In my last post, I mentioned that in the mid-1990s the Friends of Jesus community in Wichita, Kansas produced a white paper on their biblical understanding of gay and lesbian Christians. A commenter asked whether a copy of this document is still available. It is! The following is a statement prepared by the Friends of …
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TL;DR: Post-Evangelicals are one of the most important religious groups that are shaping America today. In many ways, I wish I was one, because I’d like to take part in the conversation. In this piece, I explain my experience as a child of some very early post-Evangelicals who got pushed out of the Evangelical Quaker …
We have a national religion in a America, and it’s not Christianity. We saw it on display Tuesday night, when all three branches of government gathered together for the greatest annual act of public liturgy that exists in our society. The State of the Union address is a high holy day of the American state, …
I had a friend contact me recently, asking me some tough questions. He wanted to know why I am preaching a message of radically following Jesus, while at the same time authoring an ebook about traditional Quaker worship. Isn’t this a contradiction? Why am I promoting a particular denominational heritage when my core message is …
Would it surprise you to know that it took an atheist to help me encounter God? Albert Camus was a self-described unbeliever, yet his philosophy is profoundly apocalyptic. His writing seeks to remove the veil from our sleepy, everyday lives, exposing the unspoken anxiety that lies beneath. Camus’ philosophy centers around the idea of the …
For early Quakers, heaven wasn’t a far-off kingdom floating in the clouds. It wasn’t a distant time and place, standing in stark contrast to present-day, historical reality. When Quakers said that Christ is here to teach us himself, this was just a new way of saying, repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near to …
Yeah, you read me right. If you want to be a real conservative, you might want to consider supporting LGBT equality in the church. Let me explain. In the debate around LGBT equality, almost everyone I know labels an affirming stance as progressive or liberal, while a non-affirming stance is considered conservative or traditional. I …
Read more “Are you Conservative enough to embrace Gay Christians?”