Learning How to See, Season 2 … available now!
I'm glad to announce that CAC is releasing Season 2 of Learning How to See. If you enjoyed Season 1, you'll be able to dig deeper in Season 2, and if you haven't yet listened to Season 1, you'll get a summary of Season 1 content in Season 2, along with some fresh reflections and practices with members of the amazing CAC staff team.
Here's Episode 1 of Season 2: https://cac.org/podcasts/the-big-ditch/
And here's the Season 1 archive: https://cac.org/podcast/learning-how-to-see/
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I’m Co-Hosting a new Annual Gathering. Maybe you should come?
I'm grateful and excited to join Diana Butler Bass and Jim Chafee to host Southern Lights: A January Adventure in Progressive Christianity.
For a weekend each January (starting January 14-16, 2022), we're hoping to bring together a wide array of forward-leaning Christians to brighten the light of progressive Christianity in the American South ... a region that really needs it. We'll gather at the beautiful Epworth-by-the-Sea conference center on St. Simon's island. It's a place of beauty and rest along the Atlantic coast, easily accessible via Savannah and Jacksonville airports.
In 2022, Diana, Jim, and I will be joined by some amazing colleagues.
Dr. Anthea Butler, professor of Religious and Africana studies, whose new book, White Evangelical Racism, is causing a needed stir.
Kaitlin Curtice, a storyteller, poet, and citizen of the Potawatomi nation, whose book Native explores identity, belonging, and rediscovering God.
Ken Medema, a composer, musician, and master improv artist, whose music brings me a flood of joy whenever I hear him.
We hope you'll join us too! Info here.
And if you can't wait until January to shine some light in the South, don't miss the Wild Goose Festival over Labor Day weekend. Details here. Then join us in January for Southern Lights, on St. Simon's Island in Georgia, January 14-16, 2022.
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Please consider forwarding this to every white pastor or priest you know.
My friend Rob Spencer models the kind of sermon that I believe every white pastor across America needs to preach -- to break the silence about white supremacy in our churches. If you need inspiration, you'll find it here. You may shed a few tears too. It lasts 30 minutes, and begins at 0:29:00.
https://www.facebook.com/connectionsparis/videos/803104350220553
Rob and his congregation followed up this sermon with action, and the process continues. Of course there is push-back. How could there not be in this country, with its history? God bless pastors who take the risk of breaking the sound barrier on race, and then follow up words with actions.
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Celebrating a Life of Wonder, Goodness, and Creativity
Early this morning, dear friend and creative collaborator Fran McKendree passed from this life, leaving a rich legacy of friendship and creative vitality behind.
I had the bittersweet joy of visiting him last month, seeing his body made frail by cancer, but his spirit as alive and saturated with kindness as ever.
Below you'll find a few of our creative collaborations.
https://franmckendree.com/track/2187725/if-we-don-t-have-love
Thanks be to God for a genuine human being, a friend, husband to Diana, a stellar musician and gatherer of awakening souls, a person in whose presence God's presence was as real as a wink and a smile.
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A Reader Writes: I Now Live with No Roof
I'm writing to tell you how absolutely grateful I am for your book, Faith After Doubt. I just graduated from a conservative, fundie, evangelical college with a BA in Christian Ministries, but I'm deconstructing my faith. I've felt pretty screwed, but reading your book has given me a fresh peace and hope for what can still be done and experienced in the Church from my expanding outlooks.Some highlights of your book for me have been the threads of comparative theology, practical theology, ecumenism(!!!), humanism, even universalism at times, and this idea of spiritual entrepreneurship. As a visionary and unity-seeker, I find all of this to be quite enthralling and wildly motivating. I'm an enneagram 8 and an ENFJ on Myers Briggs. I want to pounce on the problems I see and persuade people to change for the better. I heard it for myself when you told Hannah, that “’You may have lost your faith,’ I said, ‘but you sure haven’t lost your fire.’” (189). I think, at the end of the day, even if I’m disappointed at many demonstrations of faith that I see around me, I will still have the fire that pushes me forward, up and out into the world, through the glass ceiling of gatekeepers and into the expansively mystical, colorful sky of harmony.
Having read your book, I now feel truly encouraged that there is always room to grow. I now live with no roof, floating around, flexible spirit, open-mind, awestruck eyes – perhaps like a bird, or a plane, but definitely not superman. Thank God for that!Thanks again. I'll be carrying your words with me.
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