The most important historical development in the last 200 years was not the splitting of the atom or the invention of the internal combustion engine or the spread of the computer chip, but the advent of a new religious mode.

The most illuminating person that I have known personally, my mentor for 24 years, Joseph W. Mathews,  first called this history-changing event  “the advent of the secular religious.”  The four-day course that he and we who were his colleagues  taught to thousands of clergy began with a lecture on the cultural revolution.  The heart of that lecture was on what we called “the secular revolution.”  In that talk we spelled out how the ancient two-story metaphorical thinking is being replaced by living in one and only one  realm of reality.  In that talk we also noted how the imagery of angels and demons was being replaced by imagery about historically unfolding relationships. We opened that course for religious leaders with this talk because we claimed that this revolution in religious sensibilities set the context for the renewal of Christianity and every other religion that one might want to renew.

Continue reading The Secular Religious Revolution →

When the disciples of Jesus asked for help with prayer, Jesus, so the tradition goes, gave them a model prayer.  Simone Weil claimed that this familiar set of six petitions includes everything that any true prayer includes.
(“. . . we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained within it.” – from the last paragraph of  her essay “Concerning the Our Father”)

Our Father who art in heaven

These opening words indicate to whom we are praying.  We are addressing the sire of our existence,  the womb of our origin,  the beyond of the beyond of the beyond.  That Jesus chose the metaphor “father” rather than “mother” does not mean a contempt of women.  It means that he lived in the first Century, not the twenty-first.  Also, Jesus did not think of God as a human-built model of human values.  God was sheer Mystery –  the Unknowable Unknown without beard or penis, breasts or vagina.  For this enigmatic Source of our existence, Jesus used the word “Papa” rather than “sire” or “womb” or “enigma,” not because he knew  something  about  the  nature  of  God,  but because  his relationship with this Final Source was familial.  He trusted this Final Source of everything to be for him.  He considered himself offspring of  this Ultimate Parenting.  He gave up his right to judge this Final Source and assumed that all that came toward  him  from that Source  was  good  for  him and for everyone.  “Papa” (abba) was a devotional word, not a description of God.

Continue reading Teach Us to Pray →

Witnessing love may be the most important skill for organizing and anchoring a vital circle of Resurgent Christian nurture and mission.  Witnessing love can be defined as being a “means of grace” to one another in our Circle and to other persons with whom we make contact.

“Grace,” as this word is used in the letters of the apostle Paul, is an event that happens to us.  In his sermon “You Are Accepted,” Paul Tillich describes the happening of “grace” as an experience of reunion with Reality, an event that has three parts: (1) an awakening to our estrangement from Reality, (2) a dawning of our welcome home to Reality, and (3) a choice to accept and live this welcome.

Continue reading Witnessing Love →

A sketch of the Christian story

Jesus did not establish a religion; he was and remained a Jew for his whole life.  We know this from the earliest New Testament writings.  For Jesus there was no New Testament, no Christian religious practice, and no intimation that there ever would  be.  Rather, in his own being he felt the dawn of a new day for humanity as a whole.  He proclaimed the advent of a New Adam, a New Humanity, the coming of a “Kingdom” on Earth characterized by a direct experience of the Eternal here and how.  This down-to-Earth yet Eternal dawning meant the advent of a humanity that Trusted “Mysterious Reality” as a loving father; that Loved Mysterious Reality, self, and others unconditionally; that experienced a Freedom that gave immediate authority rooted in our true personal depths (our authenticity) rather than in the traditions and laws of scribes and moral teachers.   He saw in his own ministry the dawning of this Eternal Kingdom among those whose lives were being healed.  He signaled the coming of an Eternally initiated restoration of authenticity for all humanity, not just for that part that would call themselves “Christians.”

Continue reading From Jesus and Paul to You and Me – A Religious History →

 A dialogue by Gene Marshall with John Shelby Spong’s essay
Tribal Religion: Recasting the Christian Message for Century 21

I have recently read the presentation/essay by John Shelby Spong on Tribal Religion. I count it as one of the best essay’s I have read by Spong. I agree entirely with Spong’s critique of what he means by “tribal religion,” namely the popular religion of our times (or any times) in which people worship their nation, their religious group, their gender, their race, their sexual orientation, and then project the quality of that group upon the cosmos or upon the God of the Bible, and call that projection of their own selves, “God.” Continue reading Beyond Tribal Religion to the God of the Bible →

Let us suppose that you have already decided that the first priority of your life is Spirit maturity.  Let us suppose that you are like that man in Jesus’ parable that found a valuable treasure hidden in a field and then sold all that he had to buy that field.  Let us suppose that for you Spirit maturity is like that treasure; it claims priority over all else.

Secondly, let us suppose that you have decided to make Christianity your religious home.  There are many good reasons for doing this: familiarity, experience of its healing strengths, or simply finding in this heritage the Spirit poetry with which you have (for whatever reasons) fallen in love.

Next, a third decision comes into view.  What sort of Christian religious community do you need?  The Symposium on Christian Resurgence for Century Twenty-One came into being to focus on this issue.  This research group has given a name to the Christian community needed: “The Christian Resurgence Circle.”  What is the Christian Resurgence Circle?  It is the Circle you need.  If it is not the Circle you need, it is not the Christian Resurgence Circle. Continue reading The Christian Circle You Need →

Here is my greeting for the season: May the Dark Nights of Advent prepare you and yours in becoming fertile soil for that tiny candlelight of Christmas that can become a fire upon the Earth.

We seldom celebrate Advent anymore. Only a few of us light some purple candles and remember that the four weeks before Christmas were traditionally dedicated to the theme of coming to terms with how shit, piss, puss, slime awful the world situation actually is. Continue reading The Dark Nights of Advent →

Progressive Christians are achieving great clarity about the historical development of the Bible and about viewing biblical passages in a metaphorical rather than a literal way. Using the word “God,” however, continues to be an area of unclarity and outright confusion.

It is, I believe, helpful to begin with H. Richard Niebuhr’s insight that the word “God” is a devotional word, much like the word “sweetheart.” “Sweetheart” points to a particular person, but it also expresses a quality of relationship. Similarly, the word “God” includes the meanings of loyalty, commitment, trust, friendship, and passionate devotion. At the same time, “God,” as used in the Bible, points to an actual experience, an actual encounter with, how shall we say it, the Ground of our Being; the Mystery, Depth, and Greatness of our lives; Final Reality; Reality as a Whole; the Mystery that will not go away. Continue reading God and Progressive Christianity →