Missionary Renegade: Progressive Christianity of Gigs Harbor, Washington, United States Weekly Recap for Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Progressive Christianity of Gigs Harbor, Washington, United States Weekly Recap for Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Progressive Christianity of Gigs Harbor, Washington, United States Weekly Recap for Tuesday, March 31, 2015

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Worship Materials: Easter William L. (Bill) Wallace
THEME: The Rapturous Awakening
The Irrepressible God
The Ever-Present Mystery THEME The Rapturous Awakening – The Irrepressible God — The Ever-present Mystery
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION

Easter is the festival of the irrepressible God whom not even death can contain.
Most of us would prefer a cozy God to a God who shatters our complacency. Yet Easter is about a God who bursts tombs of the familiar, the ordinary and the mediocre.
Easter is the amazing wow of cosmic love.
Just when I thought I had God under control the wild wind of the spirit blew me away.
Easter is the season of stone rolling – rolling away guilt, fear, hatred, monotony, lifelessness and blandness.
O God, how many times have we sought to bury you again, for fear of what you might do to our predictable grayness?
To believe in the historicity of the resurrection is one thing. To experience the liveliness of the resurrection is something quite different.
It is not our beliefs about what happened in history that transform us but the extent to which we allow these glimpses into the heart of God to energize our lives.
All crosses can be transformed into trees of life. All tears are part of the river of life.
The vibrancy of the vision is only exceeded by the discovery that one’s spirit has a home everywhere.
Home becomes a tomb when flexibility vanishes, awareness contracts and adventure disappears.
The delight of new awareness can be a prelude to a life lived in the mellow light of love.
When we invite the earth-shattering spirit of Easter into our lives, our images of God recede into the background and we are left walking hand in hand with the unknowable.
Easter is the eternal moment that supersedes all time; the vision that puts into perspective all visionless living.
Easter is the sky that encloses the broken egg.
Out of the familiar emerges the extraordinary that transforms the ordinary.
All risings of the human spirit are preceded by brokenness, loss or rejection.
If you look into the dust for long enough and contemplate its mystery, you shall find a resurrection.
At Easter all the themes of the Christian Gospel are held together in one great burst of life.
The Cross and Easter are two faces of the one mystery.
Love life and deadness will flee.
The Resurrection is witness to the golden incandescence at the heart of life which neither suffering nor death can destroy.
To live the mystery is to flesh the idea and to share Resurrection.
Resurrection is beauty appreciated, love shared, justice implemented.
We turn Easter back into Good Friday when we worship ugliness, sterility and unthinking conformity.
The sequence of death and resurrection is the pattern of all creating and of all loving.
Resurrection is about seeing behind and beyond death, ugliness, injustice, pain and despair.

PRAYERS
O Easter God, who shatters all the familiar tombs which we create, enable us to move beyond slavish conformity either to old understandings or to new fashions and with joy embrace your ever-changing, ever challenging future.
O God, who gifts us moments of amazement, help us to accept the rhythm of the ordinary and the extraordinary that we may retain a steady awareness of your presence both in grey days and in bright.
O God, help us to let go of those mental pictures of you which prevent us from accepting that we will never know you fully and save us from pointless theological argument which reflects our insecurity rather than your mystery.
HYMNS
In between the Cross and rising. (BL)
From Good Friday’s gruesome darkness. (BL)
I saw the gardener dancing.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
There shall be life and love.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
In the sprouting of the seed.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
Taste and see.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
We are an Easter people.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Rise O my heart.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Wake up, wake up it’s morning. (STS1)
Empty lay the tomb. (STS1)
This planet is pregnant. (STS1)
Singing the Sacred, Vol 1 2011 World Library Publications
Jesus Christ is alive and lives in me. (SYSJ)
RESPONSES
In the sprouting of the seed.
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
Easter Chant.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
SONGS
Life is for living now. (SYSJ)
Give me laughter.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
POEMS / REFLECTIONS
BURIED TREASURE
In the disaster lies the hope,
In the laughter lies the truth,
In the emptiness, the fullness,
In the nothingness, the essence,
In aloneness, the belonging,
In the “we are”, the “I AM”.
For “I AM” is everywhere
But out of non awareness
There comes
Death.
THE EGG THAT REFUSED TO BE ETERNAL
On first inspection Divinity appeared to the seekers to be like a luminous egg, well rounded, self contained, completely clothed in light and amenable to definition. But suddenly, those who had waited in silence saw the egg crack and a phoenix bird emerge and immediately fly away into the mysterious nothingness leaving the seekers sitting in the broken shells of their religious presuppositions and carefully crafted ceremonies.
Some of the people remained in the fragmented remnants and developed compensating mantras. Others stretched the wings of their spirituality and flew off into the magic darkness joyfully singing:
“All will be well and all manner of things shall be well!” (Julian of Norwich)
PERCEPTION
To see the divine in yourself
Is to see the divine everywhere.
To reverence the divine in yourself
Is to reverence the divine everywhere.
To nurture the divine in yourself
Is to nurture the divine everywhere.
For there is no division within the divine.
DEATH AND RESURRECTION
The way of the cross and the way of the dance
are but two parts of the one Way;
without the dance there is no life –
without the cross there is no healing.
THE EASTER EXPERIENCE
The Easter experience
is becoming
a cross that grows into a tree,
a tomb that liberates,
a rock that dances,
bread and wine that feed the spirit,
an earthquake that destroys complacency and
a darkness that births radiant light.
GOLDEN INCANDESCENCE
Having glimpsed
the golden incandescence
at the heart of the mystery
I need not ask
‘Who am I?’
but rather rejoice that
I AM,
need no longer to understand
but simply
to be ‑
for the interaction
of fire and water,
earth and sky brings answers
that are not mine yet reside within.
All this
I seek to reverence,
celebrate,
live ‑
for the interior beauty
finally uncovered
inhabits the whole created world,
the love I share
flows throughout the Cosmos,
my inner song echoes
the mystic hymn of universe
until my griefs merge with
Creation’s calvaries
and God’s unending liveliness
embraces
my
resurrections.
THE RISEN CHRIST
The Risen Christ is the liberated Inner Child which is allowed to dance, to skip, to sing – for as Jesus said, ‘unless you become as a little child you are unable to enter the “Kingdom of God” (the commonwealth of God, the dancing space of God), “Kingdom of heaven” (your heaven.)
(Matthew 18:3, Luke 18:17, Mark 10:15)
AFFIRMATION
In forgiving past grudges,
In unlocking unwept tears,
WE EXPERIENCE EASTER.
In transforming buried anger,
In abandoning guilt and fear,
WE EXPERIENCE EASTER.
In the melting of the ice in our heart,
In the giving of our being to God,
WE EXPERIENCE EASTER,
SEASON OF NEW LIFE.
THE PATTERN OF DEATH AND RESURRECTION
The pattern of death and resurrection is the pattern of all our creating and all our loving
for out of darkness comes light
out of chaos comes new creation
out of silence comes the singing
out of stillness comes the dancing
out of desolation comes new hope
and out of the death of the old comes the birth of the new.
FOCUS FOR ACTION
What mechanisms do I use to attempt to tame the untamable wind of God’s Spirit?
What tombs of conformity does society create in order to control the spirit of fully alive divergence?
What tombs are there in the Church that exercise the same function?
Does attending worship make my heart dance? If it doesn’t is it my heart or is it the worship that is dead? Or perhaps it is that both are dead?
Text and image © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.

Words – semantics sleight of hand Gretta VosperFor the past many years, I’ve been struggling against the power of the Christian story within the traditional church and outside of it. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Baha’i, and so many other religious streams ply stories of a cosmology that includes either a deity residing in a supernatural realm or a life that is more (or less) rewarding after this reality. They are all stories which, I do admit, can have a positive influence by controlling masses (through fear) and keep them in check thereby reinforcing the positive norms of civil society. But for me and for the many who no longer hold those stories as sacred, the cost is simply too high. The potential for posthumous reward or damnation has too often drained life of its beauty, wealth, diversity, and joy and the norms of civil society that are reinforced are often not in the best interests of humanity or, at least, significant swaths of it. So we need a way forward.
Slipping new meanings behind old words
Within the church, leaders often slip new interpretations and definitions behind the original words so the story remains palatable and they can keep using it. I did that for years without realizing how powerful the language was; powerful enough to prevent anyone from “getting” what I really meant. Many of my mentors and peers can offer new explanations for theological terms or new interpretations of ancient stories that make them ring with new life for me. But I learned, the hard way, that even as I shared those engaging and transformational new interpretations and explanations, the practice of wrapping them up in the stuff of antiquity – hymns and practices that reinforced all the old interpretations and explanations – prevented anyone from really moving forward in their understandings. It wasn’t until I dropped the language completely that we started really talking about the struggle to live a meaningful and rewarding life made up of positive relationships with oneself, others, the world around us, and the seventh generation. With the language went the pretense of being religious and the expectation of a rewarding afterlife. But it opened up the challenge of being human and the immensity of wonder this side of the grave.
Anyone who has shifted in their understanding of god from that of a creator, intervener, grantor of requests to an amorphous non-ish-being that represents good or meets the “god is love” criterion knows how easy it is to get away with using the same old language. My FB posts are riddled with people telling me their understanding of the nature of reality and then saying that they don’t have a problem calling that “god.” I don’t have a problem with them calling it that, either. Unless they are in a position of authority in the church; then I have a big problem with it. Then its what I call a semantics sleight of hand. We’re saying one thing but leading others to believe we’re saying something completely different.
We stole a word and made it a name
The word “god” refers to a deity, a being that inhabits a sacred realm and exists, for the most part and in most stories, in that supernatural dimension where he or she has supernatural powers. Gods interact with humans in specific ways. Most have had names and very human characteristics. Some could take human form to interact with us or even mate with us.
In our Christian tradition, however, our deity became known as the god called God. We seem to have stolen the generic word from the multitude of other traditions and made it the name for our special trinitarian god, a kinder, gentler version (we like to tell ourselves) of YHWH or Elohim, the god of the Israelites, who morphed into the god of the Trinity. When we use the word god in western society, we usually mean the god called God. And we’ve saturated public space and the public mind with that definition.
If we use that word to mean “a sense, a deep feeling and a belief in something more” as one FB poster recently argued and “can call that something more God”, we’re in complicated territory. Who is going to know that’s what is being meant when 99.9% of the population (more likely 99.999999999%) still think you’re talking about “the big guy” as he was identified on a radio show this past week? Surely, the woman who called god “the big guy” wouldn’t know you meant “a deep feeling” or belief in some indefinable “more”. Nor would she have known what the Executive Secretary of London Conference meant when during her phone in, she referred to the “god” the whole United Church believes in. Other callers, and, indeed, the talk show’s host, would have assumed that the Executive Secretary was talking about “the big guy”.
Obfuscation is the pretty word
If I do not believe in “the big guy”, I cannot think of a single reason why I would want people to think that I do. And so I continue to challenge those in The United Church of Canada who do not believe in “the big guy” to use language that clearly describes what it is they do believe in. When clergy obfuscate, we do more than just talk a fuzzy theology in a messy church kind of way. They allow others to interpret their words in ways that they do not mean them. I cannot comprehend the reasoning behind that beyond mere self-preservation. I do understand self-preservation, but I think it is deeply troubling that The United Church and the many other liberal denominations that teach contemporary critical scholarship in their seminaries would not create supportive environments or workplaces that are safe enough for clergy to speak of their beliefs clearly while caring for parishioners in the process of doing so. Encouraging ministers to obfuscate by not supporting them during the difficult times that will follow in their congregations should they share their true definitions for the word god, ensures a cognitive dissonance that can be terribly hard on clergy and and arrogance that is incredibly condescending to church members.
I recall a letter to the editor of The Observer many years ago. An article about the work we were doing at West Hill United had been published in the February issue. It provoked letters for a full year following. But the best letter of all was the one in which a United Church member wrote asking if ministers should really be that honest. Mainline denominations are complicit in preventing their clergy from being honest. By encouraging clergy to cover their true beliefs with language that neatly allows everyone else to believe they hold traditional ones, mainline denominations are complicit in a mass obfuscation. That’s the pretty word for what is a very serious issue indeed.
As West Hill United Church and I continue our course of bringing theologically barrier-free church to our small corner of Toronto, this conversation will continue to rage (that is the perfect word for it) across the country. It is my hope that we will find a way to encourage all clergy to speak openly about what they believe, both those who continue to believe in the interventionist being that created the world and all that lives in it and those who may never have believed that at all. May we create space with such integrity and security that it invites and allows each person within it – especially the clergy – to find the language necessary for him or her to speak clearly and truthfully enough about religious belief that no one in the church is ever again misled by those who lead it. And as we struggle to hold the diversity that will inevitably exist in such places, my we exhibit respect for one another even and especially if we do not respect the beliefs that are held.
on being an atheist minister
Had an opportunity to share some ideas with AM640’s Jeff McCarthur this afternoon. Here is the clip. Enjoy!

Charity reflects on your own inner values ... it is a deeply fulfilling exercise to give to a cause that you are passionate about.
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Weekly Liturgy Week of: March 22nd - 29th
Holy Week 2015
You can’t get to Easter without going through Good Friday ... there is no light without darkness to contrast ...Assurance of Pardon by Claralice Wolf

Over and over again in the gospels we find Jesus face to face with a person in need of healing, in need of reconciliation with God, a person whose soul is burdened. Have you ever noticed that Jesus never says, “If you confess, I will forgive you?”
Jesus always knew that that person had been repenting for a long time, or the burden would not have been so crippling. He would look them in the eye and say, “Your sinsare forgiven.”
And today, here in this place, face to face with God, we too may be assured that we areforgiven.

Worship Materials: Holy Saturday by William L. (Bill) Wallace

From the Festive Worship collection

THEME Life-giving Sabbath – Time of Silent Wrestling
EXPLANATION FOR INCLUSION

Despite the fact that Holy Saturday is not a major Christian festival it is included here because psychologically there is no Easter without making one’s peace with the dead and with the forces of destruction that lurk within the human psyche, our inner “Hades”, our inner “hell”. So Christ’s “descent into Hell” in the Apostles’ Creed can be interpreted as referring to a mythological reality rather than an historical one.
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
Resting in expectation is a source of new life
In the darkness lie the seeds of Resurrection
Without the opposites there is no wholeness; without the pieces there is no completion.
In the place of oneness there is a friend in each enemy and an enemy in each friend for nothing is as simple as it seems.
When we pray for the enemy, both within and outside, the aura of love radiates.
In the empty space lies the whole of our inner humanity, the seething mass of human kind.
The purity that has no place for impurity produces a smiling mask and not a true compassion.
Compassion holds all the opposites together in love, transforming without destroying, encouraging without condemning, so that all the outcasts feel at home.
It is not that our Esau should become a Jacob or visa versa but that both should live in harmony in a dynamic pluralism. (Genesis 27)
We would prefer to believe that our inner Cain the destroyer had died but he still lives on needing to be transformed and not denied; for without destruction there is no life and everything has two faces. (Genesis 4)
I reflect on emptiness and find fullness.
I immerse myself in silence and hear singing.
I surround myself with stillness and my spirit dances.
As the Cosmos emerged from darkness so each of us have emerged from a darkened womb. So it can be said that darkness is our primal home.

PRAYERS
O God of the darkness which births the light may your inner fire within us flare forth like a miniature birthing of the Cosmos.
O God who is both the darkness and the light may we honour them both and with courage venture into that space within our psyche where opposites dwell and perceive them all as essential parts of the fire that is within our spirits and throughout the Cosmos.
HYMNS
From Good Friday’s gruesome darkness. (BL)
In between the Cross and Rising. (BL)
We are always part of the other. (BL)
Behind the world of images. (BL)
We sing of the darkness. (BL)
“Weep not, weep not for me”. (BL)
Darkness is my mother.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
REFLECTION
CHRIST’S TOMB
Christ’s tomb was a place of darkness.
In the world of Western dualistic thought
Darkness is the enemy of light,
The enemy of life,
The abode of fear,
Of death
And of destruction.
But without darkness
There would be no exposure to the light.
It was out of the familiar darkness of the womb
That we all came to be surprised by the light,
Moving from all-embracing security
To the unfamiliar and threatening world of light.
It was out of the darkness
That the Cosmos emerged
In a burst of fiery flaring forth.
And it is the darkness of dark matter
And dark energy
That seems to hold the Cosmos together.
So, let us celebrate the darkness
Acknowledging it as our primal mother
And be open to that greater part
Of the wisdom of God
Which only comes in the sacred mysteriousness
Of allowing ourselves to be encompassed by the dark.
ACTION AND REFLECTION
Action and Reflection are like Siamese twins. Neither can operate completely beneficially without the other. Sometimes we have to act instinctively and immediately but that action should be drawing on our wisdom’s well.
Action severed from reflection can lead to foolishness at best and disaster at worst. Its success is a matter of luck. Reflection without action can result in an ego-centric withdrawal from the world which corrupts the spirit and is of little relevance to other human beings.
WHEN DARKNESS AIDS OUR SIGHT
While our daytime experience is that light produces sight and darkness produces blindness, the reverse can be true at night. The further one moves away from the nightlight of cities the clearer becomes the image of our galactic home, the Milky Way. Night’s darkness enables us to obtain a vastly larger and more far-reaching picture than daylight can ever reveal.
And so it is with our bodies and our psyche. What the light of day reveals to our surface inspection is a total over-simplification. Hidden beneath what can at times be the calm exterior of our bodies is a dancing, atomic realm. As far as our psyche is concerned preoccupation with the healing and destructive activities of our surface self can obscure the wonder of our most loveable centre whose complexity reflects that of the Cosmos.
Of even more significance is that when we dare to expose our spirits to the darkness of Divine Mystery, we discover a wholeness beyond the realm of sight and understanding, for it is the inner eye rather than the outer one which has the power to transform us.
FOCUS FOR ACTION
How are we to re-interpret the biblical claim that there is no darkness in God since astronomers have now confirmed that 70% of the universe is composed of dark energy, 25% of dark matter and only 5% of that form of matter which we regard as ‘normal’.
If this darkness is not part of God we cannot claim that God is the creator and sustainer of all. (Reference: Dark Energy, Dark Matter – NASA Science)
There are no images in the darkness, yet it is out of a mind swept clean of images that new images emerge. What steps can we take to embrace the darkness in our services of worship and in our times of reflection?
How can we pay more attention to and learn from the sometimes confusing images that appear in our dreams? Perhaps we need to affirm the value of the dreamer and dreaming rather than to label them as impractical, useless and a threat. Remember that the Joseph who in Genesis 37/19 was sarcastically described by his brothers in the phrase “Behold the dreamer cometh” was the same Joseph who saved them from starvation. Should we include the dreamers in the list of people for whom we give thanks?
Text and image © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.
Worship Materials: Good Friday

THEME The mystery of suffering

From the Festive Worship collection

by William L. (Bill) Wallace

THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION

When love and hatred engage in mortal conflict it is love which suffers most; but love has the final victory.
The cross is witness to the golden incandescence at the heart of life which neither death nor suffering can destroy.
The vulnerable strength and the strength of vulnerability. The greatest strength is the strength that allows itself to be vulnerable, for it knows that nothing can destroy the mystery of which we are a small but significant part.
The price of God’s non-intervention is the pain that God experiences when we do not use the power which God has given us in a wise and loving way.
Crucifixion can be the onset of death or the forerunner of new life.
Only those with a deep faith can face crucifixion with hope.
The real test of faith is not whether you can wear a Jesus smile but whether you can bear a Jesus cross.
We begin to see God in all things once we have discerned light in our darkness and darkness in our light.
A demon disowned is a demon conquered. Therefore disown evil as your true nature and let divinity own you.
We create our own demons and then proceed to blame them for our misdoings.
The way of the cross and the way of the dance are but two parts of the one Way; without the dance there is not life – without the cross there is no healing.
Two thousand years later we are still crucifying prophets who announce good news for the poor, liberation for the oppressed, insight for the indoctrinated and life for the lifeless.
Forgiving our persecutors is never easy; however they will retain their hold over us until we have let go of our animosity toward them.
Seeing our betrayer as a child of God allows us to let go of resentment.
The suffering of God has many faces.
The Breaking is the herald of breakthrough, Chaos the source of new ideas and Death the seedbed of new life.
To fully hear the pain of God, we need to listen to the cries of the oppressed and the cries of the earth.
Suffering and solitude are twin gateways to new life.
Pain is a seed out of which compassion can flower.
Only suffering love can resist the corruption of power.
Jesus was crucified by people who took their obsessions to their logical conclusions.
The cross speaks of straight line destructiveness, the circle the stone that rolls away to reveal resurrection.
The cross is a symbol of death, the circle a symbol of life but life and death belong together hence the value of the Celtic cross.
The cross is the clearest image of a God who grieves for us even more than we grieve for ourselves.

PRAYERS
O God, whose broken heart we perceive on Calvary, in the strength of your compassionate love give us the courage to acknowledge both our inner pains and the pains of the world and to surround them all with the transforming power of your love.
O God of all wisdom, help us not only to see the good in all people but also to discern the many ways in which individuals, groups and institutions manipulate others for selfish gain, and what we see in others, may we also have the grace to admit in ourselves through the power of your love.
HYMNS
We need a cross. (BL)
“Weep not, weep not for me”. (BL)
When love flies on the wings of sacrifice
www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/boundlesslife
Why has God forsaken me?
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
I wash my hands.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Your cross provides a window, Christ. (STS1)
Many people die in anguish. (STS1)
When the temple veil is torn in two. (STS1)
Christ Jesus praying from the cross. (STS2)
Singing the Sacred, Vol 1 2011, Vol 2 2014, World Library Publications
POEMS / REFLECTIONS
MOVEMENTS IN HOLY WEEK
The Anointing John 12:1-8 From economics to beauty
Losing Life/Gaining Life John 12:20-26 From survival to letting go
Jesus and the Crowd John 12:27-36 From simplification to complexity
Judas and Jesus Luke 22:47-48 From betrayal to forgiveness
The Crucifixion Luke 23:34 From betrayal to forgiveness
The Scourging and Matt.27:27-31 From suffering to concern for others
Christ’s Mother John 19:25-27 From suffering to concern for others
Words from the Cross Matt.27:46 From abandonment to absolute trust
Death and Resurrection Matt.27:45-46 and Matt. 28:9-10a From dark night to new dawn
CROSSES
Almost all the crosses
I have ever seen
seem much the same
despite their differing
size, shape, texture ‑
some are empty
others bear
cosmetic Christs
but few
if any
present
the crosses
of our world
crosses of plants and animals
under threat of extinction,
crosses of people suffering
unjust imprisonment,
starvation, torture,
personal and institutional
violence.
Sometimes I wish
I could place
real bodies
upon those crosses
bodies of dead whales,
dead native birds and trees,
bodies of dead,
dying,
emaciated
and mutilated people;
for at the intersection
of the horizontal
and vertical
elements of life
there is always
a body
and in the Body of Christ
I see
all the bodies of this world.
GOOD FRIDAY’S CROSS
Good Friday’s cross
stood on the altar skeleton
shrouded in black,
anonymous
as anaesthetized
death ‑
as if
we could not face
dying,
pain,
blood,
but wished
their annihilation
behind unseeing veil
and choir’s
harmonizing
of the torn body
and spilt blood
of the One
whose life
is sign and symbol
of all the
calculated obscenities
people endure
in the name of God
of anyone else
for that matter.
FOCUS FOR ACTION
If suffering is a mystery for which there is no simple explanation, what attitude of mind can I adopt which will enable me to face it with quiet hope and with a willingness to learn the lessons which it can teach me?
The conflict between good and evil, right and wrong, is never as simple as it often appears on the surface. Within the so-called “good” people there are always elements of evil and within the so-called “evil” people there are always elements of good. That is why we need to be as harmless as doves and as wise as serpents. If we were so ideologically correct as to choose as allies only “the absolutely good – the perfect” we would never do anything. Effective action is always based on compromise between moral rectitude or purity of ideology on one hand and on the other an astute pragmatism.
In what ways do my beliefs prevent me from effective cooperation with other people?
Text and image © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.

Events and Updates
Pluralism Sunday
On the first Sunday in May – May 3, 2015churches dedicate their worship to a celebration of our interfaith world. Progressive Christians thank God for religious diversity!
On the first Sunday in May – May 3, 2015 (or other times during the year) – churches dedicate their worship to a celebration of our interfaith world. Progressive Christians thank God for religious diversity! We don’t claim that our religion is superior to all others. We recognize that other religions can be as good for others as ours is for us. We can grow closer to God and deeper in compassion—and we can understand our own traditions better—through a more intimate awareness of the world’s religions. OnPLURALISM SUNDAY, churches celebrate elements of other world faiths in their sermons, litanies, and music; many feature speakers and singers from other faith traditions. Some congregations have exchanges with other faith communities, going to each other’s houses of worship.DIVIDED WE STAND, UNITED WE FALL Read the words of Thomas Jefferson, celebrating religious diversity in a letter he wrote to a Jewish leader in Savannah, Georgia, in 1820: “the maxim of civil government being reversed in that of religion, where its true form is, “divided we stand, united we fall.”
On the first Sunday in May- May 3, 2015 (or other times during the year) – churches dedicate their worship to a celebration of our interfaith world. Progressive Christians thank God for religious diversity! We don’t claim that our religion is superior to all others. We recognize that other religions can be as good for others as ours is for us. We can grow closer to God and deeper in compassion—and we can understand our own traditions better—through a more intimate awareness of the world’s religions. OnPLURALISM SUNDAY, churches celebrate elements of other world faiths in their sermons, litanies, and music; many feature speakers and singers from other faith traditions. Some congregations have exchanges with other faith communities, going to each other’s houses of worship.
SOULJOURN is a resource at Patheos.com for celebrating religious pluralism and for learning about the faiths of the world, and inviting people to explore religious diversity in their own “back yards”. The new novel by Jim Burklo, Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, is a conversation-starter for churches and other groups that are exploring world religions. The online study guide for the novel is a resource for discussion about world religion and interfaith relations. Congregations that welcome “Souljourners” - people visiting houses of worship of traditions other than their own – can advertise their welcome with this logo:

HOW CHURCHES CELEBRATE PLURALISM SUNDAY:
Rowntree Memorial United Church of Canada London Ontario celebrated Pluralism Sunday on April 28th, 2013 – relying on materials available through The Center for Progressive Christianity with the Bohemian Cafe dialogue from the Pluralism Project presented during sermon time.
St Andrew’s on The Terrace Church, Wellington, NZ, invited a member of the Buddhist community to speak about his journey as a secular Buddhist at our Sunday morning service on 5th May 2013.
First United Methodist Church of Madison, celebrated Pluralism Sunday on May 5, 2013 with worship focused on appreciation of religious diversity and what we receive from other faiths. Liturgical movement and music of other traditions were included. The church also hosted an interactive, intergenerational World Peace Village that day with banners, prayers, traditions, and sacred items from several different faiths.
First Congregational Church of Tacoma, WA, held an Interfaith Celebration Service and Dialogue on Sunday, April 22nd, 2012. An interfaith inspired service happened at 11am with speakers from several different faiths. Afterward a round-table discussion ran from 1p-3:30pm.
Countryside Community Church, UCC, Omaha, Nebraska conducted “The Faith of Jesus in a Pluralistic World” in 2012, the first in a 6-part series in a chain of TWELVE 6-part series called “By This Way of Life – Twelve Journeys Into the Heart of Christian Faith”.
On May 6, 2012, St. Augustine’s Episcopal Parish, Tempe, Arizona, hosted Imam Yahya Hendi and Rabbi Gerald Serotta as co-preachers for the 10:30 AM service.
On Sunday May 6, 2012, “Conversations about Progressive Christianity”, a study group of Lynnhaven Colony Congregational Church, United Church of Christ sponsored its Third Annual International Pluralism Sunday. After the success of sharing with local Buddhist communities, and then a progressive Jewish congregation last year, in 2012 they shared time and talent with a local Catholic Workers Movement house. Special guests were Steve Baggarly and Kim Williams who operate Sadako Sasaki House in Norfolk, VA. They offer short and long-term hospitality to homeless men and women and serve 100+ folks four mornings a week, bringing “breakfast-to-the-streets. This “faith-based”, intentional community supports the Plowshare movement for disarmament and is involved in nonviolent civil resistance against militarism locally and with the Atlantic Life Community.
Unity Church of Monterey Bay in Monterey, CA consistently honors other paths to God or the Sacred by reading sacred Scripture from at least two other faith traditions (in addition to the Judeo-Christian scripture) on the topic of the Sunday lesson.
In May 2012 it offered a series based on Karen Armstrong’s book “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” which also cites various faith traditions.
Niles Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Fremont, CA, celebrated Pluralism Sunday on Sunday, May 8, 2011 with a dialog sermon (by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer and the Rev. Steve Kindle) based on Matthew 2:1-12 and Acts 10:9-16. It covered topics such as how we become Christians, the implications of our stories of becoming Christians, why (given the plurality of religions that exist) we are still Christians, and (given that neither claimed that Christianity is superior to all other religions) what we think about the validity of other religions and the purpose of evangelism for progressive Christians. You are invited to listen to the audio of it here.
On Sunday, May 22, 2011 at Plymouth Congregational UCC in Helena, Montana, Rev. Cathy Barker preached on religious pluralism and use the wonderful “Reading from Many Traditions” from the Tanenbaum Center, with special music with Native American drum and flute.
On Sunday May 1, 2011, the “Conversations about Progressive Christianity” study group of Lynnhaven (VA) Colony Congregational Church, United Church of Christ sponsored its Second Annual International Pluralism Sunday. After the success of sharing with several of its local Buddhist communities last year, this year the church shared time and attention with members of the Jewish community. Rabbi Israel Zoberman, Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, was the speaker for Pluralism Sunday at Colony Congregational. May 1st was also Holocaust Remembrance Day and the church focused this solemn remembrance from an Interfaith perspective and the themes that follow for the whole human family. In addition to this special day of worship May 1st at 10:00 am and potluck meal at 11:00 am, several other learning opportunities happened: a Shabbat service with Congregation Beth Chaverim on Friday April 15th at 7:30 pm and the community-wide Holocaust Remembrance Day service at 6:45 pm on Sunday May 1st at Ohef Shalom Temple in Ghent.
The Unitarian Church of Weymouth, MA, featured a Pluralism Sunday sermon by the pastor, Richard Trudeau, on May 1 titled “More Like an Eddy than a Rock,” presenting the basic ideas of Buddhism, contrasting them with those of Christianity, and pointing out ways in which the two supplement each other.
First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, TN, celebrated Beltane on Pluralism Sunday, May 1, 6 pm. Bel was the Celtic sun god who was in his glory during the light half of the year. In the old traditions, this feast day celebrated the new growth and fertility of the land and all of its inhabitants. The Peacemaking Committee celebrated with dancing and dining at the church, and will hold the rite outside if weather permits.
The Congregational Church of Belmont, CA, on May 1 heard a local Baha’i leader speak in worship and the pastor of the church, Kristy Denham, preached on “Many Streams, One River”.
First Congregational Christian United Church of Christ, Chesterfield, VA on April 10 had Malik and Annette Khan of The Islamic Center of Virginia to do a presentation of Islam with the church’s Adult Faith Formation gathering. It also celebrated pluralism in its May 1 worship.
Celebrations of Pluralism Sunday include many other creative ways of embracing religious pluralism as integral to our Christian faith. Mt. Hollywood Congregational UCC in Los Angeles included in worship a performance by the students of the Shanti Interfaith Choir from the University of Southern California. St. Paul’s Church in Laramie, Wyoming, read the Golden Rule in 6 different religious traditions. Other churches focus on sermons about religious pluralism: Rev. John Shuck, First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethtown, Tennessee; Rev. Christine Paulus, St Luke’s Church in Philadelphia.
SIGN UP your congregation to be listed as a participating church for 2012 – by emailing Rev. Jim Burklo, Pluralism Sunday Coordinator for ProgressiveChristianity.org. (Churches can celebrate the event on other dates and still be listed as participants – indicate your plans for the event to Jim so these details can be listed on our site.)
PLURALISM SUNDAY is initiated by ProgressiveChristianity.org. Congregations worldwide have adopted its “Welcome Statement” that affirms that other religions can be as good for their followers as Christianity is for us.
Learn here what churches around the world are doing to promote religious pluralism as a profound expression of the love and the humility that Jesus preached and practiced. You’ll find sermons, litanies, book reviews, and other resources your congregation can use to create a celebration of PLURALISM SUNDAY that is appropriate for your community.Read Past Articles on Pluralism Sunday

Jim Burklo’s New Novel “Souljourn”
SOULJOURN is an entertaining way to learn about the religions of the world, and to get inspired to learn a lot more. It’s a novel with a mission – to increase religious literacy so that people of all faiths, or no religion, can understand and respect each other more.
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