Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Tuesday, May 10, 2022

Being a Radical Church of Refuge and Inclusivity




The primary goal of radical inclusivity is
not to imitate or change the mainline church.
But rather to BE the church.




* * * * * * *

A Radical Democracy
by R.E. Slater


        Like a church's misdirected eschatology
of a Jesus ever coming
            in wroth and judgment -
                    as misguided Savior
                            into a misguided world

            so too is democracy's
                    languished hopefulness -
                            of a radical inclusivity
                        built on love

        to all, for all, as right and truth,
 measured not by arrival,
            but by preparedness,
                    need and wont, released
                            tears of oppression 

    sought by faithful congregants
        ever hopeful - and in their hope
                ever moving - towards a better
            becoming - a more improbable probable,

                       filled by anguished hopefulness,
                of a realized unreality gone wrong 
        built in healing and helps,
justice and equalities,
    washed in necessary sacrifice

        be-speaking
    what purposeful democracy
            might become
                    before men and women

            old and young
        bearing in their arms,
                by words and deeds,
        love and care
    and peace

for their fellow man
        laid into radical communities
    built of love - not wroth,
                grace - not injustice,

        to all, for all,
            as right and truth,
                    light and life,
                            as being becomed


R.E. Slater
May 10, 2020

"Democracy, like justice, is always ‘to come’, à venir." 
- Jacques Derrida

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved


* * * * * * *


The Age of Man in the Age of Christ
by R.E. Slater


Freedom isn't free when conservatives keep bludgeoning it to death.

Per the Supreme Court's alleged removing of Roe v Wade in support of the fetus over the mother's individual rights (May 2022) we are seeing in America a rolling stone gather power and energy in the denial against all non-conservative individual rights - whether racial, ethnic, gender/sex, color, religion, etc. Trumpian "rights" are no rights except for Trumpian followers.

This also goes to Trumpian interpreters of the American Constitution...

Rather than seeing individual liberty and equalities rise as the conservatives bemoaned during the period of Covid masking during 2020-2021, we see those same rights denied by alt-right movements across the United States.

In effect, we are seeing a return to 17th century church-based mendacities by appointed conservative "Constitutionalists" who are now imposing Enlightenment Era laws and thinking upon postmodern societies.

Remember, a "Living Constitution" goes with the times and the eras of a nation in the best of its forms and fashions when envisioning societal justice and equalities - including environmental justice and equality for ALL living things!

Conservatives however, seem to be opposed to the liberties and consitutionalities of the living, and are actively tearing down, breaking, harming, and destroying life in the best of White Christian nationalism.

"Trumpian conservatives are exactly opposite their self-righteous proclamations as they proclaim themselves "pro-lifers." Ironically, these radical rightists are speaking death into society, not life, as they think they are doing.

Death not only in the hearts of others they would deny life too but also including the God they worship, who has been made in the image of an unholy and unsanctified religion. A hateful religion forgetting its role of love and ministry for the greater temporal glory of religious and political power usurped from the hands of God's very Self.


R.E. Slater
May 10, 2022


* * * * * * *



And Death Shall Go Before Them
by R.E. Slater


"And death shall go before them
by those who bear not
the life of creation.
These ignorant, self-serving,
lies bear darkness and evil
across the lives
of the destitute
all their evil days."


R.E. Slater
May 10, 2022

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved


* * * * * * *




Embracing a theology of acceptance
means a radical inclusivity
which leaves no one behind.





The primary goal of radical inclusivity is
not to imitate or change the mainline church.
But rather to BE the church.





* * * * * * *

What It Means to be the Church

by R.E. Slater

Rarely has the church led societies in solidarity of human rights in "free" countries unless they are left-leaning faiths witnessing the injustices of racisms being experienced by its non-majority fellowships.

However, it is quite the opposite experience in authoritarian, despotic or imperialistic countries where the church, or majority religions like Islam or Buddhism, have actively protested for liberty and freedom of their people. From China to Poland, across South America and Africa, we see church demonstrations against apartheidism, socialism, communism, racism, white supremacy, etc.

Western democracies, especially hardline capitalistic democracies, are just as evil. for which the conservative right-leaning American churches must take note. As church fellowships you are either with the people in your community or against them when seeking the favor of corrupt fascist governments posing as "Keepers of Democracy."

To all churches -
  • Be good shepherds...
  • Be discerning community leaders...
  • Lead your flocks rightly in truth, love, peace, and honesty...
  • Put away from you the world's corruptions and embrace light over darkness, love over hate, and justice for all...
  • Especially to those whom you despise and preach against with ill will.
The sanctimonious church's mythical idealisms which are preached from their "purified bible" are hated in their dogmas and their statements both by God and by man. Such aberrant "bible truths" are social inhumanitarian evils disguised in sheep's clothing. The wolf is in the statements of hate over love themselves created to separate, rather than to blend, one's faith from "the radical other" chosen to be vilified rather than be loved.

God is love.
  • Be love, not evil, in your faith.
  • A faith which follows Jesus cannot come from man's evil heart.

R.E. Slater
May 10, 2022

* * * * * * *








And death shall have no dominion
by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.



* From The Poems of Dylan Thomas.
Copyright © 1943 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
All rights reserved.


Meaning of Poem

‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’ is a enlightened look at the ways in which death controls mankind and the fact that even though death is powerful, it cannot control everything.

Mankind has the power to stand up against any of the evils of death, and become unified through their moving to the next world:
  • Death does not divide but brings together equally all those that lived apart.