christian faith in a post-modern world....
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Saving Jesus From The Church - How To Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus
By Robin Meyers
"In his least political and most thoughtful book to date, Dr. Robin Meyers finds the common ground in the world of Jesus and lays out a call to action that unites us under a banner of hope and reconciliation." ~Erick Ebama.  This is not a call to the church to move to the far left or to try something brand new. Rather, it is the recovery of something very old. Saving Jesus from the Church shows us what it means to be a Christian and how to follow Jesus' teachings today....
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Jesus Was A Liberal: Reclaiming Christianity for All
For the millions of people who identify as liberal Christians. In McLennan's bold call to reclaim ownership of Christianity, he advocates a sense of religion based not on doctrinal readings of scripture but on the humanity behind Christ's teachings. He addresses such topics as intelligent design, abortion, same sex marriage, war. torture and much, much more. As he says in the Preface, "We liberal Christians know in our hearts that there is much more to life than seems to meet the rational eye of atheists; yet we find it hard to support supernatural claims about religion that fly in the face of scientific evidence."...
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Always A Seeker
By Fred Plumer
Certainly the most influential and helpful reading I had done over the years was in the various Buddhist traditions. It is true that on the surface there are significant differences from the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha. And it seems important to note that the historical Jesus had only three or four years to formulate and articulate his teachings, while the Buddha's teachings evolved over several decades. And certainly these two great teachers were coming out of very different cultures and social settings....
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Mind In The Balance-Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity
By B. Alan Wallace
By establishing a dialogue in which the meditative practices of Buddhism and Christianity speak to the theories of modern philosophy and science, B. Alan Wallace reveals the theoretical similarities underlying these disparate disciplines and their unified approach to making sense of the objective world.  "This work is replete with lucid argument and wonderful, (nearly breathtaking) detailed explanation as to the congruencies and parallels between Eastern & Western contemplative traditions and modern, that is to say: quantum physics. Mind in the Balance is now in my top three favorites of all time, easily a must read 5 plus star effort," reviews Matthew J. Schimpf.

A Word to the Spiritual Seekers- Hope for New Life in Churches
By Don Murray
Unfortunately, many churches are slow to change and are out of sync with modern times. Often neither the theology nor the music speak to the souls of people of today.  But Milford-Lantz it is different. The Service turned out to be a going away party and worship all rolled into one. But no one minded the two hours we spent together in song and celebration, nor the lunch and conversation which followed. It was good to be part of this honouring of Helen's long and creative ministry. With her kind of leadership, and people ready to grow, there is hope for new life within the church....
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Prayer for Authenticity
By Bob Kleinheksel
In these quieter moments, may optimism's glow creep in and then pervade our spirits and countenance. May hope, possibility and inward smile (at least) abide side by side with any worries, fears and the rest of our human repertoire and jumble of thoughts and emotions...
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"God Needs You To Get Out of the Bubble": Riverside Controversy Exposes Theological, Racial Fault Lines of the Christian Progressive Movement
By Peter Laarman
From: religiondispatches.org What does it mean that Rhodes Scholar and Progressive Evangelical Brad Braxton resigned as senior pastor of the influential Riverside Church? In this discussion over the implications, a reverend and a scholar ask whether multiracial churches require making white people comfortable, why God needs liberal protestants to get out of the bubble, and what the future holds for the mainline church as a whole.  The following conversation between the Rev. Peter Laarman, executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting and Dr. Jonathan Walton, assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside, took place via a series of lively emails over the course of two days. It has been edited for grammar and clarity, but it more or less appears as written....
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We Might Need the End of Progressive Christianity
By Rita Nakashima Brock
In response to the roundtable on Rev. Braxton's abrupt departure from Riverside and the crisis in Progressive Christianity, Rita Brock sees little hope in the Church as it stands. The following was written "in response" to the feature, "God Needs You To Get Out of the Bubble": Riverside Controversy Exposes Christian Progressive Fault Lines, a discussion between Rev. Peter Laarman and Dr. Jonathan Walton....
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Dimensions of Faith
By: Philip Sudworth.  Considers the different dimensions of faith and the implications for how we respond to the faith of others....
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Who Is Your Jesus?- Musings
By Jim Burklo
By current standards of journalism and historical analysis, we know hardly anything about Jesus. The stories in the New Testament were written by people who belonged to the religion that followed him. They had "axes to grind" - they were hardly impartial observers, and it is obvious from the four gospels that much of what they wrote about him was mythological. The only roughly contemporary non-Christian writer who mentioned Jesus was Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century. One short reference to Jesus in the "Antiquities of the Jews" appears to have been inserted by later Christian editors of Josephus' work, and the other brief reference is to a Jesus who may not have been Jesus of Nazareth at all....
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Not God’s People: Insiders and Outsiders in the Biblical World
Using an array of biblical texts from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, Not God's People explores how ancient Jews and Christians created their own identity in relation to others. The book analyzes how biblical texts define 'us' and 'them,' how these texts differ in the way they define group identity, and how this process continues to be re-created by Jews and Christians today....
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Blinded by Belief
By Joseph Mattioli
Humans are wondrous creatures. Even the very thought that we are conscious at all is enough to baffle the most intelligent of people. Yet it is even more amazing that this wondrous creature we call human, which has been mysteriously endowed with mind and reason, will voluntarily give up these faculties rather than use them. How? They give it up to have a book they can believe in that has all the answers spelled out for them. Then the attribute this book they know was written by humans, to the divine creator....
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The Study of Life, Part 5. My Search for the Meaning of Life as I Walked in Darwin's Footsteps
By John Shelby Spong

In the preparation required to write my new book on eternal life, I soon discovered that this subject raised all of the contemporary theological issues that threaten to destroy Christianity as we have known it. It was clear that I would have to turn the traditional religious approach around. I had to read the modern critics for whom the religious concepts of the past make no sense. I also had to come to a new understanding of what life itself means. Life after death cannot possibly be contemplated until one understands the wondrous and even mysterious dimensions of life before death.

A Progressive Christian Faces Death
By Jack Good

Without an omnipotent God, and without a clear vision of an afterlife, what do I, as a progressive Christian, have for support when death draws near? The answer is simple: I find support in the same realities that have sustained me through life.

Trying to String Things Together
By Fred Plumer
According to the best scientists in the world, our universe is composed entirely of vibrating strings of energy. Everything from the smallest measurable particle to the largest star in our universe is made from the same kind of ingredient. Just like the strings of a cello or viola can make a multitude of sounds, quantum strings of energy create a multitude of forms. In ways we cannot understand, at least at this point, all of these strings are inter-related and interdependent. In other words, the great spiritual teachers, including Jesus, were right. We are all one interconnected whole. The universe is like one grand symphony orchestra playing beautiful music. And we are part of that music....
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Why I am a Progressive Christian (Part 2)
By C. Drew Smith

In my last column, I told briefly my story of being a progressive Christian by first describing why I am a Christian and why I continue to choose to be a Christian. The thing that has been my saving grace, that which has kept me from abandoning my faith, is that I have chosen to identify myself as a progressive Christian.

Why I am a Progressive Christian
By C. Drew Smith

Many of the evolutionary changes that have taken place for me over the years are those related to what I believe about God and religious faith. Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian environment in the Bible Belt, I rarely encountered diversity. If I did, I was probably too ingrained in the approved way of thinking that I did not even recognize another point of view, and I certainly would not have recognized it as valid. Yet, at this point in my life, as I look back, I am far removed from who I was and what I believed then.

On Knowledge and Faith
By Joseph Mattioli

It seems to me there are two kinds of knowledge. The most common being a knowledge 'about', which comes from study whether scientific or personal experimentation. With it one can spend a life time studying religion or even birds for that matter and know all there is recorded to know about God through religion or birds through study and observation of birds without really ever truly knowing either.

Slaves To Faith

Based upon the author's twenty years of classroom and clinical study, Slaves of Faith explores and explains the emotionally laden dynamic at work in the fundamentalist mind. As Dr. Mercer posits, the fundamentalist is fundamentally driven by anxiety layered over a fragile sense of self-identity constructed upon a system of beliefs that is both logically inconsistent and highly suspect in light of modern science. As a result, the fundamentalist completely rejects modernity while battling mightily in the arena of national politics and culture to bring about a world that aligns more closely with the fundamentalist worldview.

My Politico-Religious Journey

The Christianity I knew had nothing to do with today’s moral judging from the religious right. It didn’t depend upon a church hierarchy throwing around its weight in the name of ecclesiastical authority. It wasn’t defined by the drama of today’s fights over gay rights or attempts to sneak creationism into the schools. There was no political grandstanding. It was a deeply humble, self-emptying, other-serving Christianity.

ButterflyFish Music CD

Butterflyfish is a rootsy blend of American folk, gospel, blues, country, and bluegrass, cooked down and spiced up into fresh takes on the spiritual themes so characteristic of old American music.

Myth and the Genesis Stories
By Fred Plumer

It is impossible for us today to fathom the world view that the ancients who created these stories must have had.  We really cannot grasp what it was like to look out in the stars, to travel, to watch the days get shorter with no obvious reason,  to deal with the seasons, watch babies be born without an understanding of basic biology, science,  without airplanes, space ships, Hubble telescopes, physicists, calendars, let alone computers and GPS. These were people, after all, who believed that the earth was flat and covered with a dome that had holes in it. For them, the stars were God’s or the gods’ light shining through those holes. 

Religion is Not about Belief: Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God

“Until well into the modern period,” Armstrong contends, “Jews and Christians both insisted that it was neither possible nor desirable to read the Bible literally, that it gives us no single, orthodox message and demands constant reinterpretation.” Myths were symbolic, often therapeutic, teaching stories and were never understood literally or historically. But that all changed with the advent of modernity.

The Christmas Myth is the Story of the Human Family
By Tom Harpur

From Living Waters.  If one is to pass beyond the childish and the external to the core of what Christmas is all about, it's an essential step. What one has to realize first of all is that the story of the birth of Jesus is a myth. No, not a fairy tale, not a legend, not a piece of fiction to be seen through and dropped at puberty or before, but a spiritual myth-in other words, a truth so vast and so important to our human condition that it can only be told in the most profound language of all, the language of symbolism, allegory and metaphor.

Love the Hell Out of Each Other
By Ian Lawton

Hell is a religious myth intended to hold you captive to fear and the church’s teachings. Stand up to the myth and pull its beard. You will find that it comes off in your hand. You can not be denied. You are an adventurer, storming the gates of hell and fear.  The good news- There is no reason to believe there is an actual place of eternal suffering after life called hell.

Thank God for Evolution
By Michael Dowd

"The science vs. religion debate is over! A path forward emerges! Michael Dowd masterfully unites rationality and spirituality in a world view that celebrates the mysteries of existence and inspires each human being to achieve a higher purpose in life. A powerful book! A must read for all, including scientists." - Craig Mello, 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine

The Leap of Advent

By: Chuck Queen,  The “Advent” of God in the person of Jesus not only challenged old ways of thinking about God and old patterns of relating to God, Jesus’ Advent marked the beginning of a spiritual revolution, a conspiracy of love.

Lots of Love
By Gary A. Wilburn

Gary's third and final book - Lots Of Love - is an urgent and loving testimonial to the simple but fundamental building blocks of our human and spiritual DNA - that "love is the beginning and the end of our journey." Each day physical life may conspire to ebb out of Gary's body but his spirit flows through his pen and his glorious fight to bring us all a message of hope at the holiday season. Lots of Love is an ornament to be hung on every tree, a candle to be lit on the last night of Hanukkah, an Eid prayer at Ramadan and a strand of lights at the new moon of Diwali.

What Gift Will You Give?
By Tom Hall

I trust it will come as news to very few that the canonical gospels offer us two Christmas stories, and to those who have actually read the accounts it is clear that the two bear little resemblance to one another.  To be sure, the names of the infant, his mother, his nominal father, and the place of birth are the same; but nearly all the other details stand in striking and irreconcilable conflict.  Does this mean that Matthew’s narrative or Luke’s—or both—are simply to be rejected as wildly unreliable? Not if we adopt the strategy of understanding the two tales not as failed attempts at history, but as brilliantly conceived and wonderfully effective parables.

The Ordinary God: Notes from the Far West of Ireland
By Hilary Wakeman

That is what this book is about. The ordinary, everyday God. The ‘God’ that comes instinctively to most of us. If we’ve had a religious education, from schools or parents, we may need to drop a lot of stuff that has been drilled into us. If what we think we know about God doesn’t feel right, or doesn’t feel true, then it probably isn’t right and isn’t true. Like love, this is a subject where we do better to trust our gut feelings.

Progressive Christians and God Talk
By Michael Morwood

But we keep pruning away, and as we prune, domino after domino falls, whether it be connected with revelation, the person and role of Jesus, the meaning of salvation, doctrine, worship, prayer, death and afterlife.  So “progressive Christians” find themselves almost aching with questions and issues such as: Who or what is God? What is worship for or about? What is prayer about? How do we talk to children about “God” in ways that respect the pruning we have done?

Children Praying a New Story- A Resource for Parents, Grandparents, and Teachers
By Michael Morwood

Morwood's books have been especially insightful and helpful to adults struggling with prayer and ritual while radically reconstructing their Christian faith.  This book is for adult Christians engaged in this shift, now asking the vital questions: How do we educate children into this new faith perspective?  How do we pray with them if prayer is not about addressing an external, listening Deity?

Christmas
By Scott Robinson

Christmas both mutes and heightens this impression that something under the sun is ferhoodled.  On the one hand, people are often more civil and decent to each other.  On the other, anything painful or ugly stands out more glaringly against the festive background, even taking on a tint of moral injustice.  If people die in June, it’s sad; if they die in late December, it’s “a shame.”  One especially wants the season to be magical for children, and this desire for things to be a certain way intensifies the disappointment when the world just goes on being itself.

God Talk
By Fred Plumer

Over the last few weeks I have had the opportunity and the privilege to meet with two different groups made up of people who are all in their own way searching for new ways to tell the Christian story.  More than once, while I was participating in one of these gatherings, I was almost overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude.  I wondered, “How did I get so lucky to be involved with such bright, informed, caring people who really are dedicated to making a positive change in their lives and in the world?” Interestingly, although each group had a slightly different focus, at some point in both of these gatherings, we found ourselves trying to decide what we mean when we use a word or metaphor for that which we commonly call “God.” 

The Need for an Inclusive Faith

When I was more dualistic in my faith the key question was: Are my beliefs correct and how do I get others to believe the right things? Now that I am more inclusive in my thinking the key question is: How can I fall in love with an unconditionally loving God and share this love with others?

Praying A New Story
By Michael Morwood

In this invigorating, poetic and imaginative paperback, Morwood shares prayers that can be used in small groups that reflect a fresh and bold reframing of Christian views of God, the universe, Jesus, the Spirit, and holidays such as Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost. Here you will read about an everywhere God instead of an elsewhere God, who is present and active in every corner of the universe and in every dimension of our everyday life.

What About Sin?

Obviously how we think about sin changes how we think about repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.  If we understand sin to be primarily personal… the burden is on us individually to change our behavior. Change in personal behavior is always good when we identify behaviors and thoughts that we know we need to change.  But personal change does not adequately deal with destruction and hurt and evil that can come from the corporate, communal sin. For example: we might know that we have to change our attitudes toward homeless persons…and be more generous in our personal charity.  And it is good to do so.  But that still does not change the structural economic and political situations that will continue to result in more and more homeless people.  Or we might become aware that we personally need to be more open minded to those who are different from us.  So personal transformation is good.  But that does not change the systems of racism, sexism or homophobia. That infuses much of our cultural landscape.

A Voice in the Wilderness
By Sea Raven

The underlying assumption in this study of Luke (and eventually Acts and the authentic letters of Paul) is that Luke wrote his gospel and his account of the Acts of the Apostles as a subversive counter to Roman oppression, and the Roman imperial theology that proclaimed Cesar (whether Augustus or Tiberias) as the son of God.  The voice of John the Baptist screamed from the edges of civilization about “repentance” until Herod Antipas had had enough.

Two Kinds of Evangelism
By Chuck Queen

There are two vastly different Christian approaches to evangelism being practiced today. One can be described as inclusive and invitational; the other is dualistic and confrontational.

Christianity isn't News
By Adalynn Siemens

How Christianity not being news is actually a large portion of its very strength.  The truth is... Christianity isn't news.  I don't mean in modern terms either; I mean in ancient terms. Christianity isn't news, and it never really was. When Christianity came along, it was literally nothing new. The amount of parallels between Christianity and various other religions around the world (the oldest of course dating back to Ancient Egypt or even earlier) is astonishing. Nothing in the Bible was original. Almost every last item attributed exclusively to Jesus, for example, including the things he said or did (or anything that happened to him), can be readily traced back to another source far more ancient than Christianity or the birth of Christ.

New Report: More Sex in the Pulpit

From religiondispatches.org.  By Jeanne Carstensen.  While religious conservatives are vocal on issues of sexuality—from pre-marital sex to masturbation to abortion—progressive religious leaders have largely ‘abstained’ from discussing these matters in the pulpit. A new report urges more clergy education and openness on sexuality issues.

A Sample Lesson on Humility from the TCPC Children's Curriculum
By Lorna Knox

This is a lesson on Humility from our Children's Curriculum that we are creating!  You can find more information here. 

From History To Mystery, The Life And Teachings Of The Historical Jesus
By Lisa A Morris

This book explores the quest for the Historical Jesus and seeks to discover the original meanings of his teachings, in particular his kingdom of God teachings. You will learn about the last 200 years of Jesus research, including the Jesus Seminar. The author discusses Gnosticism, The Gospel of Thomas, The Secret Gospel of Mark, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene along with the four canonical gospels; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The author spends much of her time investigating the Parables of Jesus. In the parables, Jesus preaches about "the kingdom of God." This concept is taught by Jesus on two levels. One for the masses and one for his inner circle. The uncovering the "secret teachings" of the parables is very illuminating and inspirational. Whether you are a seminary student, pastor, educator, or layperson; this is a must read on the subject of the historical teachings of Jesus! The book was written by a respected scholar in Historical Christianity, Dr. Lisa Morris.

Mojados
By Jim Burklo

 “Mojados in the Promised Land”: words by Jim Burklo and Lisa Atkinson, music by Lisa Atkinson and George Kincheloe, on “Connie’s Songbird”, CD by Lisa Atkinson, www.atkinsonkincheloe.com, reprinted with permission.

Reading Jesus; A Writers Encounter with the Gospels
By Mary Gordon

In this impassioned and eye-opening book, Gordon takes us through all the fundamental stories—the Prodigal Son, the Temptation in the Desert, the parable of Lazarus, the Agony in the Garden—pondering the intense strangeness of a deity in human form, the unresolved more ambiguities, the problem posed to her as an enlightened reader by the miracle of the Resurrection. What she rediscovers—and reinterprets with her signature candor, intelligence, and straightforwardness—is a rich store of overlapping, sometimes conflicting teachings that feel both familiar and tantalizingly elusive.

It is this unsolvable conundrum that rests at the heart of Reading Jesus and with which Gordon keeps us in thrall on every page.

Sacred Marriage, Sacred Sex, Sacred Text- the Song of Solomon
By Sea Raven

The Song of Solomon would never have become sacred scripture if it had not been interpreted as allegory. In the traditional Jewish understanding, the Song recounts God’s love for Israel and the history of their relationship. For Christians...
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Is God A Delusion?: A Reply To Religion's Cultured Despisers
By Eric Reitan

"Is God a Delusion?" addresses the philosophical underpinnings of the recent proliferation of popular books attacking religious beliefs. Focuses primarily on charges leveled by recent critics that belief in God is irrational and that its nature ferments violence Balances philosophical rigor and scholarly care with an engaging, accessible style Offers a direct response to the crop of recent anti-religion bestsellers currently generating considerable public discussion.

Religionless Religion: Beyond Belief to Understanding

In these perilous times when the very survival of the human species is at stake, there is a desperate need for wisdom to provide guidance. The sacred literature of the world's major religious traditions is a source for such wisdom, but it has largely been misinterpreted and misunderstood, and, thus, instead of being a source for wisdom, it has been a source for confusion and conflict. The ancient scriptures, for the most part, were written in a language which is quite different from ordinary language. It is a mythological language, which is symbolic, and therefore its meaning is hidden. In the Bible, for example, there are many narratives that appear to be historical, but they are history that has been mythologized, and therefore their surface meaning is not their real meaning. Clyde Edward Brown clearly illustrates that the correct interpretation of the world's religious texts would lead to a different concept of religion. Instead of belief in the literal truth of texts that have been misinterpreted, the emphasis would be on having those religious values, such as social and economic justice, which are common to all religions.

I Want to be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth
By Brenda Peterson

In Brenda Peterson’s unusual memoir, fundamentalism meets deep ecology. The author’s childhood in the high Sierra with her forest ranger father led her to embrace the entire natural world, while her Southern Baptist relatives prepared eagerly and busily to leave this world. Peterson survived fierce “sword drill” competitions demanding total recall of the Scriptures and awkward dinner table questions (“Will Rapture take the cat, too?”) only to find that environmentalists with prophecies of doom can also be Endtimers. Peterson paints such a hilarious, loving portrait of each world that the reader, too, may want to be Left Behind. Her clever take on the "Left Behind" phenomenon in the book's title isn't just a gentle refutation of an escapist religious prophecy. It's an appeal for something more inclusive than the idea that true believers will one day be swept up midair and whisked off to an eternal paradise, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

I Met God in Bermuda, Faith in the 21st Century
By Steven Ogden

It is time to challenge traditional understandings of God in order to create a twenty-first century faith. We have to say goodbye to the Sunday school God and find new ways of thinking about God.

This is not an exercise in theory, but an effort to take the practice of life seriously. In fact, a twenty-first century faith is an open, dynamic and courageous attitude toward life. It presumes that God is found not in the sky, but in the midst of life. It begins with experience, our shared experience. While experience is not everything, it is a good starting point. It is what we know.

Uncertainty is Trust's Shadow
By Andrew Furlong

Catholics and other Christians misunderstand and misrepresent Jesus, as will be explained, if they believe he "happens to be God" and to be literally human and divine. They should renounce such ideas, because only in a mythological story can Christ be presented as divine. Such myths are not factual or historical, but were written to express convictions about the commitment of a transcendent God. ?

Building a Stronger Faith
By Jim Burklo

"If a student at a faith-based institution gives up her faith, convinced that it’s intellectually untenable, has that institution failed? Has it succeeded? What if that happens at a secular institution?"

Jesus: Magician or Liberator?– The Choice for Progressive Christians
By Sea Raven

For 21st Century Christianity, the question is, which interpretation makes the most sense?  Magic and miracle, or liberation from injustice?

If Darwin Prayed- Poems
By Bruce Sanguin

Poems from an upcoming book by Bruce Sanguin. Author of Emerging Church and Darwin, Divinity, and The Dance of the Cosmos.

With or Without God
By Gretta Vosper

Invisioning a future in which the Christian church plays a viable and transformative role in shaping society, Gretta Vosper argues that if the church is to survive at all, the heart of faith must undergo a radical change. Vosper, founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity and a minister in Toronto, believes that what will save the church is an emphasis on just and compassionate living-a new and wholly humanistic approach to religion. Without this reform, the church as we know it faces extinction.

God in a Bottle

How our attempts to define God and present him within terms of our own understanding are bottling up the power of God.

The Plantsman

A parable of how a vision can be distorted, so that a process of liberation, healing and inclusiveness becomes an an institution preoccupied with conformity.

Homodoxuals and Heterodoxuals in the Church
By Jim Burklo

Lately I've seen many uses of the term "heterodoxy" in my reading about current trends in religion in America, referring to people who mix a variety of religious traditions and beliefs in their spirituality.  That got me to thinking about what its opposite would be: "homodoxy".  This struck me as an ironic twist in language, since so many "homodoxual" people oppose homosexuality, and so many "heterodoxual" people are open and affirming towards gays and lesbians.  This musing resulted from these observations.

Excerpts from Fred's Presentation at the Common Dreams 2 Conference- Are We Living the Progressive Faith or Are We Just Dreaming?
By Fred Plumer

I have hope that something very special is happening in our world and I would like the Christian tradition to be part of that positive, evolutionary change. But I believe there are things that progressive leaders, progressive teachers and progressive Churches, have to do immediately, if that we are going to have a chance to make it work.

Fred's Full Presentation from the Common Dreams 2 Conference- Are We Living the Progressive Faith, or Are We Just Dreaming? Part 1
By Fred Plumer

I have hope that something very special is happening in our world and I would like the Christian tradition to be part of that positive, evolutionary change. But I believe there are things that progressive leaders, progressive teachers and progressive Churches, have to do immediately, if that we are going to have a chance to make it work.

Imagining a future for the Bible in tomorrow’s churches and a post-Christian world
By Gregory C. Jenks

Are We Living the Progressive Faith, or Are We Just Dreaming? Part 2
By Fred Plumer

Part 2 of the Full Presentation by Fred Plumer, given at the Common Dreams 2 Conference in Melbourne, Australia.

Stepping Out with the Sacred: Progressive Engaging the Divine, Part 1
By Val Webb

In progressive religious thinking, old images of God have been retired and new metaphors for the Divine within the universe, whether Energy, Presence, Spirit, Sacred, Ground of Being, Life, have become more authentic for a scientific world. Yet, in a multi-faith world, we cannot speak of the Sacred infusing the universe without recognizing It as that sought and described in all religions. How do we engage this Divine within the world, or the Divine engage us, if at all, in a multi-faith world? How do human beings step out with the Sacred in everyday life across countries, cultures, and religious persuasions?

Stepping out with the Sacred: Progressive engaging the Divine, Part 2
By Val Webb

Part 2 of the Presentation given by Val Webb at the Common Dreams 2, Melbourne Australia.  In progressive religious thinking, old images of God have been retired and new metaphors for the Divine within the universe, whether Energy, Presence, Spirit, Sacred, Ground of Being, Life, have become more authentic for a scientific world. Yet, in a multi-faith world, we cannot speak of the Sacred infusing the universe without recognizing It as that sought and described in all religions. How do we engage this Divine within the world, or the Divine engage us, if at all, in a multi-faith world? How do human beings step out with the Sacred in everyday life across countries, cultures, and religious persuasions?

The Challenge Progressive Thinking Is Making to the Church
By Gretta Vosper

We come to this moment in time, called by a very long list of voices, and it has been many, many years, decades, even centuries, that those voices have been calling us.
Over the course of the next years, we must find again that inspiration that was the spark for what has been an incredible journey toward wholeness but one that has, ironically, continued to fragment and judge, to deny rights and oppress.

Creation

by: Alexandra Sangster

This children's story explores the different worldviews of creation.

Covenant Economics: A Biblical Vision of Justice for All

In this insightful new study, Dr. Horsley contends that God intensely cares about economic justice. As followers of the Heavenly Father, we, too, should be deeply concerned about this vital issue. Horsley divides his book into two sections: “Economic Justice and the Common Good” and “The Renewal of Covenantal Community.” A “distinctively covenantal concern for economic rights and mutually supportive and cooperative community,” he asserts, “runs strongly throughout the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Letters of Paul.”

Who Are the "Lost"?

At the recent Southern Baptist Convention which met in Orlando, a theme reiterated throughout the meeting was the “lostness” of the world. Consider the following quotes, taken from an article in the Western Recorder by Editor Todd Deaton titled: SBC takes ‘fresh look’ at nation’s lostness: 

Well-Fed Spirit Website

A free Website providing diverse spiritual-practice and wellness resources for Christians in a progressive and affirming manner.

Questions for the Rabbi and the Pastor

A son returning from college talks with his father about his course on Religion...

The New Atheists Are God's Prophets

The New Atheists are to be commended for demanding that humanity update our maps of reality and that we begin to value and actually use our modern and much enhanced capacities to discern right relationship and to devise age-appropriate ways for psychologically and materially moving in those directions.

The New Atheists as God’s prophets: What a twist! How could we have arrived at such an absurd reversal of who speaks for God?

Are the New Atheists Wrong to Suggest Religious Moderates Justify the Extremes?
By Be Scofield

Should I abandon my tradition because liberal and moderate religion serves to justify the extremes? Is my participation in this religious institution providing legitimacy and credibility for fundamentalism, violence, oppression and bigotry done in the name of religion? I’m studying to be a minister in this tradition. It’s called Unitarian Universalism. Am I guilty by association? Should I jump ship? What do you think?

What Do We Mean When We Say, "I am Christian?"
By Fred Plumer

Over the last fifteen years I listened to a growing number of troubled clergy who are in conflicted and or dying churches. (I believe there is a connection.) Sometimes the battles are over “LBGT” issues and other times it may be about politics. But far more often, the conflict is rooted in theology, Christology and ideology. Frankly, with rare exceptions, clergy cannot freely teach what they learned in seminary or more importantly, what they have come to believe about their own understanding of the Christian religion, the Bible or their faith.  The resultant message is often mixed or muddled and almost always without passion. Maybe that is why, according to several recent polls, mainline churches continue to decline at an increasing rate and maybe that is why the number of people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious appears to be growing exponentially. Sadly, more and more of these individuals are leaving organized religion and are finding other ways to satisfy their spiritual needs.

Show Us God
By Gary A. Wilburn

          One of the primary issues which separates progressive churches from those which are not is our understanding of salvation.  We do not believe that we, as Jesus’ followers, have a better access to God than other people - or that our way is right and theirs is wrong.  For us, Jesus is the essential definition of God.  Jesus fully reveals God to us.  We have found in Jesus Christ the highest definition of what it means to be human, and of what it means to be divine.  We see in him what all of us were created to be.

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