Progressive Christianity
15 Jul Benjamin Franklin’s Religion & Jesus of Nazareth
Continuing with our series on the Founding Fathers Religion and their reflections on God, and Christianity, we move today to some commentary from that Progressive Christian and inventor Benjamin Franklin. The following passage is taken from a letter Franklin wrote to the reverend Ezra Stile in 1790, when Franklin was 84 years old, and Stile was serving as president of Yale College. Here...
13 Jul The Founding Fathers On Christianity, God & Religion
The Founding Fathers of the United States are often referred to as a mixture of anti-clerical Christians (i.e. religious free-thinkers) and deists. In many ways, we might think of them all as laying the groundwork for what is now referred to as the Progressive Christianity movement---for they were leaders who possessed a solid sense of reason that was guided by an understanding of...
08 Jul Kahlil Gibran & The Ass Loaded With Books of Wisdom
The Lebanese-American writer Kahlil Gibran is best known for his elegant and moving book The Prophet. But Gibran produced many other works during his short life, which ended in 1931. Since his death, Gibran has inspired countless men and women, including artists like John Lennon who paraphrased Gibran's famous verse, "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that...
26 Jun Leo Tolstoy & The Kingdom of God is Within You
The great Russian author Leo Tolstoy is a monumental figure in the world of literature. His epic novel War and Peace is unrivaled in its breadth and scope. But Tolstoy was more than just a fiction writer. He was a keen observer of the human condition and arguably the most progressive Christian in Russia during the 19th and early 20th century. His later...
24 Jun The Evolution of God Review: Robert Wright Interview
In today's online issue of Salon.com there is an interesting interview with Robert Wright, a well-known American journalist. Wright is the author of a new book "The Evolution of God," which approaches its subject from the logical standpoint that, more often than not, we have created our Gods to match our own evolving self-image and needs. Wright refers to himself as a materialist...
22 Jun The Progressive Christian: A Working Definition
Readers of LivingHour.org have noticed that we cast a pretty wide net when talking about Progressive Christianity and the works of Progressive Christians. In our writings we include people who've never identified themselves as Christians, much less Progressive Christians. Indeed we've even included atheists, like Albert Camus, among our sources of Progressive Christian inspiration. Although our definition of a Progressive Christian may seem a...
09 Jun Life is a Boiling Up – Meister Eckhart
The 14th century German vicar Meister Eckhart was in many ways a 21st century Progressive Christian. Although highly educated and an admirer of Thomas Aquinus, Eckhart also realized the limits of formal education, once telling the Paris elite that not one person among them could conceive with all their learning what God was in the meanest creature, not even in a fly. An indomitable...
31 May Ways of Escape – Graham Greene & Jesus
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...
11 May Common Sense Christianity & Spirituality
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...
01 May Isabelle Eberhardt & 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...
29 Apr Jesus, Dostoevsky & The Grand Inquisitor
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's parable of The Grand Inquisitor, Jesus reappears on Earth during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Although the crowds adore him, he is promptly thrown in prison and sentenced to death. While in his cell, Jesus is visited by the Grand Inquisitor who says that he must kill him, even though he knows that he is truly Jesus Christ. The...
25 Apr Progressive Christian New Year’s Resolutions
When Progressive Christians look toward their lineage, few find sympathy with the old Calvinists of 18th century New England. Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is one of the last things we equate with the tenants of Progressive Christianity. And yet Jonathan Edwards, like all of us, is a complicated individual. While going off the rails at times...
24 Apr Jesus & Miguel de Unamuno – Solitude & Society
Jesus tells us we cannot enter the kingdom of God unless we are born of both water and spirit (("In truth I tell you," exclaimed Jesus, "unless you are reborn, you cannot see the kingdom of God." "How can someone," asked Nicodemus, "be born when they are old? Can we be born a second time?" "In truth I tell you," answered Jesus, "unless...
22 Apr Teilhard de Chardin & Having Faith in the World
The 20th century Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a remarkable figure in that he was both a highly trained scientist and defender of the Christian faith---someone who realized that the entire structure of Christ's mythology had to be reworked to fit new scientific discoveries. Having forged that new structure through the crucible of his own experiences and knowledge, he not only...