I remember the night my cousin and I planned our funerals. We were teenagers. I was fourteen and she was sixteen. Sitting up late one night, we fantasized about what it would be like when we died; all the people who would show up, who would cry, who would share memories and talk about how much they loved us. Death did not seem like a bad thing to us. Because for us, dying meant that we would finally be noticed; people... Read more
“If you are a follower of Jesus who listens to the news and wonders if there’s anyone else out there like you; if you want to follow Jesus in loving your neighbor (and everybody!) and want to do that in all of your life and you’re lonely, come to the Wild Goose Festival. This is where we gather.” — Rosa Lee Harden, Producer, Wild Goose Festival Summer is just around the corner, and that means it’s almost time for another wild... Read more
Elizabeth Gerhardt’s The Cross and Gendercide is without hesitation among (if not the) most convicting, thought-provoking, well-researched, biblically-grounded, and empowering text on the church’s responsibilities toward women that I have read. Read more
Part 3: Progressive Reflections on Traditional Christian Themes At the national gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2010, a theme reiterated throughout the meeting was the “lostness” of the world. One leader said, “We need to be looking forward with an aggressive agenda to penetrate lostness around the world and in North America.” Another leader said, “Every pastor has to walk away from this convention asking, ‘What can I do . . . to make a difference by penetrating... Read more
Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler wrote a piece this week defending the death penalty. In his 1200 word argument for why Christians should support the death penalty, he does not mention Jesus a single time. Digging deeper, as you read the official pro-death penalty statement of the Southern Baptists, there is not a single reference to Jesus or the Gospels. There are plenty of other problems with the scriptural maneuvering used to justify the contemporary practice of the death penalty... Read more
What’s Emerging? A New Story Dave Csinos, the founder and president of the Faith Forward Conference taking place in Nashville May 19-22, is excited by what is emerging in Christian education curricula today. He sees more taking place than just surface changes. New forms are reflecting the revitalization of emerging Christianity and that diversity is just what Dave hopes participants at Faith Forward 2014 will experience and continue to build on together. What strikes Dave as particularly relevant is that... Read more
Part 2: Progressive Reflections on Traditional Christian Themes I believe that the living God who Christians know through the sacred story of Jesus is far more interested in our faithfulness to the way of Jesus than our worship of Jesus or veneration of his deity. Having the faith of Jesus is more important than what we believe about Jesus. I don’t want to suggest that what we believe is insignificant. What we truly believe in the core of our being... Read more
What’s Emerging? A New Theology of Atonement Why do violence and religion appear to be such intimate bedfellows? The apparent connection between the two has provided low hanging fruit for atheists and anti-Christian polemicists for centuries. Not only do we fight brutal wars for religious reasons, but religion itself seems to have been born as a practice of ritualized violence. No human culture seems to have emerged without the appearance of religion, and most of these archaic religions involved some... Read more
Exciting news, friends! We’ve graduated to kindergarten! That’s right … Patheos, the little religion-site-that-could, is turning five this month! And I couldn’t be a prouder Mama. I remember the day we launched the first beta site, a few of us huddled around a computer monitor, anxiously watching to see if anyone would come. We were thrilled to have 7,000 unique visitors on that first day. Today, our small team has grown (but not by much!) and our readers have multiplied to... Read more
Part 1 : Progressive Reflections on Traditional Christian Themes One day I received an e-mail from a representative of SONday Distributors. The company had a special deal “for churches only” on “a great Bible.” For just ten dollars each (regular $40 value), we could get a shipment of ANSWER Bibles. That’s right—the ANSWER Bible. Their goal, she wrote, was “to plant a Bible in 10,000 homes, organizations, and establishments in communities across America.” She wanted churches to make a commitment... Read more
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