Carl McColman: Interfaith Dialogue, Interspirituality, and Holy Daring
It is important for any person or community to have appropriate and healthy boundaries, and I understand that religions need to safeguard their identity as much as any other social unit. But it gets tricky when a religion reveres someone like Jesus of Nazareth, much of whose ministry was all about challenging unhealthy or unfairly enforced boundaries.
Old Resolutions
As we begin again this year, we remember that many times we find new life in old resolutions.
Carol Howard Merritt: Image of God and the Little Pink Pill
When the only religious voice is fighting against contraception, we have the hazard of communicating to a generation of women that Christians don't care about their education, productivity, or empowerment.
Weekly Sermon Illustration: Lord of ALL
In our blog post every Monday we select a reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the upcoming Sunday, and pair it with a Frederick Buechner reading on the same topic. On January 12, 2014 we will celebrate the First Sunday after Epiphany.
ON Scripture: Baptism, Righteousness, and the War on Poverty: A 2014 Epiphany (Matthew 3:13-17) By Roger Nam
This week’s commemoration of Epiphany marks a suitable point of reflection on the ongoing fight against poverty. The opening of Matthew 3 portrays John the Baptist as a courageous prophet.
Tony Robinson: Look Up, I Can Help
Psalm 27 is the prayer of a person with a few things awry in their life and world. And it is a multiple-exclamation-point-reminder to LOOK UP!!! Lift your eyes, lift your heart to the Lord.
Literature and Life - A Lecture by Frederick Buechner
In this audio recording, Buechner delivers a lecture at the Bangor Theological Seminary, entitled "Literature and Life".
Brett Younger: How Seminaries Fail
New students show up on the first day of class ready to take up a cross and die for their faith. Then faculty members begin teaching them to exegete 2 Timothy, conjugate Greek verbs, and compare and contrast Calvinism and Arminianism.
Martin Copenhaver: Leaning Toward the Future
The Christian gospel, though rooted in history, is always forward-leaning.
Steve McSwain: Want to Be Free? Truly Free? Here's How
Until you and I detach from all things, until we can let go of the illusion of control, we remain incarcerated, as it were, incapable of knowing the 'abundant life' as Jesus called it -- which explains much of the worry... fretting... anxiety... division that is our world.
Jim Somerville: Which Jesus Will We Give Them?
When you make up your mind that you will do whatever it takes to get people to come to church, then you will get just the kind of church you deserve: a congregation of fickle religious consumers who will leave you as soon as the church next door opens an espresso bar.
Kenneth Samuel: The Planet In Praise
Make no mistake about it, the entire earth is a declaration of God's awesome power to create and sustain life with wondrous beauty and fathomless splendor.
Carol Howard Merritt: Always Root for the Humans
One of the most fun films I saw this year was World’s End””the final installment of the trilogy that included Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. While the first two were about zombies and buddy cops, this one was about saving the planet from Stepford-like robots.
Weekly Sermon Illustration: Word
In our blog post every Monday we select a reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for the upcoming Sunday, and pair it with a Frederick Buechner reading on the same topic. On January 5, 2014 we will celebrate the Second Sunday after Christmas.
ON Scripture- The Bible: Rising Above the Low-Water Mark of 2013 (Ephesians 1:3-14) by Doug Mendenhall
O gracious God, we thank you for getting us through 2013 – cantankerous, contentious bickering mess that it was on many public and political fronts – and we pray that you will help us to look back on it as the low-water mark from which American society emerged more civil and united.
Carl McColman: The Fullness of Our Destiny
The Laughter of God: At Ease With Prayer by Trappistine nun Miriam Pollard is an insightful book which seeks to foster a sense of prayer as a means of entering into intimacy with God ”” the God who laughs and loves, a healthy corrective to the frightening God of judgment and wrath that so often seems to be the stock in trade of old-style religion.
Bruce Reyes-Chow: 10 Ways to Disconnect from the Next Generation of Progressives
I write this list, not as much about that next generation, but to my own and those before me. For if we want our good work and our dreams for a better tomorrow to keep moving towards justice for all, we must do everything we can to stay in relationship with those who have been and will be taking our place at the table.
The Shepherd
The Shepherd is an excerpt from "The Birth", which was first published in The Magnificent Defeat and later in Secrets in the Dark.
Tony Robinson: Sometimes an Imperative
Despite what many assume, Christian faith is not mostly about imperatives. God is not like a hectoring parent exhorting us to eat our vegetables or to be nicer to our neighbors.
Greg Garrett: "Catching Fire": Spirituality and the Hunger Games, Part One
When we look closely at the sins of the Capitol, they are our sins -- exaggerated, to be sure, but still recognizable as our own.