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Progressive Christian

2025-03-07T17:52:54-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A Lenten Time Change–How are you doing?

Last updated on: March 7, 2025 at 5:52 pm By Vance Morgan

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For many of us, Daylight Saving Time began this morning at 2:00 am. This year’s version of “spring forward.” I’m going to go out on a limb and embrace the controversy that I know is to come: I like time changes. I like changing to standard time in the late fall, with nightfall earlier each day as we inch toward the winter solstice. For entirely different reasons, I appreciate springing forward on the night DST begins (even though we lose... Read more

2025-03-02T17:32:53-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Helping to Repair a Broken World

Last updated on: March 2, 2025 at 5:32 pm By Vance Morgan

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I love the liturgy and prayer book of the Episcopal Church (which I’ve been doing on and off for 40 years), but I’ve encountered a couple of things at the Lutheran church with Jeanne lately that I greatly appreciate. For instance, the church she attends begins with this confession of sin: Merciful God, you speak blessing and compassion into the world. Forgive us for the ways we act with judgment, cruelty, or indifference. We ignore the needs of our neighbors;... Read more

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2025-03-05T12:06:35-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Prayer and the Middle Voice: A Different Way to Speak to God

Last updated on: March 5, 2025 at 12:06 pm By Vance Morgan

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Over the past several months I have occasionally accompanied Jeanne to a local Lutheran church where has been a regular for a while. They are in between pastors; the interim pastor is a “retired” Lutheran minister who stepped into the void which in many churches can take a long time to fill. Pastor Dan is a gifted sermonizer, courageous in his public commitment to justice, and a person whom I intend to get to know better over the coming weeks.... Read more

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2025-03-03T12:31:51-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

When God Is Silent: N.T. Wright on Lament and Faith

Last updated on: March 3, 2025 at 12:31 pm By Vance Morgan

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When the Spirit Groans In a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts, “Everything Happens,” Kate Bowler interviewed one of the great Christian theologians of his generation, N. T. Wright. I’ve always thought of Wright as important, but a bit too conservative for my taste theologian. In my Easter blog post last year, I wrote the following: According to New Testament scholar and theologian N. T. Wright, “The practical, theological, spiritual, ethical, pastoral, political, missionary, and hermeneutical implications of... Read more

2025-02-28T11:46:43-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Longing to be Whole: A Transfiguration Sunday Reflection

Last updated on: February 28, 2025 at 11:46 am By Vance Morgan

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This coming Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Each of the synoptic gospels, including today’s lectionary reading from Matthew, tells essentially the same story. Jesus takes his inner circle of Peter, James, and John to the top of a mountain where suddenly Jesus has a conversation with Moses and Elijah, while “his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.” The disciples are understandably frightened, but Peter still... Read more

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2025-02-22T11:45:49-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What is the Best Proof for the Existence of God?

Last updated on: February 22, 2025 at 11:45 am By Vance Morgan

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Man is in his actions and practices, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue I run into issues related to storytelling all the time on this blog. Although the name of the blog is “Freelance Christianity,” and it is published on Patheos’ “Progressive Christian” channel, I regularly attract comments from readers who do not fit those categories by any stretch of the imagination. Occasionally, someone using arguments and language I recognize from my... Read more

2025-02-22T11:22:22-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What Happens When We Pray?

Last updated on: February 22, 2025 at 11:22 am By Vance Morgan

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In her spiritual memoir Still, Lauren Winner begins a brief chapter on prayer by noting that “it is easier to read about prayer than to pray” (tell me about it), then describes the results of a fifty-year-old study of children and prayer, the aim of which was to discover how children’s concepts of prayer evolve as they grow older. The results of the study reveal a hierarchy similar to Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, in which children’s ideas about prayer... Read more

2025-02-20T14:10:17-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Joseph, Peter, and Radical Forgiveness

Last updated on: February 20, 2025 at 2:10 pm By Vance Morgan

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The reading from the Jewish scriptures for this coming Sunday is from Genesis 45 when Joseph, after several chapters of making his brothers’ lives miserable, reveals to them that he is indeed their lost brother whom they had sold into slavery when he was but a youngster. The story of Joseph, among other things, is a story of radical forgiveness. In my forthcoming book A Year of Faith and Philosophy, I consider the story of Joseph’s fraught relationship with his... Read more

2025-02-17T09:40:30-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Are You Tired of Being Angry Yet?

Last updated on: February 17, 2025 at 9:40 am By Vance Morgan

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Do not letthe sun go down on your wrath. Ephesians 4:26 Although I have been largely successful in carrying out my commitment to not getting sucked into the daily black hole of bad news since the November election, the daily barrage of bullshit from Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their minions is not easy to completely ignore. Anger and hate, two feelings that are not natural to me, regularly threaten to percolate to the surface. My Facebook acquaintances, whom I... Read more

2025-02-17T12:48:48-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Mystical Faith: Finding Unity in Life’s Brokenness

Last updated on: February 17, 2025 at 12:48 pm By Vance Morgan

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An Abiding Suspicion . . . A mystic is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity. Lawrence Kushner Once several years ago Jeanne and I were in the car listening to the hourly news update on NPR. As usual, they were trying to stuff as much horrible news as possible into a three-minute segment. Ebola, ISIS, Zika, Palestinians, Israel, Istanbul, Russia, illegal immigrants,... Read more

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