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Reimagining Church: Emerging Theologies

Visioning a future church for the now; creating communities centered on Christ, cosmic good, and conscientious living.

Books

Abundant Lives | A Progressive Christian Ethic of Flourishing (Udis-Kessler)          bell hooks' Spiritual Vision: Buddhist, Christian, and Feminist     Beyond Justification     Book cover image: Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes          Christianity in Blue: How the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Theology Shape Progressive Identity     The Church in the Public: A Politics of Engagement for a Cruel and Indifferent Age     Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred     don murray     Do I Stay Christian?     Faith After Doubt     Faith, Class, and Labor     BL_AFaithOfManyRooms_Cover_9781506481456c     Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves     The Gospel according to James Baldwin: What America’s Great Prophet Can Teach Us about Life, Love, and Identity          The Half Known Life by Pico Iyer               John Pavlovitz; Pavlovitz; palvovitz; plavlovitz; jon Pavlovitz; john Pavlovitz book; Pavlovitz book; john Pavlovitz books; Pavlovitz books; new Pavlovitz; new john Pavlovitz; new Pavlovitz book; new Pavlovitz books; new john Pavlovitz book; new john Pavlovitz books; stuff that needs to be said; stuff that needs to be said blog; stuff that needs to be said book; spiritual none; spiritual nones; religious none; religious nones; if god is love; If god is love book; if god is love Pavlovitz; if god is love john Pavlovitz; if god is love Pavlovitz book; if god is love john Pavlovitz book; if god is love don’t be a jerk; if god is love, don’t be a jerk; if god is love dont be a jerk; if god is love, don’t be a jerk; finding faith that makes us better; finding a faith that makes us better humans; Christian living book; Christian living books; progressive Christian; progressive Christians; progressive Christianity; progressive Christian book; progressive Christianity book; progressive Christianity books; the church of not being horrible; how to be a better Christian; being a better Christian; Christian left; the Christian left; progressive Christian author, progressive Christian authors; john Pavlovitz twitter; john Pavlovitz facebook; Pavlovitz twitter; john Pavlovitz facebook; john Pavlovitz trump; john Pavlovitz Wikipedia; who is john Pavlovitz; john Pavlovitz author; john Pavlovitz blog; john Pavlovitz quotes; johnpavlovitz.com; john Pavlovitz bio; pastor john Pavlovitz youtube; liberal christian; liberal christianity; liberal christian book; liberal christianiy books; progressive religion; progressive religion books; F2021     In My Grandmother's House: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit          Jesus and the Abolitionists: How Anarchist Christianity Empowers the People          Just Faith: Reclaiming Progressive Christianity          Let the Light In          Life's Too Short to Pretend You're Not Religious: Reframed and Expanded     Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness  -     By: Ilia Delio     The Mystics Would Like a Word by Shannon K. Evans     The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole     Open: Unorthodox Thoughts on God and Community     Post-Traumatic Jesus     BL_PsalmsOfMyPeople_Cover_9781506479026c     Radical Kinship: A Christian Ecospirituality     Reading the Margins: Encounters with the Bible in Literature     Red Lip Theology by Candice Marie Benbow     The Relational Power of God     Cover Image               Cover for The Sins of Scripture     BL_SurvivingGod_Cover_9781506495781c     There Is No God and Mary Is His Mother: Rediscovering Religionless Christianity     Thy Queendom Come: Breaking Free from the Patriarchy to Save Your Soul     In Trembling Boldness: Wisdom for Today from Ancient Jesus People          What If Jesus Was Serious About Heaven?: A Visual Guide to Experiencing  God's Kingdom Among Us - With God Daily     What Is Heaven? What Is Hell? | Reflections on Ultimate Concerns          Cover for Why Christianity Must Change or Die

     Is Was     Mother God     Picturing God

Artistic Expressions

United Seminary solicited line drawings from community members to celebrate LGBTQ History Month. You can download the Queer Theofuturism Coloring Book for free!

Webinars

CONVERGENCE offers numerous leadership and community development webinars on-demand or in a cohort:

Engaging Christianities and Socialisms — The Wendland-Cook Program in  Religion and Justice

Register for upcoming webinars here.

Watch previous webinars here.

Studies

Religionless Studios was inspired by the musings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian and activist, who imagined a “Religionless Christianity” – A Christianity that captured the heart of Christ’s teachings without all of the dogma and doctrines that religion has added.

Religionless Studios hopes to continue to imagine and embody this “Religionless Christianity” by creating a progressive and liberative Bible commentary. 

Every Sunday (starting October 6th), leaders on Progressive Christianity's YouTube channel will move verse by verse through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures to interpret it through the lens of Liberation Theology. 

In addition to their weekly video Bible commentary, people can gain access to Progressive Christian resources (devotionals, study guides, and digital community) through Progressive Christianity's Patreon.

Womanist biblical scholar, the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, shares Biblical Language for a God who Transcends Gender - along with pretty much every book, blog post, and article she's written.

This TheoEd lecture by Dr. Gafney is a marvelous introduction to this scholarship.

UnClobber, Expanded Edition with Study Guide

Blogs, Podcasts, & Articles

A People's Theology | Podcast on SpotifyMason Mennenga (he/him/his) is an aspiring theologian, podcaster, YouTuber, and the Internet’s youth pastor.

He is the podcast host of A People’s Theology. A People’s Theology explores inspiring and liberating theologies that transform you and the world.

He is also the podcast host of The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine. In this podcast, he and his co-host and best friend, Cullen, interview musicians, artists, and other creatives about their art, life, faith, and much more.

 

In the left image we see open hands. In the middle image we see an old stone building with an open doorway, through the doorway we see a pathway leading off into distant beauty. In the right image we see another set of open hands receiving clear water as it drips from above.

Week Forty-Five: Interfaith Friendships: Daily Meditations exploring the fruitfulness of interfaith friendships.

 Only Love Is Absolute

ImageMatthew Fox offers a lovely collection of Poems to the Mother.

Mary the Tower

by Diana Butler Bass

What would Christianity be like if Mary Magdalene hadn't been hidden from view?

Learning How to See Podcast with Brian McLaren, Jacqui Lewis and Richard Rohr

Daily Meditations spent a week considering Images of God.

Matthew Fox regularly reflects on the Cosmic Christ and Deep Ecumenism.

“Reflection of the Cosmic Moment” window by Doyle Chappell, inspired by The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, at aChurch4Me, Metropolitan Community Church, Chicago. Published with permission of the artist.

Matthew Fox on Nicolas of Cusa on Multiple Names for God and Naming the Divine, continued.

\Barbara Holmes, Untitled 2 (detail), 2021, photograph, United States.

Richard Rohr spent a week Contemplating Creation - short, daily devotionals to help us see and develop awareness of our oneness with creation.

Rev. Dr. Cameron Trimble, reflecting on how our words/language create our realities, encourages us to Say What You Mean.

Rev. Dr. Michael Piazza encourages us to reconsider our Sunday school - and adult - approach to reading, understanding, and interpreting the Word of God / the Bible in Liberation Word: Is God Still Speaking?

Shuck and Jive: Progressive and Progressing Spirit

Refiguring the Birth of Christ, but Toni Reynolds, July 5, 2018 illuminate the need to reimagine theology for our time and context.

The “Heresy Is Good” podcast is about fighting back against evangelicals’ disinformation and distortion of the gospel. It addresses their hypocrisy and ignorance of Christian history, and examines why people who couldn’t even see through the transparent lies of Donald Trump, culminating in the “Big Lie,” believe that they are somehow the spiritually enlightened ones qualified to interpret Christ for the world.

In Our Library

51% Christian: Finding Faith after Certainty     Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom,  Persistence, and Strength: Kat Armas: 9781587435089: Books          The Age of the Spirit | Baker Publishing Group          34564368. sy475      Cover for Choosing Our Religion               Emergence Christianity: What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters:  Phyllis Tickle: 9780801013553 - Christianbook.com          Faith in the Face of Empire - Orbis Books     Faith Shift by Kathy Escobar          Flipped : The Provocative Truth That Changes Everything We Know about God          The God We Never Knew               The Great Spiritual Migration by Brian D. Mclaren          How (Not) to Speak of God     The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction:  Rollins, Peter: 9781451609028: Amazon.com: Books     Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guide               Making Paper Cranes: Toward an Asian American Feminist Theology     Original Blessing by Matthew Fox     Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith         9780819229038: New Clothes: Putting on Christ and Finding Ourselves     Re-Membering and Re-Imagining  -     Edited By: Nancy J. Berneking, Pamela Carter Joern               210215_FrontCover-01.png     Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don't Belong To     True Inclusion     velvet-elvis               

Studies - In Our Library

The Answer to Bad Religion Is Not No Religion     The Answer to Bad Religion Is Not No Religion - Leader's Guide     Slow Church     Slow Church Study Guide