The Choice Before Nations to Love and Forgive

In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't

want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy

and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore." - Peter Mullan

"Either we learn to find our Lord in ordinary, everyday life,

or else we shall never find him." - St. Josemaria Eseriva

I apologize for my inattention to this site. My wife and I have just returned from a very long two week vacation where we travelled and visited many states, their historical & cultural sites, cities, and community events throughout Virginia, Maryland, and the Atlantic coast. In our travels we visited Jefferson's Monticello and walked the length and breadth of Washington D.C.'s memorials  and institutions reminding ourselves once again what America's charter of responsible liberties must mean to our society and world. And when these are rejected to learn first-hand of the horrors of destruction and evil when personal liberties go unobserved as was found when visiting the Civil War cities of Richmond, Petersburg, Gettysburg, the grave sites at Arlington, and the Holocaust Museum.

However, we also discovered thriving ecosystems and communities dedicated to keeping their wildlife preserves and national refuges healthy, green, and flourishing. We swam in the clean waters of the ocean, crossed its many bays and rivers, and felt the commerce of communities trying to figure out the most responsible forms of government, industry, and society with one another. But we also saw the vast interiors of our country struggling with their own remnants of once-glorious days where industry and services were fewer and far between. Where industry once had been in the coal mining towns of the Alleganies and now closed forcing townships and local communities to recreate themselves. Perhaps through a renewed dedication to agriculture and clean water, to the land, to their history, to creating a bit of Eden hidden from the world at large. In our travels we observed much, talked to as many as we could, and learned from each their hopes and dreams and aspirations.

We are now back home and in the month ahead I will attempt to catch up where I had left off several weeks ago. In the meantime I would encourage readers to read through the many sidebars I've worked on over the years on hundreds of topics devoted to a progressive, humanitarian, postmodern outlook of the world, the church, its doctrines, and ourselves.

Persecution and Oppression by the Christian Church

The Next Chapter

For myself, as well as for other Christians and non-Christians alike, I am interested in pursuing a Christianity that is contemporary, post-modern, and progressive. It must be Jesus-centered as much as I am able to discern what that compass means - and not centered in our beliefs about the bible or our doctrines emphasizing God's glory and judgments over His love and reconciliation of mankind. Our understanding of God's grace, love, and forgiveness must fill all our churches and their personal creeds and confessions without threatening unbelievers with authoritarian promises of divine wrath, judgment, and hell. For myself, as for many others, God is a God of love. Not a God of wrath and judgment. A God who reconciles and redeems. Not a God who separates and divides wheat from tare, sheep from goat, righteous from unrighteous. Nay, sin and evil does this separating, even sinful man, not God.

And it is this observation that the gospels make and not the incorrect teachings that God does this. He has given the world the gift of free will by decree. He will not control our free will. It is a free will that is the exact copy of His own free will. Which means He cannot interfere with our choices should we chose the darker sides of our natures that are not freeing. Not recreating. But what God can do is actively guide us towards making better choices; who can aide us in directing us to the free will gifts of others willing to help, heal, counsel, and provide; who can open up opportunities of nurture and nourishment from earth's bounty; who leads us unto green pastures and still waters of His blessings and away from the wastelands of our baser wants and needs. God is a nourishing, enriching, empowering God of creation and re-creation. This picture of God is vastly different from the church's fractured picture of a God dedicated to wrath and judgment. Dedicated to hell and anger. And how do we know that God is a God of love and forgiveness? Because He came and died for our sins and empowerment of recreation. He did not come to divide and "cleanse." He is a God of example as much as the Almighty God of Life and Light. He has given us Himself by right of creation and is dedicated to redeeming a world fallen unto its own depravities. A world refusing His grace gifts of beauty and wonder. This is the God I know and wish to tell of.

A Fractured World

As an American citizen, our political season this year and last (2015-2016: Trump v. Clinton) has tested the church in the areas of who and what God is, wants, and does. The media is filled with the harsh, unloving, and divisive political speeches by some of our more popular candidates for election who have demonstrated in their speech how far astray our society has come from God's ways and means. A God who is driven by love and mercy not judgment and war, not discrimination and racism, not inequality and oppression. When the church is on the wrong side of these issues the people of God must cry out and say "NO!" We cannot go in these directions regardless the nominee, the party, or the platforms! And so, I've have been spending a lot of time politicizing the gospel in its humanitarian outreach to the world. Not here at Relevancy22 but on Facebook where friends and family must be tested in their beliefs and outlooks during these incorrigible times.

For it seems our postmodern world has a few hard choices to make. Yesteryear's establishment politics has been rejected in favor of moving either more to the left - from humanitarian liberalism to (forced societal) neo-liberalism. Or more to the right - from responsible fiscal conservatism to radical (oppressive) conservatism. Each extreme end is radical in its own way even as each forces choices of bondage and oppression through deceptive political policies and ideas which stray from the foundations of America's political charters. Charters which are being worked out by each generation as to their reach and meaning. Imperfect at first, but refining as they go, as American society learns to accept the blending of new races, languages, and cultures into its own images of itself.

The choices of neo-liberalism's socialism from the left, and radical conservatism's fascism on the right, are neither acceptable nor compatible with Amerca's constitutional charters.  A republic which is being tested once again in its liberal democracies dedicated to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights (and Magna Carta, in general), and its Jeffersonian principles, to name but a few. A democracy learning to re-envision what these basic charters of government must mean for today's postmodern world. And why these charters are important documents for today's citizens, immigrants, foreigners, and overseas relationships.

The Oppression of the Church upon the discriminated, the unempowered, the disenfranchised

Political Choices in the Face of Inhumanity

Does America move to a position of isolationism or to a position of responsible global leadership? And if the latter, than how does it withdraw from its past policies of use and abuse of other nations, their national resources, and their peoples, in its need for energy, food, clothing, and housing? Of an ever-guarded war-mindedness constantly making enemies of nations in their titanic struggles to be released from their own bondages, servitudes, holocausts, and inhumanities. We, as the world, have some very difficult choices to make and it is my opinion, along with many others - whether Christian or not - that Jesus' example of love and mercy must become front-and-center if we are to move forward as a world dedicated to the basic democratic principles of liberty, justice, and equality for all.

And so, I have spent this past year focusing on the political consequences of Jesus words to His church, and to mankind, in what it means for a holy God to reconcile the world to Himself using the principles of love, mercy, forgiveness, and hope. I think it means that we must do a far better job at listening to one another; respecting each other's beliefs and convictions; learning to cooperate with one another in healthy ways of personal and societal re-creation; and especially refusing to threaten each other with deceptive fears, lies, and misrepresentations.

If a "postmodern" world is to survive - one where we listen and cooperate with one another - than it must survive from its oppressive extremes, societal fears, cultural prejudices, callous uncaring lifestyles, and selfish preoccupations. This is what "post-postmodernism" means. One where fear and oppression lives and governs - whether from the radical left or the radical right. It is a people or society dedicated to a government where democracy has failed in its consitutional charters and political rights and is replaced by interpretive (or revised) policies of protectionism, isolationism, and global oppression, with the misuse-and-abuse of power that comes with these extreme political ends.

The Oppression of Religion not centered in Jesus' ethics and morals

Now is the Time to Choose For Humanity Not Against It

So I think that God has brought us to this time of national and societal reconciliation. Where we must learn how to behave ourselves towards one another across our continents and many political spectrums. Our choices are to continue i) the world's past 2000 years of nationalism and bondage in the "Christian era" or, ii) the past 4000 years of civilization's struggle to steal, kill, and discriminate between social classes in the "World History" era. Perhaps, these many millenias of sin and evil have led us to the choices today of whether to continue its inhuman oppressions or to begin healing a fractured world yearning for liberty and justice.

Since God has sacrificed Himself to make redemption possible than it is time in our lives to make choices towards living humanely with one another by observing the best of ourselves and not the worse of ourselves. If not, we re-live the pages of the book of Revelation over and over and over, again and again and again. Our inhuman apocalypse is the living Hell we read of, fear, endure, and experience through societal tragedies and inhumanities towards one another. But if Jesus is to come into our societies as promised by the Apostle John to make all things right than we must believe that He has already come and empowered humanity through Jesus' death on the cross. This was the beginning point. It is a point of hope as much as it is a point of reconciliation.

And that it is left to us, the (radical) church, and to those penitents outside the church, who must ride Jesus' white horse of judgment and healing into our Ages of destruction and evil. That we have a choice to grant freedom and justice to one another or to ignore these principles altogether while continuing in our oppressive wars with one another. Whether we continue in our unChrist-like doctrines and beliefs that God is a God of War and not a God or Love. Believing God is a God who divides and conquers as we have done as nations to one another for centuries. Thus making of God an Idol after our own craven image. Or whether God is a God who heals and binds up the wounds of neighbor and stranger. Who comes to provide justice to the oppress; freedom to those chained in bondage; liberty and life to the destitute, poor, homeless, and forgotten.

The Church of God is cautioned to forsake sin and oppression

The Choices We Must Make

My God is this latter and not the fractured God of the former. It is this God I, and others, testify of in the blog pages of our progressive and humanitarian writings of what it means to be a true Christian centered in love, mercy and forgiveness. A God who is rich in the graces of selfless servitude to the help of others desperately seeking love and mercy. Seeking housing, clothing, food, water, medicines, wholeness, and re-creation of ruined ecosystems. It is this God - and these people of God - whom we must be committed to however we think of God in our many beliefs and religions. In our many names of God or many observances of nature's highest principles of humanitarianism.

And finally, I think, we have come to this time in world history that as nations we must make the choice to work and live together with one another in responsible, societally-recreative ways. Where the watchwords are cooperation, tolerance, respect, and selfless service towards one another. If not, we will continue this dehumanizing and ungodly cycle of destruction resulting in the destruction not only of ourselves but of our ecosystem. And when these occur our end has come. Ingloriously. Pathetically. Inhumanely. Because we have rejected our humanity for its inhumanity. Rejected our Creator for something unlike His image. Rejected our future of peace and hope for war and ruin. Religion can do that to people. Especially religions based upon seeing only themselves, their ways, and their beliefs as more important than the life-and-breath of others. It is called oppression. Its called societal suicide. And any religion dedicated to oppression is a wicked thing. Not holy. But wicked.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

August 13, 2016

Embracing the Dark Side of Doubt & Uncertainty

Not many years ago I spent nearly a year held within the black landscapes of doubt and uncertainty. My soul was troubled unlike anything I had ever experienced before and it drove me towards shattering my past before I was allowed to reform/reframe my future. Most curiously was the journey itself in that I didn't mind being in this troubling stage of destruction. I knew it needed to be done. And it needed to be quite thorough. But nor did I go on a "binger" and freak out during this time. I still was a husband and a dad and worker and lay minister with community responsibilities. But underneath to the observing eye there were dark waters and warring storms crashing across my soul.

Worse still was this strong feeling of God's absence. How ironic I thought! How could that be? Because even though there was this deep sense of abandonment of God's Spirit still I knew God was there. Hearing my laments. Knowing the troubles demanding my soul. But perhaps this was Job's experience too. Or, the Psalmist David's. Or really, any of those prophets of the bible who needed to be stretched out and laid bare before God from all the beggardly conformities of this tempestuous life.

Shattered

And so I tarried in this dark land of shattered dreams, unknowing, and personal removal. What I was ,and where I was, before this occurred turned significantly afterwards to what, and where, I am now, today. It was unplanned. It was deeply surprising and unnerving. But it was also necessary. And it wasn't a place I wanted to leave or abandon while going through this dark, soul-searching time. Why? For some reason it dawned upon me that God needed to have His way with me during this time and that I shouldn't quit it lest it be undone or incomplete. And so I stayed and waited for a redemption to come in the days of my reforming.

I knew too that my God would never leave me. But as well that I must fundamentally leave my past to follow Him. And so, it was a spiritually dark time. Nearly oppressive in many ways. And without anyone who would or could help though I tried to speak of my travail several times to unhearing ears. Still, there was silence. From God. And from man. But as this darkness persisted through most of a year I began to hear the Spirit's words in my heart and my mind more plainly than I had ever heard Him before. More surprisingly was the movement of God's Spirit upon me to write of Him in fundamentally new ways that freed my soul to do the task laid out before me; and later would go on to bless many others seeking healing, inspiration, or reconstitution.

And lest you think this is a rare occurrence let me share a video below which gives but a small glimpse of the agony a believer can go through when pressed of God into a new service, a new change of living, a new burden. But know also we are never forsaken of God though it feels for a time we are. Mine lasted most of a year. Now that is a long time. And certainly it was troubling to my soul. Foundationally troubling. Here was were doubt and uncertainly lived. Lands I had previously embraced, but now in fundamentally new ways of acceptance (and joy). Even so, though I felt abandoned by God I knew God was with me as He is with all of us at all times though we feel it not at times in life. At least that was my experience knowing God's assurance never left me even though heaven's brass ceilings echoed my laments back only to myself with no one - not even the Divine - seemingly hearing.

But morning eventually came and when it did I then understood the value of God's silence. For it was in the wilderness of my despair that He ministered to me across a land of hard rocks and desert heats. Through anguishingly empty spaces and formidable obstacles I would encounter in my (unwanted) journey into the divine whose fire burned all that remained within me. And it was there that faith returned and grew strong again in the bad lands of evil and lostness. That a divine compass was re-ignited to guide me again. That nourishing manna was provided to heal the soul. And cold waters would flow from the fissures of the earth opening up in their time.

And so it was enough. And the long days of despair in wilderness living were left behind and in its place, as I looked back, were discovered scattered memorials to God's faithfulness supplying His grace and wisdom in the desert places of my soul though I saw it not at the time. And with it a new direction that might guide me through the end of my days. And perhaps guide a host of other penitents living out their own wretched miseries and afflictions like as I. At least this is my prayer of healing restoration to the ones who weep in the night seeking guidance upon their knees. Whose speak words of lament to questions, angers, or disappointments without answer heard only upon the blowing wind. But know this, there is a mighty wind of the Spirit who bears and hears all who blows across the desperate reaches of our soul.

R.E. Slater

July 20, 2016

Doubt is Real - I Pray This Blesses Someone in Jesus name

Artist: @ChristianRapz

Category: Christian Hip Hop

Not knowing but moving forward

The Agnosticism of Wonder

R.E. Slater - Radical Reflections on God, Faith, and the Bible

I hear too many Christians say that God's Spirit has left this world. I hear too many Christians looking forward to Jesus's coming in militaristic power and authoritarian judgment. But the doctrine of insistence says God has never left this world. That His Spirit has doubled-down in His death on the Cross. That His resurrection was not so simply b-a-c-k to heaven but into the very sub-structures of this world and into humanity's desperate plights. The power and presence of the Holy Spirit in this world is now more evident than ever despite what we preferred to see of its evils and atrocities. There is a global resistance to evil even as evil continues it's strife against mankind. The doctrine of insistence says God's Spirit and presence will persist against evil and that He will be all that He is becoming. Even so Lord, become all that you must be in our midst.

R.E. Slater

July 17, 2016

* * * * * * * * *

The emerging God is the evolving God. God's manifestations unfold in human

understanding through time, marking territory along the way. This is highly

noticeable in the biblical text, which can be referred to as an evolving story,

where the Creator speaks, the Crucified and Risen One takes center stage, and

then the Spirit signs us towards a destiny with God, which will someday be

fully realized.

- Reflections for the Week of July 18 by Living Spirituality

I can fully agree with the above reflection in the process sense and in the evolving (non-inerrant) bible sense.

Both God Himself, along with our understanding of God, is evolving through time and history - as would be natural as societies develop and God's experience evolves in relation to mankind's societal evolution.

As examples, when reading Israel's tribal laws from Leviticus or the Deuteronmic legal code it feels like we're reading Sharia (Islamic) law more concerned with cultural/community purity than love or compassion. But when Jesus comes along many, many generations later to reinterpret these sections the religious crowd doesn't like it. Nor did Paul who persecuted Christians for years before coming to the Jesus view of scriptures.

What this means is that we are allowed as we grow older to change our minds and attitudes from those early Sunday school days of youth and instruction as we gain maturity and wisdom. That it's not enough to "know" the Bible from a religious sense but to understand it from a contemporary  (Jesus) perspective. That our understanding of the bible changes with societies and their evolvement with one another.

As another contemporary example, to accept evolution should be more helpful than it present is to Christians too easily upset in their faith and traditions when considering this science (sic, cf. Christian anti-science proponents such as Ken Hamm et al).

Or, to understand that biblical passages do fall in the literary genre of narrative story telling should be a helpful observation rather than the need to legalistically codify biblical passages into strict doctrines of belief (the genre of biblical myths and legends versus literalistic interpretation).

By these examples we can see that a faith maturity requires energy and work and sometimes, if not many times, failure, doubt, uncertainty, disappointment, suffering, and intense struggle. Without these blessings-in-disguise God and His Word will never make sense to us. Nor can we evolve and mature in our religious thinking as contemporary witnesses to God's majesty and glory. Rather, we miss God completely within our traditions requiring a Jesus-figure to come along and point out to us that "there is another way of hearing and understanding God."

R.E. Slater

July 18, 2016

* * * * * * * * *

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way

through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that

democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

- Issac Asimov

I've said before and will say again, "Ignorance, though blissful, is always illusionary." 

Especially in a Christian culture more willing to believe what it believes than to critically examine those beliefs perpetuating ignorance and myth.

Harsh? Yes.

True? Yes as well.

And don't suppose apology is the answer to critical thinking. It isn't. It is a defensive response to rebutting proper criticism in order to comfort the supporters wishing to continue in errant beliefs. 

Thus the dissonance of the world with the church and the church's banal belief it is always being persecuted for its beliefs.

Or for falsely believing God's Spirit is abandoning the world as He prepares it for judgment when in fact He is abandoning the church for its harshness and uncompassionate religious zeal.

So to listen to church folk trying to reinforce their religious beliefs is quite problematic in a scientific era which rightly questions staid church doctrine.

The truth is you won't lose your God or your faith by critiquing either.

In fact, quite the contrary.

Both God and faith will be enriched and expanded in the discovery of conflict and abandonment of unbiblical church doctrine more commonly described as folk religion or religious dogma than it is good doctrine.

R.E. Slater

July 19, 2016

Christianity's New Atheism

Not long ago I went through a transformative period which I deemed my "atheistic stage" of faith. Having grown up in a Christianity that positively affirmed itself while denying so many "worldly" attitudes and practices I bore a critical Christianity towards "the other" rather than towards my faith or my church fellowship. In fact, this kind of Christian faith had become its own death knell in my life which eventually collapsed and in its deconstruction rose again as another kind of Christian faith than the one I had grown up with and was so familiar or comfortable around its religious constructs.

The curious thing I discovered was that in this phase of "unknowing" or "deconstruction" it proved to be a period of lament and grief for me as much as it was a period of questioning the directions/answers I was taught to believe. This lament was a dark time of soul searching and lasted for most of a year before it left its beneficial affects upon both my soul and my outlook of what Christianity could be and not what it had become. This was a paradox.

Another paradox was the closeness of God I felt to me. Like Job of old I never felt His presence to have left my soul regardless the deep trauma of soul-searching I was undergoing. Rather, God was closer than ever before. But what did leave me was my own positivistic belief structures which refused to question itself, so strong its borderlands of strict dogmas and religious folklores which I had intermixed with a truer form of Christian faith than I was holding. In essence, as deep as my grief and lament was, so was God's presence in my life as I wrote of my dissatisfaction with my church, its pulpiteers, and outcome-based theology of hate, violence, and judgment.

For myself, as with so many others, if a Christian faith was to be true it had to be built up upon the better elements of humanity - its courage, its searching honesty, its non-discriminatory forms of ministry and outreach. At its core it needed a loving God working through an evil world and pliant forms of clay-based Christians or humanity seeking for a better world than what they saw in mankind's many sociological or political institutions.

And so it wasn't long before I became acquainted with a new kind of atheism which would allow for an agnosticism and a kind of anti-theism as well. One which was questioning, discovering, and falling into the camps of the "nones and dones" of the church. Perhaps then I was one of these individuals because I certainly was "done" with the form of church I had grown up with. And perhaps I was also part of the "none" crowd though for me it was more in the form of rehabilitating my Christian faith rather than jettisoning it altogether.

Which is also where I believe many so-called agnostics, atheists, and anti-theists are today... not so much stripped of a spiritual kind of faith, but of a disillusionment with the world and its debilitating faith structures. If so, they and I have a real bond of fellowship in this regard and it has become one which I have been exploring through the length and breadth of this blogsite. One which would distill my faith to its very essence. To its pith. To its central cores of Christian belief by rejecting its more pagan street-forms and folklores which so many within the church would claim as biblical when they are not.

But I have also noticed amongst this brave new world a reluctance to re-enter into any kind of positivistic statement of doctrinal belief, structure, or assent. To be honest, as a (postmodern, radical) theologian I am not built this way. Though I have been stripped of what I thought were the essences of my Christian faith, they were, in the final analysis, unnecessary and harmful hinderances to entering into the way of Jesus who demonstrated to us God's fellowship with the pagan, the unholy, and the despised. It was this "humanitarian" view of Jesus that drew me over against the church's ill-perception of His pharisaical outlook upon the world of mankind. An outlook that had become in the church's doctrines and dogmas more brutal, unkind, full of hell and despair, and hateful to all elements of humanity that seemed less worthy of God.

This unkind/shallow/legalistic/inhuman form of Christian teaching had to die for me. It had to be thrown into its own pit of despair and flames of eternal torment. For me to continue in the Christian faith was to become like unto its own spiritual hell that God helped me to escape through deep grief and lament in my life. Of burying that part of Christianity which was unworthy of Himself. One which held to another form of Christianless Christianity become lost in its more popular forms of bigotry and bullying, hatred and aspersion, callousness and without mercy, forgiveness, or compassion. And once accomplished, God then burdened me to re-teach the "better forms" of Christian doctrine which would allow for more alliance with postmodernity's new atheism than it did its stricter, more classical forms of faith and belief. A faith which questioned itself first and foremost above all else. That critically reassessed what it was saying and doing before feeling assured of itself.

However, it appeared to me that it wasn't that the Spirit of God had to throw out the entire Christian faith I had learned through the church and its kindred souls of fellowship over the long years of my life. But to recognize and remove that part which had become unspiritual, unkind, unbiblical. More so, to allow in a new kind of "uncertainty and doubt" of self-examination which would better help both me and the church in the years ahead when coming to Christian teachings amiss of soul or heart. Thus, for me, I felt driven to re-teach theology in its better, more healthier forms, while also allowing contemporary society's newer insights from science, philosophy, and epistemology to help me re-create a postmodern, contemporary presence/witness of Christianity. One that was both post-secular and post-Christian in its reflection and dictates.

So then, I was tasked by the Spirit of God to realize (or re-create) a postmodern, radical Christianity which would reach out in a fundamentally uplifting way through its many avenues of witness and discussion to the nones and the dones while disturbing the unpeturbed, unquestioning, and settled of my faith. To more kindly embrace the former while making uncomfortable the latter.

Rather than denying the legitimacy of new atheism's unbelief in its "religious" sphere of rejecting all forms of knowing and belief, I wished to embrace its healthy skepticism of religion by reforming my own epistemology to be more open, more radical, more accepting of "the other." When done, a new form of Christianity had arisen which can accept "positive forms of unknowing or denial" which may be both spiritually constructive and more personally healthy in the lives of both the believer, the unsure, and the disbeliever.

Why? Because much of today's more popular forms of Christian belief has been rejecting and assertively judgmental upon the language of agnosticism and atheism. Fearing it - rather than accepting it - in the transformative experience of the existential and phenomenological experience of the church and its congregants. Yes, the worlds of unbelief can be a strong starting point for the one willing to question faith and yet, paradoxically, finding God beyond the church's institutionalized forms of its societalized God and "Christianized" belief structures which have more in common with the pagan than with the truly biblical. 

In a sense then, all epistemologies must first be broken down or deconstructed before they can be reborne or reconstructed. The nones and the dones are a part of Christianity's narrative story of postmodern angst and dissettlement to its older forms of commonly accepted practices and beliefs. But it can ironically become a place for revival when first throwing off all Christian pretentions to the real and the true that are actually unreal and untrue. Which are sandier foundations of belief than truly biblical foundations. As such, the language of the church must adjust for this postmodernal occurrence lest it clings to a poorer form of itself in action and belief.

Lastly, it is all too easy for postmodernal Christians holding this elevated sense of epistemology to fall into a form of Christian asceticism. I think of the followers of Richard Rohr who has been so helpful in reclaiming the spiritual side of Christianity by espousing a Socratic kind of "unknowing" when conflicted by biblical claim, verse, or teaching. However, as a postmodern, radical Christian, I am discontent towards this kind of "unknowing" and am burdened to elevate Scripture onto a Jesus-plane of gospeling so that even in its uncertainties we can be certain of God's love, guidance, and hope.

Christian asceticism, like stoicism, is not where I want to live. I can appreciate its monkish outlook on life, its forms of "walking softly upon this earth," and its claims of never being sure. But in another sense, as a Spirit-led teacher of God's Word I must "unearth" its truths, doctrines, and verities lest we simply fall into a kind of naturalistic faith whose hope is in hope itself and not in the Living Creator God of the cosmos come to redeem us from sin and shame.

And so, I hope to not only teach God's Word, but to teach it in a humble and kind fashion full of grace and truth while always questioning my self and my teachings so that each in its turn might be ever learning, growing, and reaching out to as much of mankind as possible. This is a Jesus thing. Its what I would expect of God's embrace of the world when He came to this earth to expose Himself to its sin and evil. Who died for us in order to bring redemption's healing to our hearts and souls. Who has transformed Himself through the insurrection of the Cross that both He-and-we be resurrected into the newness of life promised us through God's fellowship with us and with one another in spiritual solidarity with the divine, the holy, the gracious, and deep mysteries of His healing Personage.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

April 26, 2016
edited April 27, 2016

Reference Material - Wikipedia

New Atheism is the journalistic term used to describe the positions promoted by atheists of the twenty-first century. This modern day atheism and secularism is advanced by critics of religion and religious belief,[1] a group of modern atheist thinkers and writers who advocate the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises in government, education and politics.[2] In England and Wales, as of 2011, census figures showed a decrease in respondents citing belief in Christian religion, while the non-religious are the largest growing demographic.[3]

New Atheism lends itself to and often overlaps with secular humanism and anti-theism, particularly in its criticism of what many New Atheists regard as the indoctrination of children and the perpetuation of ideologies."

---

Emerging Church - The emerging church is a Christian movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that crosses a number of theological boundaries: participants are described as Protestant, post-Protestant, evangelical,[1] post-evangelical, liberal, post-liberal, conservative, post-conservative, anabaptist, adventist,[2] reformed, charismatic, neocharismatic, and post-charismatic. Emerging churches can be found throughout the globe, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. Some attend local independent churches or house churches[3][4][5] while others worship in traditional Christian denominations.

Proponents believe the movement transcends such "modernist" labels of "conservative" and "liberal," calling the movement a "conversation" to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its vast range of standpoints, and its commitment to dialogue. Participants seek to live their faith in what they believe to be a "postmodern" society. What those involved in the conversation mostly agree on is their disillusionment with the organized and institutional church and their support for the deconstruction of modern Christian worship, modern evangelism, and the nature of modern Christian community.

---

Progressive Christianity is a form of Christianity which is characterized by a willingness to question tradition, acceptance of human diversity, a strong emphasis on social justice and care for the poor and the oppressed, and environmental stewardship of the Earth.

Progressive Christians have a deep belief in the centrality of the instruction to "love one another" (John 15:17) within the teachings of Jesus Christ.[1] This leads to a focus on promoting values such as compassion, justice, mercy, tolerance, often through political activism. Though prominent, the movement is by no means the only significant movement of progressive thought among Christians (see the 'See also' links below).

Progressive Christianity draws on the insights of multiple theological streams including evangelicalism, liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, pragmatism, postmodernism, Progressive Reconstructionism, and liberation theology.[2] Though the terms Progressive Christianity and Liberal Christianity are often used synonymously, the two movements are distinct, despite much overlap.[3]

Some characteristics of Progressive Christianity, though none be exclusive to it, are:

• A spiritual expressiveness, including participatory, arts-infused worship as well as a variety of spiritual disciplines and practices such as prayer or meditation.

• Intellectual integrity and creativity, including an openness to questioning and an insistence upon intellectual rigor.

• Understanding of spirituality as a real affective and psychological or neural state (see Neurotheology)

• Critical interpretation of the scripture as a record of human historical & spiritual experiences and theological reflection thereupon instead of a composition of literal or scientific facts.

• Acceptance of modern historical Biblical criticism.

• Acceptance (although not necessarily validation) of people who have differing understandings of the concept of "God", such as pantheism, deism, non-theism, as a social construct, or as community.

• Understanding of church communion (the Eucharist) as a symbol or reflection of the body of Christ.

• An affirmation of Christian belief with a simultaneous sincere respect for values present in other religions and belief systems. This does not necessarily mean all Progressive Christians believe that other religious traditions are as equally valid as Christianity, but rather, that other faiths have certain values and tenets that everyone, including Christians, can learn from and respect.

• An affirmation of both human spiritual unity and social diversity.

• An affirmation of the universe, and more immediately the Earth, as the natural and primary context of all human spirituality [as versus a heaven-mindedness].

• An unyielding commitment to the Option for the poor and a steadfast solidarity with the poor as the subjects of their own emancipation, rather than being the objects of charity.

• Compassion for all living beings.

• Support for LGBT rights and affirmation, including, but not limited to, support for same-sex marriage, affirmation of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals as authentic Christians, affirmation of trans identity, and LGBT rights in general.

* * * * * * * * * *

More people than ever before are identifying as atheist, agnostic, or otherwise nonreligious, with potentially world-changing effects. | PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS BERGIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160422-atheism-agnostic-secular-nones-rising-religion/

As secularism grows, atheists and agnostics are trying to expand and diversify their ranks.

by Gabe Bullard

April 22, 2016

You don’t usually think of churches as going out of business, but it happens. In March, driven by parishioner deaths and lack of interest, the U.K. Mennonites held their last collective service.

It might seem easy to predict that plain-dressing Anabaptists—who follow a faith related to the Amish—would become irrelevant in the age of smartphones, but this is part of a larger trend. Around the world, when asked about their feelings on religion, more and more people are responding with a meh.

The religiously unaffiliated, called "nones," are growing significantly. They’re the second largest religious group in North America and most of Europe. In the United States, nones make up almost a quarter of the population. In the past decade, U.S. nones have overtaken Catholics, mainline protestants, and all followers of non-Christian faiths.

A lack of religious affiliation has profound effects on how people think about death, how they teach their kids, and even how they vote. (Watch The Story of God With Morgan Freeman for more about how different religions understand God and creation.)

There have long been predictions that religion would fade from relevancy as the world modernizes, but all the recent surveys are finding that it’s happening startlingly fast. France will have a majority secular population soon. So will the Netherlands and New Zealand. The United Kingdom and Australia will soon lose Christian majorities. Religion is rapidly becoming less important than it’s ever been, even to people who live in countries where faith has affected everything from rulers to borders to architecture.

But nones aren’t inheriting the Earth just yet. In many parts of the world—sub-Saharan Africa in particular—religion is growing so fast that nones’ share of the global population will actually shrink in 25 years as the world turns into what one researcher has described as “the secularizing West and the rapidly growing rest.” (The other highly secular part of the world is China, where the Cultural Revolution tamped down religion for decades, while in some former Communist countries, religion is on the increase.)

And even in the secularizing West, the rash of “religious freedom bills”—which essentially decriminalize discrimination—are the latest front in a faith-tinged culture war in the United States that shows no signs of abetting anytime soon.

Within the ranks of the unaffiliated, divisions run deep. Some are avowed atheists. Others are agnostic. And many more simply don’t care to state a preference. Organized around skepticism toward organizations and united by a common belief that they do not believe, nones as a group are just as internally complex as many religions. And as with religions, these internal contradictions could keep new followers away.

Millennials to God: No Thanks

If the world is at a religious precipice, then we’ve been moving slowly toward it for decades. Fifty years ago, Time asked in a famous headline, “Is God Dead?” The magazine wondered whether religion was relevant to modern life in the post-atomic age when communism was spreading and science was explaining more about our natural world than ever before.

We’re still asking the same question. But the response isn’t limited to yes or no. A chunk of the population born after the article was printed may respond to the provocative question with, “God who?” In Europe and North America, the unaffiliated tend to be several years younger than the population average. And 11 percent of Americans born after 1970 were raised in secular homes.

Scientific advancement isn’t just making people question God, it’s also connecting those who question. It’s easy to find atheist and agnostic discussion groups online, even if you come from a religious family or community. And anyone who wants the companionship that might otherwise come from church can attend a secular Sunday Assembly or one of a plethora of Meetups for humanists, atheists, agnostics, or skeptics.

The groups behind the web forums and meetings do more than give skeptics witty rejoinders for religious relatives who pressure them to go to church—they let budding agnostics know they aren’t alone.

But it’s not easy to unite people around not believing in something. “Organizing atheists is like herding cats,” says Stephanie Guttormson, the operations director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, which is merging with the Center for Inquiry. “But lots of cats have found their way into the 'meowry.'”

The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, continues Sunday, April 24, at 9/8c, and will take viewers on a trip around the world to explore different cultures and religions on the ultimate quest to uncover the meaning of life, God, and all the questions in between.

Guttormson says the goal of her group is to organize itself out of existence. They want to normalize atheism to a point where it’s so common that atheists no longer need a group to tell them it’s okay not to believe, or to defend their morals in the face of religious lawmakers.

But it’s not there yet.

Atheism’s Diversity Problem

The Center for Inquiry in Washington, D.C., hosts a regular happy hour called Drinking Skeptically. On a Wednesday in late March, about a dozen people showed up to faithlessly imbibe, and all but one were white.

“Most of the groups I’ve seen have been predominantly white, but I’m not sure what to attribute that to,” says Kevin Douglas, the lone African-American drinker, shrugging at the demographics. He came from a religious family in New York and struggled internally with his skepticism until shortly after college. The only time he mentions having difficulty with others accepting his atheism was when he worked in Dallas, Texas, and race, he says, had little to do with it.

But more typically, “there is pressure from our [African-American] community,” says Mandisa Thomas, the founder and president of the Atlanta-based Black Nonbelievers, Inc. This pressure stems from the place religion—Christianity in particular—holds in African-American history.

In the abolition movement churches “became a support system for blacks. It became almost the end-all be-all for the black community for a number of years,” Thomas says, adding that the Civil Rights movement was dominated—she says “hijacked”—by religious leaders.

“If you either reject or identify as a nonbeliever, you’re seen as betraying your race,” she says.

Thomas is an outlier among nonbelievers for another reason. She’s a woman.

The secularizing West is full of white men. The general U.S. population is 46 percent male and 66 percent white, but about 68 percent of atheists are men, and 78 percent are white. Atheist Alliance International has called the gender imbalance in its ranks “a significant and urgent issue.”

The Privilege of Not Believing

There are a few theories about why people become atheists in large numbers. Some demographers attribute it to financial security, which would explain why European countries with a stronger social safety net are more secular than the United States, where poverty is more common and a medical emergency can bankrupt even the insured.

Atheism is also tied to education, measured by academic achievement (atheists in many places tend to have college degrees) or general knowledge of the panoply of beliefs around the world (hence theories that Internet access spurs atheism).

There’s some evidence that official state religions drive people away from faith entirely, which could help explain why the U.S. is more religious than most Western nations that technically have a state religion, even if it is rarely observed. The U.S. is also home to a number of homegrown churches—Scientology, Mormonism—that might scoop up those who are disenchanted with older faiths.

The social factors that promote atheism—financial security and education—have long been harder to attain for women and people of color in the United States.

Around the world, the Pew Research Center finds that women tend to be more likely to affiliate with a religion and more likely to pray and find religion important in their lives. That changes when women have more opportunities. “Women who are in the labor force are more like men in religiosity. Women out of the labor force tend to be more religious,” says Conrad Hackett with Pew. “Part of that might be because they’re part of a religious group that enforces the power of women being at home."

In a Washington Post op-ed about the racial divides among atheists, Black Skeptics Group founder Sikivu Hutchinson points out that “the number of black and Latino youth with access to quality science and math education is still abysmally low.” That means they have fewer economic opportunities and less exposure to a worldview that does not require the presence of God.

Religion has a place for women, people of color, and the poor. By its nature, secularism is open to all, but it’s not always as welcoming.

Some of the humanist movement’s most visible figures aren’t known for their respect toward women. Prominent atheists Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have awful reputations for misogyny, as does the late Christopher Hitchens. Bill Maher, the comedian and outspoken atheist, is no (nonexistent) angel, either.

The leaders of Atheist Alliance International, Dawkins Foundation, and Center for Inquiry who I talked to were all well aware of the demographic shortcomings, and they’re working on it: All of the leaders I spoke to were women.

Even people who are white, male, and educated may fear the stigma of being labeled a nonbeliever. A white dentist at the CFI’s Drinking Skeptically event didn’t want to go on the record out of a fear that patients wouldn’t want an atheist working on their teeth.

“We have this stigma that we’re combative, that we’re arrogant, that we just want to provoke religious people,” Thomas with Black Nonbelievers, Inc. says. She’s working on changing that, and increasing the visibility of nonbelievers of color, too.

Thompson believes the demographics of nones don’t accurately reflect the number and diversity of nonbelievers; it just shows who is comfortable enough to say they don’t believe out loud. “There are many more people of color, there are many more women who identify as atheists,” she says. “There are many people who attend church who are still atheists.”

Several atheist and humanist organizations have launched advertising

campaigns aimed at making skeptics more comfortable not believing.

| PHOTOGRPAH BY ANNE CHADWICK WILLIAMS/SACRAMENTO BEE/MCT VIA GETTY

Expanding the Ranks

What’s sometimes called the New Atheism picked up in the mid-2000s. These were years of war, when Islam was painted as a threat and Christianity infused U.S. policy, abroad and domestically, most visibly in faith-based ballot initiatives against same-sex marriage.

In the U.S., many state legislators are still using a narrow interpretation of Christian morals to deny services to gay people and appropriate restrooms to people who are transgender.

But the national backlash to religious legislation has become faster and fiercer than ever before. Europeans seem set on addressing Islamophobiaand the forces that could create tension with the “rapidly growing rest.”

And compared to past campaign seasons, religion is taking a backseat in this year’s U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump is not outwardly religious (and his attraction of evangelical voters has raised questions about the longevity and the motives of the religious right). Hillary Clinton has said “advertising about faith doesn’t come naturally to me.” And Bernie Sanders is “not actively involved” in a religion. Their reticence about religion reflects the second largest religious group in the country they hope to run. Aside from Ted Cruz, the leading candidates just aren’t up for talking about religion. The number of Americans who seek divine intervention in the voting booth seems to be shrinking.

For all the work secular groups do to promote acceptance of nonbelievers, perhaps nothing will be as effective as apathy plus time. As the secular millennials grow up and have children of their own, the only Sunday morning tradition they may pass down is one everyone in the world can agree on: brunch.