Flawed Glass

  This concern may be the most difficult for me to comprehend and may be the biggest barrier in my ability to communicate with and understand people whose religious and political standards and principles are to the right of mine. Without stereotyping everyone to my right, I recall very few times when I have been able to engage any of them in a civil conversation on any topic more wide-ranging than Aunt Myrtle’s hysterectomy. And the deal-breaker almost always is selective literalism and/or selective inerrancy. We all are inconsistent and imperfect in living out our faith and all of us put greater emphasis on some biblical passages than others; but there’s a world of difference between giving emphasis versus absolutizing a verse or passage taken out of context and eliminating or ignoring other related passages. Perhaps the clearest example is the iconic anti-gay passages (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13) and the word, “abomination.” There are significant translation issues within the pri...

  I don’t know if this is ethical or even legal, but I’m going to share a blog, complete and unedited, and properly documented, from one of my spiritual inspirational gurus. In that blog, Franciscan priest and contemplative, Father Richard Rohr reinforces a major theme of my book [1] . The theme is that much of what Western Christianity teaches today reflects a much later understanding than is assumed. Specifically, most of what is taught and preached today is closer to Reformation theologians of the 15 th and 16 th centuries (John Calvin, Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, et. al.) than to the Judeo/Christian Scriptures or the earliest Christian writers (generally called the ‘Patristic’ writers.) There are significant differences. Some specific expressions of Western Christianity today reflect an even narrower approach, reinforcing Reformation theology (primarily Calvinism) as a reaction against Enlightenment thinking that emerged in the late 16 th century and flourished in t...