Tag: Progressive Christianity
Sensuous Spirituality: Out from Fundamentalism
"Like the writings of any mystic, much of it will take contemplation to digest. It will also have appeal to those whose own spirituality is not Christian, and might even 'bring back' some who have given up on the Bible as hopelessly patriarchal."
Rachel Held Evans — Reaching Across Generations
Rachel Held Evans "had doubts and questions that many in that religious subculture appeared not to think about or wouldn’t admit because of where such thinking might lead and how others would regard them."
Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith
Out of Sorts is not only a deeper exploration of Sarah Bessey’s life, struggles, and joys but, at times, is also a journey into the spiritual angst of those of us who feel deeply about our families, communities, and, like Sarah, a closer relationship with Jesus.
Courage to Think Differently
To pressure us toward honesty, Johnson provides seven sections of powerful essays on aspects of our culture: irrelevant religion and idolatry, exclusion and thin democracy; biblical certitudes and ignorance; individualism and cheap grace; ecological crisis and greed; silence and job security; and empire and civil religion.
When God Was a Little Girl
I was curious as to how such a unique story was received by the public, and I found that When God Was a Little Girl has garnered overwhelming praise and support from readers. The book was published with the assistance of a Kickstarter campaign that received nearly double the amount of pledges requested to publish the book. Reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads are glowing, and the book received two prestigious book awards in 2014.
Love More: Trump and the Country We Know
We can react by demonizing those who brought the next four years upon our country. We can judge them and denigrate them and turn on them. And in doing so, we will perpetuate the very situation that led us all to this point. Or we can try to figure out how to love more and love better.
Femmevangelical: The Modern Girl’s Guide to the Good News
Crumpton writes from a strong, progressive Christian perspective. She has coined a new word to describe the archetype she promotes, “femmevangelical,” a mash-up of “feminist” and “evangelical.” She brings an honest voice, one borne out of the experience of attending a conservative church that presented the Divine only in a male voice and with a male perspective.
Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can...
"The most oppressive of human binaries is the one that differentiates between those who are in and those who are out. Just as Jesus “took on whatever stigma was applied to the people he was engaging: women, children, Samaritans, lepers” (p. 180), so must progressive Christians and progressive queers continue to disrupt the inside/outside binary."
Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice
“Yet, humbling though parts of the story may be, this is a history that needs to be heard. It isn’t wholly a story of stumbles. It’s also a story of honorable words and courageous actions, often undertaken in the face of great hostility. For that, we can all be thankful. It’s also a non-static story of growth, evolution, and change. Again and again, you’ll find evidence of that Wind that blows where it wills.”
How Marcus Borg Taught Me to Read the Bible
I no longer need to avoid looking at its flaws as I do with my image in the mirrors in my home. The Bible’s pages reveal whispers of the Spirit, glimpses of vistas where justice reigns, and winding valleys where our ancestors never seemed to find their way out of the muck.
Pray For Those Who Murder You
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” he says. When he himself was the target, he added, “Forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23: 34).
Who heard these radical words and copied them down? Who later collected and preserved them?
By the grace of God, we can find testimony today for this minority position against revenge in the words and acts of Jesus, Terence, Gandhi, Daryl Davis, and others.
By binding our hearts to Jesus and his words, we can counter our intuitive responses and lift up even our enemies to the Creator’s loving care.
Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most
[Borg's] concise and ordered way of doing theology gives me words and concepts to better explain moves I’ve made in my own faith and theology. I was also pleased to read about his mystical experiences, which adds another dimension to his obvious critical abilities."
Why Doesn’t Church Work Anymore?
I do not reject the digital church. In digital church I see healing happening. I see a flattening of hierarchies that were made up in the first place and have been profoundly destructive. I see people telling the truth. And I see other people listening.
There’s something missing at the Wild Goose Festival
Realizing that scheduling nothing is just as important as scheduling something, might help the people involved in a weekend of spiritual discovery to become aware of how Spirit is moving through them, or to engage in relationship building, or participate in spontaneous spiritual practice together.
Wild Goose – She Is Here
So here's what happened on another level. Five women, sitting on a plywood platform in the woods, sang, and prayed, and beckoned Sophia to join them. And She answered by filling their hearts and bodies so full that they couldn't hold it all. So She spilled out of them, disguised as tears, and dispersed into the bark of the trees, the green of the leaves, and the sound of the river.
Wild Goose Festival 2013 – Teresa B. Pasquale
Teresa's book was excellent. It was one of those books where I kept highlighting passages in the text because difficult concepts were so well illuminated. It's a casual distillation of a type of spiritual journey that is almost always portrayed with needless drama, and the simplicity makes it all the more powerful.
Wild Goose Festival 2013 – Jared Byas
I like to think that this is where Spirit moves, in the underlying dynamics of what we find ourselves involved in here. In our lives and in our world, I see Her as being what flows through everything, but She's too often obscured by all our bluster, pretension, and ego. Perhaps She is most knowable in the spaces that often go unnoticed, unobserved.
Wild Goose Festival 2013 – Introduction
I've never been to Wild Goose before but am looking forward to the experience. You'll be able to read about and see what I experience here on Where She Is (and on the Christian Feminism Today social media outlets) as I'll be posting frequent updates leading up to, during, and directly after the conclusion of the festival (August 8-11, 2013).
The Female Breast: Our Culture’s Obsession and Ambivalence
"It seems we humans can’t make up our minds about whether to think of women’s breasts as natural physical structures designed to provide nourishment for infants, or as distracting and exciting erotic appendages, or as just something else about the human body to be ashamed of—or dissatisfied with."
Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in...
The concept of Christian identity was new to me, so I was especially intrigued by the lengthy first section, as McLaren discussed several ways in which Christians relate to people of other faiths in our country and world. Interestingly, other religions can have the same range of identity conflicts."
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith
Leaving Church is a memoir of finding, losing, and keeping—although with none of the preachiness that sometimes accompanies such narratives and with an ever-present consciousness of doubt and uncertainty. Taylor’s honesty on these points pervades the narrative and makes it one not to miss.
A People’s History of Christianity
Providing a nuanced work, including persons (often women) usually overlooked and dismissed, Bass brings to light the ways in which these previously disregarded people were important shapers of Christian history and tradition.
A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously...
As for Islam and violence, Eck quotes Jamal Badawi's insistence at Boston University in 1994: "Jihad cannot be equated with senseless terrorism. . . . I would challenge anyone to find an instance of the term holy war in the Qur'an."
Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community
Bass is telling us two stories. As she describes it, it's "the story of intertwined journeys -- how one woman observed and experienced the shifts and struggles of mainline religion as she lived her own journey in eight Episcopal congregations over two decades. And it is the story of each congregation at a particular moment in its history" (p.18).
Christianity for the Rest of Us
Although we’re of different generations, Diana and I had similar experiences of attending “Rotary Club”-type mainline churches that left us spiritually unsatisfied in our early years, leading us to turn to evangelicalism on our own as teenagers. There we found a more lively form of Christianity and an exciting emphasis on a personal relationship with Christ.
Christian Feminism Online: A 1997 Interview with Pat Gundry
"Christian feminists haven’t even begun to tap into the full range of possibilities offered by the Internet, which may be the greatest communication tool ever devised," writes Pat Gundry.
Love Wins
As soon as I finished Love Wins I went out and bought a hard copy to give to my neighbor down the street. It's the kind of book you want to share. I'll give Love Wins to my friends who are dissatisfied with the Common Christian message, but who are not dissatisfied with Jesus.
An Altar in the World
Taylor has an extraordinary gift of sharing with readers ways of encountering the Divine in the most ordinary events of our daily life—a walk in the park, recycling our clutter, getting lost by turning off the GPS and taking a different route home, having a short chat with the cashier at the grocery, really observing a dog, a cat, a butterfly.
If Grace is True & If God is Love
The discussion of the will of God, human free will, questions of salvation, atonement, and redemption are presented in light of the experiences of the writers and their personal spiritual journeys.
Latest Posts on CFT
Damaris of Athens
September 2023 Poetry Selection
Damaris peered into alleyways, stumbled along porticos,
her eyes enflamed by the hot light of stones...
Damaris peered into alleyways, stumbled along porticos,
her eyes enflamed by the hot light of stones...
