Jesus, Graham Greene, & Ways of Escape
The Catholic writer Graham Greene famously summed up his life as a search for “Ways of Escape.” He said that his abundant writing and travels were simply a means to escape the panic fear, madness, and melancholia of contemporary life. Green’s life summation goes a long way in helping to explain some events found in the canonical Gospels of Jesus the Christ. It often strikes the objective reader as odd that the future disciples drop everything on a dime when the stranger named Jesus comes walking along and says “follow me.”1 But is it really that strange? As Thoreau said, the majority of us do...
Your Personal Legend?
In our SBNR motivational about William Blake and seeing Heaven in a Wildflower, we talked about the transcendent personality of Jesus Christ and how that should be one of our goals as Progressive Christians (or as Sons and Daughters of God, regardless of our religious persuasion). Some readers have interpreted this motivational to imply that we advocate the building of personal legends ala Paulo Coelho. Nothing could be further from our intent. Legends are by their very nature simplistic but fanciful variations of the genuine life–which is littered with multiple twists and turns, failures and triumphs, and punctuated by long bouts...
How to Teach The Lord’s Prayer to Children
The book The Lords Prayer for Daily Life was written in a way that we hope appeals to both teens and adults, each group of readers being able to take certain lessons from it, or simply food for further thought. But what about the child? The Lord’s Prayer is the kind of prayer that children can learn at a young age, and it far surpasses that old standard: Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake; I pray the Lord my soul to take–a prayer which makes children think that the Grim Reaper is going to descend upon them in their sleep. To assist Progressive Christian parents we’ve...
Why Progressive Christianity?
In the latest e-bulletin from The Center for Progressive Christianity, President Fred Plumer includes some letters sent by readers. One writer says that the members of his liberal community have “long ago opted out of the Christian cultural-linguistic game altogether and have become either Epicurean Gourmands, Secular Humanists, Process New Thought, Global Mystics, Unitarian Universalists, or else they define themselves as Unaffiliated Life-Long Learners and Spiritual Seekers who have turned from organized religion to an integral cultural creative lifestyle that synthesizes an interest in spirituality, philosophy, literature, history,...
Jesus & The Wiz
On reading that Broadway was reproducing the classic 1970s musical The Wiz, we were reminded of one of its most memorable songs, Ease on Down the Road, sung by a spirited Diana Ross (Dorothy) and Michael Jackson (Scarecrow) while on their way to see The Wiz (Richard Pryor). The song tells us don’t you carry nothing that might be a load, come on, ease on down, ease on down the road. For Progressive Christians called by Jesus to repeatedly lay down our lives for others1, this is good advice. We are not asked to carry the burdens of others, but to lift up the fallen. Jesus teaches this in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The charitable...
SBNR Progressive Christianity
Since starting LivingHour.org, we have received some wonderful letters from Progressive Christians. This feedback has shown us how truly diverse the “progressive” Christian community is. Some folks have wondered why we still choose to identify ourselves as “Christians”; while others question our focus on Jesus Christ. A few progressive readers have taken exception with the “authority” we take on The Lord’s Prayer. After all, no one knows for sure whether Jesus of Nazareth even existed, so who are we to say what Jesus “wanted” us to believe? Good questions all. And we could write long...
SBNR News: Ian Lawton Launches SBNR.org
In Progressive Christianity news, the website SBNR.org was launched in April in Grand Haven, Michigan. The new organization aims to serve the world-wide population of people that describe themselves as spiritual but not religious (SBNR). It is estimated that in the United States alone over fifty million people are SBNR. The company was founded by Ian Lawton, an independent spiritual teacher and the former Vicar of St. Matthew in the City (Auckland, New Zealand). Today he leads an emerging group of Progressive Christians at Christ Community Church (C3) in West Michigan, which has a sizeable population of church alumni. SBNR.org offers...
The Caduceus & God’s Longissima Via
How do I find God? If God does exist, what path should I take to his doorstep? What road less traveled should I shimmy down? We can look for answers in the Bible, the Gnostic Gospels, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, and other religious texts. Or we can look toward symbols to discover the nature of God, our divinity, and life on earth. One ancient symbol that is rich with meaning is the caduceus. The caduceus is a staff entwined by two serpents in the form of a double helix–a form which today often refers to the structure of DNA. In Greek mythology, the caduceus was wielded by Isis, the messenger of the Gods. It was Isis who linked the...
Talking of Eternal Things
In St. Pauls second Epistle to the Corinthians, he tells the community to remember that “the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” When this idea is delivered from the pulpit of Christian churches today, preachers usually discuss how it refers to God’s grace, the Holy Spirit, or the kingdom of Heaven. The problem is that we tend to think of all these things as God’s alone or God’s gifts to us. They come from the outside and thus we don’t consider ourselves as co-creators of eternal things, along with the Father. But as Sons and Daughters of God, we are all...
Common Sense Christianity
The old saying “there is nothing common about common sense” has never rung so true as it does today. We live in a course and relativist age where the noble drive for fairness and balance has been misdirected toward conflating opinions with facts, and where common sense lies buried beneath a rubble of truthiness. That being the case, it might be a good idea to return to the writer of Common Sense, Thomas Paine, for a little refresher on reasonable thinking. Wrongly accused of atheism by the orthodox Christians of his time (and, later on, a strident Teddy Roosevelt), Thomas Paine is among the many American figures who form the...
The Heritage Christian School & Principal Tim England
John Milton is known to most of us as writer of the epic poem Paradise Lost, but Milton also wrote excellent and thoughtful prose. In some ways, he was a progressive Christian, centuries before Progressive Christianity became a popular term. His work Areopagitica is a classic defense of intellectual freedomone which had a strong impact on the framers of American Constitution and the ideals they held most sacred. We were reminded of Milton and his Areopagitica on hearing about Tyler Frost. Tyler is the student at the Heritage Christian School in Findlay, Ohio who was suspended by Principal Tim England for deciding to attend his girlfriend’s...
For the Sake of God
The Gulistan (Rose Garden) is the masterwork of 13th century Persian writer Sa’di (Saadi), a celebrated poet who recently was quoted by President Barack Obama in his 2009 address to the people of Iran. In the Gulistan, Saadi tells a story that goes like this: A person with a harsh voice was reciting loudly the Koran. A good and holy man went up to him and asked, “How much are you getting paid for that?” The person answered, “Nothing.” “If that is so,” asked the other, “why give yourself so much trouble?” He answered, “I am reading for the sake of God!” The good and holy...
St. Matthews, Auckland: Progressive Articles & Videos
If you are looking for some thoughtful meditations and articles written from a progressive Christian perspective, The Living Hour recommends checking out the website of St. Matthews Church in Auckland, New Zealand. The Church, with a lineage that stretches back to the mid 1850s, wisely points out that it needs a modifier (i.e. progressive) to describe its brand of Christianity because contrary to the human tendency to make sweeping generalizations, being Christian does not tell us much about a faith community beyond the probability that Jesus plays a part in its beliefs. On St. Matthews Publications page you can find such provocative...
The Test of Freedom
The writer and wandering traveler Isabelle Eberhardt was an extraordinary woman. The remains of her book Dans l’Ombre Chaude de l’Islam – In the Hot Shade of Islam (salvaged from a flash flood that killed the young author) was once called “one of the strangest human documents that a woman has given to the world.” In her early twenties, Eberhardt wrote the following: Vagrancy is deliverance and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick...