I have created this blog as a forum for discussing theological issues like those raised in my book Liberating Christianity: Overcoming Obstacles to Faith in the New Millennium, Wipf and Stock, Eugene, Oregon, 2008. I will also from time to time post other things I write--essays, sermons, pastoral letters, letters to the editor, letters to politicians, original comments for the blog, and so on. This is a personal blog. The opinions stated in it are my personal opinions. They are not intended to express the opinions of anyone other than myself.
One of my great frustrations these days is the difficulty I find in spreading the word that there is a better kind of Christianity than the Christianity most people know. Perhaps this blog will be a small step toward solving this problem. If you like what you read here, tell your friends. If you don't like what you read here, tell your friends too. We don't need to listen only to voices with which we agree.
I am convinced that both the country that I love and the ancient faith in which I find my connection with God and to which I have devoted my life are badly off course. Of American politics about all we need to say to sum up the problem is that today uninformed, bigoted, superficial politicians like Sarah Palin are taken seriously. Palin and the "tea party" movement to which she panders together with most of the current Republican presidential candidates are jokes. In a healthy political climate they would immediately be laughed off the stage. The Republican party offers no alternative for our nation other than tax cuts for the very rich and more of the Republican policies of the past thirty years that have nearly bankrupted the country (President Clinton having done nothing significantly to change the disastrous policies of his two Republican predecessors). Republican politicians pander to American xenophobia and racism, cynically stirring up the basest instincts of the American people for their own political gain. They are hypocrites about the federal budget deficit. They want to take away many of the rights Americans have worked so long and hard to attain or are now working to attain. Not that the Democrats are much better. In President Obama and the current Congressional leadership we have not "change we can believe in" but a continuation of President Bush's disastrous, militaristic foreign policy in Afghanistan and "reforms," such as the recent health care reform that is based on worn out Republican ideas, ideas that Richard Nixon advanced forty years ago and that Republican Mitt Romney got enacted in Massachusetts. That isn't real reform, it's delivering millions of new customers to the insurance companies. It isn't change we can believe in. The American political climate keeps drifting farther and farther to the obscurantist right, a drift that benefits only the wealthy and the big corporations. Unless the country changes course, and does it soon, I tremble to think what the consequences will be for our nation and for our world.
In Liberating Christianity I analyze the crisis of Christianity today and offer some solutions. I won't repeat here what I say there. If you haven't read it, please do. It is widely available on line, including from the publisher at wipfandstock.com. Suffice it to say here that religious literalism is killing the Abrahamic faiths. Literalism, or what might better be called factualism, taking the words of scripture and of doctrine as fact, renders religion unintelligible and unacceptable to most people today. If the monotheistic faiths are to survive we must recapture the ancient understanding of symbol and myth that opens us to the wonder, the awe, of an ultimately unknowable yet infinitely gracious God.
May this blog be a small part of these efforts.
Peace.
One of my great frustrations these days is the difficulty I find in spreading the word that there is a better kind of Christianity than the Christianity most people know. Perhaps this blog will be a small step toward solving this problem. If you like what you read here, tell your friends. If you don't like what you read here, tell your friends too. We don't need to listen only to voices with which we agree.
I am convinced that both the country that I love and the ancient faith in which I find my connection with God and to which I have devoted my life are badly off course. Of American politics about all we need to say to sum up the problem is that today uninformed, bigoted, superficial politicians like Sarah Palin are taken seriously. Palin and the "tea party" movement to which she panders together with most of the current Republican presidential candidates are jokes. In a healthy political climate they would immediately be laughed off the stage. The Republican party offers no alternative for our nation other than tax cuts for the very rich and more of the Republican policies of the past thirty years that have nearly bankrupted the country (President Clinton having done nothing significantly to change the disastrous policies of his two Republican predecessors). Republican politicians pander to American xenophobia and racism, cynically stirring up the basest instincts of the American people for their own political gain. They are hypocrites about the federal budget deficit. They want to take away many of the rights Americans have worked so long and hard to attain or are now working to attain. Not that the Democrats are much better. In President Obama and the current Congressional leadership we have not "change we can believe in" but a continuation of President Bush's disastrous, militaristic foreign policy in Afghanistan and "reforms," such as the recent health care reform that is based on worn out Republican ideas, ideas that Richard Nixon advanced forty years ago and that Republican Mitt Romney got enacted in Massachusetts. That isn't real reform, it's delivering millions of new customers to the insurance companies. It isn't change we can believe in. The American political climate keeps drifting farther and farther to the obscurantist right, a drift that benefits only the wealthy and the big corporations. Unless the country changes course, and does it soon, I tremble to think what the consequences will be for our nation and for our world.
In Liberating Christianity I analyze the crisis of Christianity today and offer some solutions. I won't repeat here what I say there. If you haven't read it, please do. It is widely available on line, including from the publisher at wipfandstock.com. Suffice it to say here that religious literalism is killing the Abrahamic faiths. Literalism, or what might better be called factualism, taking the words of scripture and of doctrine as fact, renders religion unintelligible and unacceptable to most people today. If the monotheistic faiths are to survive we must recapture the ancient understanding of symbol and myth that opens us to the wonder, the awe, of an ultimately unknowable yet infinitely gracious God.
May this blog be a small part of these efforts.
Peace.
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