Life has been a bit of a blur and my blog has been the biggest casualty. Hopefully there are still a few of you out there! This post is just to give you a few updates on what I’m up to. There are more substantive posts coming, I promise, but I will also be throwing in a shorter reflections as well to keep the content interesting and to start conversation. Year Without God: the Documentary During the past year, Tim... Read more
In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Nigeria, religious groups of all types, including Muslim groups, issued statements condemning the violence and attempting to claim the center of their faith for peace. This is an increasingly difficult task. One example of this drew my friend and United Church of Canada minister, Gretta Vosper, newly into the fray. Gretta has written two books in which she calls for a post-theistic expression of church to emerge in our... Read more
A few days ago I had the opportunity to sit down with Michael Shermer in his home to discuss his new book, The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom, which comes out tomorrow. When I heard a few months ago that this book was coming out the first thing that caught my attention, of course, was the title. As a Christian pastor I frequently referred to this expression, popularized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther... Read more
I’ve been asked by quite a few people what books I would recommend for people going through this exploration. It’s a difficult answer to give. Each person’s experience is a bit different–their background and starting point, their primary questions and concerns. These are the books that helped me the most this year as I transitioned out of my faith. This is not a list of the best books of 2014. Most of these books were written well before 2014. My... Read more
My girlfriend, Rebecca Pratt, wrote this today and posted it as a status on her Facebook wall. I asked her permission to share it here because it so beautifully addresses a core part of my past year and answers one of the main questions that people ask about us and our relationship. (Note: for over a year I have tolerated a lot of mean and sometimes inappropriate comments because I didn’t mind it that much. However, I will delete comments that... Read more
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” —T. S. Eliot— A year without God. More pixels have been spilled over the meaning of that expression than any other aspect of this experience. Now that the year is down to its final hours, it makes sense to once again start at the beginning. A year ago I had come... Read more
Several months ago someone asked me whether Christians were trying to win me back. I confessed at that time that there hadn’t been very many. I was surprised and a little disappointed. I suggested that it might be because I was still in that difficult in between space. I suspected that everyone was giving me space to take this journey. I also guessed that when I did begin to say more clearly what my convictions are that more people would weigh in.... Read more
A comment I’ve heard frequently this year, but especially now as the year comes to a close, is this— “You’re not living a year without God. You’re living year without religion.” “You’re not rejecting God. You’re rejecting religion.” For progressive Christians and for the Spiritual-But-Not-Religious types, this gives them to ability to agree with me. As long as I’m only questioning the utility of religion, there is a vast group of Americans ready to say, “Amen!” Another category confusion is... Read more
…of this year, that is. NPR aired a segment tonight that I taped with Arun Rath for All Things Considered. If you haven’t heard it, it’s only 4 1/2 minutes long (click the image below to listen). I said more about my provisional conclusions in this interview than I ever have before. When NPR tweeted the link to the segment a very interesting conversation ensued, dominated by tweets of encouragement and support, some inviting me to try other things, like... Read more
I’m hung over. Not from alcohol. I barely had one glass of wine last night. I’m hung over from Christmas. So much goodness. So much love and sharing and positive feelings. So much wrapping paper and food and people. People. I’m hung over from people, so I’m hiding in an upstairs bedroom writing. Detoxing. Good things in excess can be toxic as well as wonderful. Like wine. And people. And the best people in our lives know when we need... Read more
Year Without God
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