As a progressive theologian I get accused rather often of cherry picking the Bible. The people who level this accusation at me typically do so because I am so vocal about social justice and in my support for the LGBTQIA community. These conservative Christians claim that because I say that being LGBTQIA is neither a …
Tag: Gospels
Let’s get biblically literal: Abortion
For over fifty years the Christian right in the United States has been attempting to ban abortion. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the faux pro-life conservative Christians have been doubling down in their misogynistic attempts to control women's bodies. Take the 2023 "Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel," a manifesto of …
Bible 101: What is the Bible?
For many people the question posed by the title of this post will be easy to answer and may even cause them to feel perplexed as to why it's a question at all. Their answer would simply be, "It's the Word of God," or they might perhaps quip that it's humanity's Basic Instructions Before Leaving …
Who am I to judge?
Love, grace, compassion
America first?
We are in the midst of yet another dark chapter in American history, which is replete with various crimes against humanity including genocide, murder, chattel slavery, warfare for profit, and being the only nation to ever drop nuclear weapons on another country-- the second bomb being a weapons test and not strategically "necessary". …
Pride Month: A Christian reflection
In the early 1990s I was indoctrinated, the only other appropriate word would be brainwashed, into fearing and discriminating against those who were born homosexual. It was a time of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military and I was in the Marines. I was also a member of a Southern Baptist Church in Honolulu …
Thank you for your service
I grew up in a rural north Texas town after relocating there with my family from Kansas City, MO in the early 1980s. During my childhood and teens, I was exposed to evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity of the conservative Church of Christ variety along with the Southern Baptist Church variety. In 1990, after graduating from high …
Some issues are black and white
Jesus was nonviolent. If one reads the Gospel accounts and takes them seriously, the fact that Jesus was nonviolent is easy to ascertain. It's right there, in black and white (or sometimes red, with 'red letter editions'. Angry white men are all too often the perpetrators of mass shootings. Despite having killed 9 people, all …
This Christianity thing is H-A-R-D
"I have decided to follow Jesus...no turning back, I'll follow him..." so goes a well known Christian hymn sung in churches around America. For many self-proclaimed Christians this following of Jesus amounts to what they believe about Jesus from a doctrinal stand point, such as that he is "God's only son," "was crucified and rose …
The Tattooed Theologian 