The Legacy of Fundamentalism

From time to time, I get asked the question: Why are you so against fundamentalists? Doesn’t this cut against your basic belief that people have a right to believe as they wish in terms of God? Goodness knows your particular conclusions are unique from mainstream ideas.
And there is truth to that. I personally wouldn’t care [...]

Don’t Blame God! (Part IV)

Sometimes when I read or listen to someone tell me why they no longer believe in God, or at least Christianity, I feel so very sad. Sad, because at least in my case, God continued to bug me even when I ignored him in my agnostic splendor.
I’ve come up against a good many “issues” with [...]

Don’t Blame God! (Part III)

Today we continue in our series based on BEattitude’s post, “Losing my religion. Why I recently walked away from Christianity.”
You can visit his blog by linking along the sidebar under the category “atheism.”
I continue to post comments on his blog, not because his posts are particularly intriguing, but that he has a large following [...]

Circling the Sun

Forgive me if this comes out somewhat disjointed. But in order to figure this out I need to set it down. It’s one of those living with the questions type things, and I don’t really expect an answer to be spit out so much as I want to finger the parameters of question.
You see, I [...]

Don’t Blame God! (Part II)

In our first installment, we ended with the question: does this mean the bible is worthless?
The answer is of course not. When we realize that sacred scripture is not God’s handbook of do’s and don’ts, but rather a reflection of ordinary people like ourselves on their walk with God, we are really to grow up [...]

Jesus, Interrupted

I am a huge fan of Bart Ehrman’s, and have reviewed another of his books here, namely the NYTimes, best seller, Misquoting Jesus. He has, as they say, hit another one out of the ball park with his latest book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About [...]

Don’t Blame God! (Part I)

I ran into a blog a few days ago, one that you can link to by following the sidebar link, or by following this one.
The title of the post was “Losing my religion. Why I recently walked away from Christianity.” I read the post which listed twenty reasons why the poster, a “BEattitude” decided that [...]

Doin’ Our Best

Our new rector preached her first sermon to us today. I really liked it. It was of course about the Trinity.
Now some Christians don’t believe in it, and one would be hard pressed to prove it by the Bible. But plenty do believe in it, and if it’s not actually true, well, God missed a [...]

Just Ordinary Words

I’ve been kicking around a couple of ideas for the past twenty-four hours, trying to conflate them into one post. It isn’t working, unless I write a couple of thousand words, and that violates most known rules of blogging. So, I’ll spare you a tome and split the two.
A few days ago, I posted about [...]

Toward a Personal Theology (Part II)

Reality changes at different stages of growth.
Plenty of people will disagree. Reality is as they say, reality. But is this really true? I would say not. First of all, we know from molecular physics that reality is actually very relative. It is relative to location, but most importantly, we learn that the very act [...]

Toward a Personal Theology (Part 1)

I’m often asked (well okay, almost never, but you have to admit it’s a good lead in) what my problem is with fundamentalists.
My answer is not that I have such a serious quarrel with somebody saying there are five or six things one must adhere to in order to be “Christian.” Actually, I do, but [...]

Reasonable and Holy

As I mentioned the other day, we just conducted a short forum discussion at our church on the issue of same-sex marriage. In light of the recent Iowa Supreme Court decision opening the way for same-sex civil marriage, our diocese is suddenly having to grapple with how we will handle it.
We had already been blessings [...]

God Hopes in Ida!

Isn’t she cute? She’s our ancestor of sorts. At least those who have studied her svelte little body seem to think so. She is the most perfectly preserved fossil of an animal that is “linked” to humans ever found. Much better than “Lucy” found about 30 years ago by Don Johanson. Only about 60% of her [...]

Jesus as Action Hero

We’re all pretty accustomed to the idea that God hears our prayers. All of them, instantaneously. We take that for granted. It goes hand in hand with his being omniscient. He knows all things, every single one. Remember how he knows how many sparrows there are, but even more perfectly how many hairs are upon [...]

Is There Spiritual Evolution?

As I mentioned a few days ago, I thought I would re-introduce some themes from my journey in faith that are not based so strictly in Christianity, but reflect a more New Thought orientation. Since I find them utterly compatible with Christian theology, I thought them proper and interesting supplements to our ongoing discussion of [...]