What started as a silly exclamation after drinking at the pub one night turned into two major projects that I undertook at seminary. The exclamation – interjected as a group of us at Union Theological Seminary discovered a mutual love of musical theater – was “we should do a Broadway Revue!” A few months later, we …
When I was a kid, along with A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the TV lineup would include the movie The Greatest Story Ever Told. It wasn’t my favorite of these sweeping Hollywood Bible epics – I much preferred the big arms of Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments or …
Over at Quest for Meaning, David Breeden made the case for Unitarian Universalism being a Do It Yourself religion. He writes: We do well to draw a sharp line between the subjectivity of religious experience and the objectivity of a congregational, corporate life together. Where I get my personal religious jolt is up to me—Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, …
A quick note today: At the Union Forum, I shared some thoughts on the quickly changing perspectives on LGBTQ issues… Enjoy!
I recently studied American Theological Liberalism with Gary Dorrien, and was quite taken by a chapter (from Dorrien’s The Making of American Liberal Theology, Volume 1) on the social gospelers. As I read the chapter, I found myself saying “amen” to Walter Rauschenbusch’s understanding of Christianity, that Jesus’s message was that the personal and the political …
A few weeks ago, I attended a Women at Union dinner in the home of Dean Mary Boys; during the evening, 15 smart, capable, and energetic women shared stories and raised questions about bringing the lessons we learn at Union about creating community, asking hard questions, and general ideas about liberal theology back into the …
Betina was exhausted. As a beat cop in a small town, she had spent her day answering a series of difficult calls – domestic disturbances, a bar fight, and a car chase over a broken tail light. All she wanted to do was go home, take a bath, snuggle her kids, and watch American Idol. …
After the service Sunday, we had a small group conversation – what some congregations call a talkback but which Saratoga calls “church chat.” It was a lively discussion about the series of sermons I just wrapped up on God – over three weeks, I talked about the transcendent, the immanent, and the creating-creator aspects of the Divine …
Listen here. In my first semester of seminary, I took a course in systematic theology from Dr. James Cone, known as the father of black liberation theology. Dr. Cone is a force of nature – a slight black man from the backwoods of Arkansas, with incredible passion and intellect, and who at age 73 can …
Listen here. Last week, we started cobbling together our own universal translators. Unlike the Star Trek universe that Gene Roddenberry created, we aren’t equipped to automatically understand the many different languages of many cultures, and even if we were, we wouldn’t always know what people really meant. What we know is that real communication relies …
Listen here. Many things would be a lot easier if we lived in the Star Trek universe. You see, in the Star Trek universe, it is important to be able to communicate with sentient beings from other planets and galaxies – in English, of course – and thus, Gene Roddenberry created a universe where everyone …
I am pretty sure I was not the only person headed for a pulpit this morning who let out an extra moan after hearing the verdict in the Zimmerman trial. In the midst of weeping for the Martin family, for our young black men, and the failed justice system…and after a while weeping also for …
I would like to tell you a couple of stories. The first involves an artist; she became the director of a non-profit arts organization that uses primarily volunteers in a small, tight-knit community. As part of her contract, she was given two years to complete a list of goals that included viability of the organization, …
It seems that one of the debates we have in our denomination is between the theists and the humanists: theists long to express their various perspectives on God through worship, prayer, and praise – and stop with all the shrieking; while humanists want moral and ethical arguments without all the “God talk” that we came …
I learned this week that I am a radical Universalist. I credit David Bumbaugh for this. In his book Unitarian Universalism: A Narrative History, Bumbaugh spends 20 pages outlining the beginnings of the Universalist church in America, from deBenneville’s sermons preached across Pennsylvania; to the founding of the first Univeralist church by Murray in Gloucester, …