[W]e pray that [this domination-free order] - God’s kingdom - might come on earth every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But we often mis...
Other prophets, other messiahs, came and went in Jesus’ day. Routinely, they died violently at the hands of the pagan enemy. Their movements either died with them, sometimes literally, or transformed...
I propose, then, a no-holds-barred history on the one hand and a no-holds-barred faith on the other. This, I believe, is to live in the uncomfortable real world, where such things do not shout challen...
Fundamentalism itself—whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim—is modern. It is a reaction to modern culture.7 Christian fundamentalism as an identifiable religious movement originated early in the twenti...
Beginning in the seventeenth century, the universe was increasingly thought of as a natural system separate from God. God was thus removed from nature, creating a thorough disenchantment of nature.8Se...
As I follow this path, I discover a Jesus who was not simply an example, even the supreme example, of a mystic or Spirit person, such as one might meet, in principle, in other cultures. I find, rather...
The Christian life is about entering into a relationship with that to which the Christian tradition points, which may be spoken of as God, the risen living Christ, or the Spirit. And a Christian is on...
It is important that children not be taught in such a way that they will later need to unlearn many things. We
About? What’s salvation all about? My answer to that question now, my conviction now: it—Christianity and salvation—is about transformation this side of death. The natural effect of growing up, beginn...
We do not need to choose between them. Our understanding of Jesus’ significance is richer if we see and affirm both the historical Jesus and the canonical Jesus. Both the pre-Easter Jesus and the post...
The terrible truth is that our world has never established peace through victory. Victory establishes not peace, but lull. Thereafter, violence returns once again, and always worse than before. And it...
The relationship among faith, knowledge, and belief is suggested by a story involving the famous depth psychologist Carl Jung. In the last year of his life, he was interviewed for a BBC television doc...
The passion for social justice that we see in the prophets is a protest against systemic evil. Systemic evil is an important notion: it refers to the injustice built into the structures of the system...
That Christian faith is about belief is a rather odd notion, when you think about it. It suggests that what God really cares about is the beliefs in our heads— as if believing the right things is what...
So the issue is not character flaws among the elites. The issue, rather, is a system in which some people sleep on beds made of ivory while others end up being sold for the price of a pair of sandals.
Progressive Christianity is about both negation and affirmation. It rejects biblical inerrancy, literal interpretation, and the beliefs that Jesus died to pay for our sins and that Christianity is the...
One scenario begins by imagining that Jesus heals somebody in a village. What is the likely response, beyond amazement and gratitude? He (and those with him) would be invited to a meal. It is the clas...
Jesus is, for us as Christians, the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like. Radically centered in God and filled with the Spirit, he is the decisive disclosure and epiphany of what...
Jesus died for our sins has been understood. Among some Christians, it is seen as an essential doctrinal element in the Christian belief system. Seen this way, it becomes a doctrinal requirement: we a...
I have been told that the German novelist Thomas Mann defined a myth (a particular kind of metaphorical narrative) as a story about the way things never were, but always are. So, is a myth true? Liter...