The decision not to indict the officer who shot and killed the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown has had the predictable effect: Those who identify with Michael and his family are hurt and angry, let down once again by a country that promises they were created equal. Many of those whose reality is very different from Michael’s, who live in That Other America where the police are always your friends, scratch their heads and wonder why this has to be... Read more
I have a theory. I could be wrong. But I think Christmas 2014 will be the year of the New Authenticity in product-gifting. I’ve already seen a few intimations in this direction. First, Taylor Swift pulled her catalog off Spotify. So if parents want to give Taylor Swift music to their children for Christmas, they won’t be able to send them a link on Facebook and say, “Hey, you should really check this out!” Instead, they’ll have to buy an... Read more
Brother David Steindl-Rast has contended in his writings that gratitude is foundational to a healthy spiritual life. If that is true, and I believe it is, then how might we expand our capacity for gratitude? Perhaps some reflections drawn from the story of Moses’ encounter with God in Exodus 33:12-23 can lead us along a path to gratitude. Moses says, “If your presence will not go with us, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that... Read more
For a long period in the history of the United States, Christians understood that progressive political action for structural social change was a necessary means toward the end of living out the gospel. They understood that charity would never solve the nation’s social ills. Their religious faith translated into a faith in democracy as the means to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. Today the Salvation Army is hardly associated with progressive politics. But in the 1890’s, Barrington Booth,... Read more
The joy came to me early this year, in the form of Jan Johnson’s Taste and See: Experiencing the Stories of Advent and Christmas. Johnson invites readers to enter into the stories through a sort of neo-Ignatian approach she calls “participative meditation.” We read each narrative and then place ourselves within it, either as a character or a fly on the wall. Lots of us create “movies in our heads” with the stories of scripture, but Johnson provides questions and... Read more
I don’t know if there is any truth to it or not, but the story is told that when Britain faced a critical shortage of silver during the days of WWII Winston Churchill launched a search of possible sources of silver. They discovered some sterling silver statutes of saints in some of their churches and cathedrals. When Churchill was made aware of this he said, “Well, it’s time to put the saints into circulation.” This parable is about saints in... Read more
“The whole Nativity Season deserves to be relished.” ~Sybil MacBeth There is perhaps no holiday for which it is possible to go more “all out” than Christmas. Stores start their marketing campaigns before the calendar has turned to Fall; Christmas trees go up before Thanksgiving dinners have even been digested (or earlier!); yards quickly fill with ever-more-enormous inflatable characters and Griswold-worthy light displays; and the weeks leading up to Christmas can easily become a flurry of shopping trips, cookie swaps,... Read more
Johann Christoph Arnold’s Their Name is Today: Reclaiming Childhood in a Hostile World crossed my desk at an interesting moment in my life as an educator: I am a college professor and, recently, became the mother to twin boys. In other words: I am learning to “mother” on both ends of the spectrum of “childhood”—from the earliest moments of self-recognition and exploration to the later, complicated experiences of navigating adulthood and adopting a “grown-up” identity. There is a lot that happens... Read more
“Preaching is a mad act, speaking for God to people who hardly know who God may be, proclaiming the gospel of one who came preaching and loving the world. No small task, that!” — John Holbert, Old Testament scholar and Homiletics professor In this month of thanksgivings, I’ll be blogging about some of the Patheos folks I’m particularly grateful for in my years of managing the Progressive Christian Channel. As I look back today, one distinguished gentleman comes immediately to mind: The... Read more
“Thirty years later, I’m still looking for God in the places some people say God isn’t supposed to be found, and I’m still as fascinated as ever.” — Cathleen Falsani, award-winning journalist, author and blogger The Progressive Christian Channel at Patheos continues to grow and flourish each month as we add some of the smartest and spirited bloggers on the ‘net. Just this fall, we welcomed the wonderfully-diverse voices of theologian Michael Hardin (Christianity is Changing); campus minister Morgan Guyton (Mercy Not Sacrifice), Eat... Read more
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