The Progressive Sacred

26/07/2024

Writing is an act of vulnerability, so when someone reads your writing closely and responds positively, the gratification runs deep. Recently, a European friend wrote this to us about The Great Open Dance:

What am I called to do? That's the question for me. And how can I know? How do I listen? God wants us to sing, laugh, weep together... "Kairos is the experience of time doing what God intends it to do - allowing relationship, instantiating the holy, expressing the sacred, creating space for beauty, inviting us to sing, dance, weep and laugh." This is still one of the most powerful sentences I've ever read. It quite literally changed my life. . . . I'm closing for now. I really really wish your views become the standard within Christian theology one day. Churches in Western Europe would bloom again, I'm sure of it. People are spiritually lost here, not that they aren't well-meaning or trying to do what's right, but they are stumbling around trying to find all the answers within themselves and the best of them are getting cynical. It's heartbreaking.

23/06/2024

05/06/2024

Jurgen Moltmann, 1926-2024, one of the finest theologians of our age, for whom we are deeply grateful.

30/05/2024

Please pray for the safety of the judge and jurors.

24/05/2024

Friends, this is the description from the back cover of my book: The Great Open Dance offers a progressive Christian theology that endorses contemporary ideals: environmental protection, economic justice, racial reconciliation, interreligious peace, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ celebration. Just as importantly, this book provides a theology of progress—an interpretation of Christian faith as ever-changing and ever-advancing into God’s imagination. Faith demands change because Jesus of Nazareth started a movement, not a tradition. He preached about a new world, the Kingdom of God, and invited his followers to work toward the divine vision of universal flourishing. This vision includes all and excludes none. Since we have not yet achieved the world that Jesus describes, we must continue to progress. The energizing impulse of this progress is the Trinity: Abba, Jesus, and Sophia, three persons united by love into one perfect community. God is fundamentally relational, and humankind, made in the image of God, is relational as a result. We are inextricably entwined with one another, sharing a common purpose and a common destiny. In this vision, we find abundant life by practicing agape, the universal, unconditional love that Abba extends, Jesus reveals, and Sophia inspires.

16/05/2024

Dear friends, one of our podcasters, Jon Paul Sydnor, has published The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology. The book is comprehensively progressive, celebrating LGBTQ+ identity, feminism, egalitarianism, and universalism, all from a Christian perspective. It also refers extensively to Buddhist and Hindu thought to flesh out some of these new ideas. We hope that the book will hearten progressive Christians everywhere. If interested, please consider buying the book through bookshop.org, an online service that supports independent, local booksellers.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-great-open-dance-jon-paul-sydnor/21449784?ean=9781666775150&sscid=51k8_ivpma&utm_source=ShareASale&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=553813&utm_term=1535322

The Great Open Dance offers a progressive Christian theology that endorses contemporary ideals: environmental protection, economic justice, racial reconciliation, interreligious peace, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ celebration. Just as importantly, this book provides a theology of progress--an interpr...

21/03/2024

Violence is unholy, and Good Friday should be called Bad Friday.

https://www.gracecommunityboston.org/blog?fbclid=IwAR1o3CHAGkkyFMrEHfQl0Fp6qjaflFKZgKo9BJsAzzidCSrA0lNRcaxU5uw

There’s nothing like a bloody, anguished Jesus to ruin your religious experience as a child. Did I just say that out loud? Yes I did. If you need to read the above sentence again, please do. On...

19/01/2024

Yes John Fugelsang!