Progressive Spirit

David Ray Griffin will go down in history (assuming the future has a history) as the most important theologian and prophet of the latter part of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is a philosopher/theologian who has written over 25 books on that topic. He wrote another dozen on 9/11 making him the premier scholar on the search for the truth behind 9/11. His latest book speaks with clarity, scholarship, and urgency to the most crucial event in our time, global warming and climate change. I speak with him about his latest book, Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis?

Veda Gill is the Executive Director of the Presbyterian Education Board in Pakistan (Facebook). She oversees a number of schools that educate over 6,000 students. These schools founded initially by Presbyterian missionaries in the mid 19th century are now far superior to government-run schools and they reach out to the poorest, both Muslim and Christian. She believes that education is the key to peace. She speaks with me about her important work.

Rick Ufford-Chase was the moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly from 2004 to 2006. He worked as a Presbyterian Mission Worker for twenty years on the U.S./Mexico border, supporting migrants and refugees and developing educational programs for people of faith who are interested in the complexities and challenges of the border region. He was formerly the Executive Director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, and is currently the Co-Director (with his wife, Kitty) of Stony Point Conference Center. He stopped in at the KBOO studio when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) met in Portland to discuss his latest book, Faithful Resistance: Gospel Visions for the Church in A Time of Empire.

On a Friday night in March 1981 Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile, Alabama in their car, hunting for a black man. The young men were members of Klavern 900 of the United Klans of America. They were seeking to retaliate after a largely black jury could not reach a verdict in a trial involving a black man accused of the murder of a white man. The two Klansmen found nineteen-year-old Michael Donald walking home alone. Hays and Knowles abducted him, beat him, cut his throat, and left his body hanging from a tree branch in a racially mixed residential neighborhood.Arrested, charged, and convicted, Hays was sentenced to death—the first time in more than half a century that the state of Alabama sentenced a white man to death for killing a black man. On behalf of Michael’s grieving mother, Morris Dees, the legendary civil rights lawyer and cofounder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a civil suit against the members of the local Klan unit involved and the UKA, the largest Klan organiza

Beaverton is one of the most diverse cities in Oregon with one in 5 residents born in a different country and 99 different languages spoken in homes.  Megan Cohen is the Cultural Inclusion Specialist with the Mayor’s office.  She discusses the Cultural Inclusion Program the city has begun to celebrate this diversity and to meet the challenges of these demographic shifts.   This program was broadcast July 7th, 2016 on KBOO’s “News In Depth.”

Here is a special report for Progressive Spirit on the 222nd General Assembly that met July 18-25 in Portland at the Oregon Convention Center. The Assembly meets once every two years. It previously met in Portland in 1967 and before that in 1893. I speak with former moderator, Rick Ufford-Chase, newly elected stated clerk of the PCUSA, J. Herbert Nelson, Palestinian Christian, Nahida Gordon, Jeffrey DeYoe of the Israel-Palestine Mission Network, Ned Rosch of Jewish Voice for Peace, Ray Bagnuolo of That All May Freely Serve, and Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project on topics of LGBTQ justice, fossil fuel divestment, Israel-Palestine, evolution, and the church's future.

Dr. Nahida Gordon, a Palestinian-American was nine years old when she and her parents had to leave their home in Jaffa in 1948. Palestinians refer to this event as al Nakba or the Catastrophe. She still has the keys to her childhood home. In her book, "Palestine Is Our Home: Voices of Loss, Courage, and Steadfastness," she brings to the West the voices of Palestinians, their culture, their resistence to Israeli occupation, and their hope to return to their homeland.

Krista Tippett is the host of NPR’s On Being. It is a show that asks, “What does it mean to be human and how do we want to live?” She was trained as a journalist and reported from divided Berlin. She received a Masters of Divinity Degree from Yale in 1994 and turned her attention from politics to the larger questions of life. She visited with me in the KBOO studio to talk about her own spiritual journey and her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.

Patricia Tull is An ordained Presbyterian minister and professor of Hebrew Bible.  She retired from Louisville Theological Seminary where she is A.B. Rhodes Professor Emerita of Old Testament.  She is the author of Inhabiting Eden: Christians, the Bible, and the Ecological Crisis.   In this book she demonstrates how the Hebrew Scriptures can open our minds to ecology, justice, and value.  She will be speaking at Southminster Presbyterian Church June 19th in conjunction with the 222nd PC(USA) General Assembly the meets that week in Portland.  She blogs at Inhabiting Eden.

“I didn’t squander my youth on responsibility,” quips Steve Theme, author of Asphalt Asylum: The Dark Roads to Light.   It is part hitchhiking journal, part mythic adventure as Steve Theme tells the story of his 7,000 mile hitchhiking quest to run away and find home again.   Steve introduces us to the fascinating people you meet on the road.  More than that, he offers a window into the angst and idealism of a nineteen year-old-male as his 50+ self reflects on what it means to be human, to connect with humans, to struggle with whatever it is we call “God.”

On September 29th, 1962, Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett spoke before a halftime crowd at a University of Mississippi football game. He said he loved Mississippi's heritage. This compelled him to personally block African-American James Meredith from enrolling at Ole Miss. Eventually Meredith was enrolled, violence followed, and 28 clergy, white Methodist clergy, signed a statement, Born of Conviction, opposing the white power structure and its racism. Of the 28 signers, three lost their positions immediately, 18 had left the state in two years. Joseph T. Reiff, chair of the Religion Department at Emory and Henry College, has written about this time, these clergy, and their statement in his book, Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi's Closed Society.

The Kamasutra brings to mind (and to Google searches) erotic and exotic sexual positions.   OK, it is that.  But it is much more.  It is about the art of living.   Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, is a leading scholar in Hinduism and mythology.   She has written over forty books including Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook, Translated from the Sanskrit, The Laws of Manu, and a new translation of the Kamasutra.   Her latest is Redeeming the Kamasutra.  We discuss this fascinating text and the controversy it ignites still today.

America's leading atheist, the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and co-host of Freethought Radio, Dan Barker, talks about his latest book, God the Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction (audiobook)   The roots of the book go to Richard Dawkins' famous description of God in his book The God Delusion.“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”Barker provides scriptural verses for each of the above attributes and then adds more that Dawkins missed.  Barker challenges Christians to pull back the veil of devotion and read what the "good book" really presents as "God."

John Loftus was an evangelical minister.  He has several degrees in Christian apologetics.  He pastored churches and taught at Christian colleges.  Then he left it all.   He has written a dozen books with titles such as Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity and The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True.  His latest book is How to Defend the Christian Faith:  Advice from An Atheist.  He cuts through the mischaracterizations, special pleading and outright lies of Christian apologists.  He blogs at Debunking Christianity.

What is the purpose of satire?  It is it effective?  Can it get you in trouble?  Terry Lindvall is the CS Lewis Professor of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan College.  He writes about humor and in his latest book, God Mocks:  A History of Religious Satire From the Hebrew Prophets to Stephen Colbert, he explores the role of religious satire throughout history.  From Elijah to Alexander Pope to Robert Ingersoll and more, Lindvall introduces us those who tickle our funny bone while calling us out.

Jim Wallis, president and founder of Sojourners, is an evangelical Christian with a social conscience. He speaks and writes about ethics and public policy. His latest book is called America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to A New America. He has been engaging in town meetings around the country to discuss what it means for white people to “die to whiteness” and what we all need to do to make a bridge to a multi-cultural America.  Here is a report about the town meeting in Portland.

A pioneer of the progressive Christian movement, John Shelby Spong, returns for the third time to Progressive Spirit.  We discuss his 25th book, Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy. The retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark demonstrates that the gospel writers were not writing material to be taken literally but liturgically. As Christianity moved away from Judaism it lost its ability to interpret the stories about Jesus.  The Christian faith became a matter of believing things that can't possibly be true.   Fundamentalist Christians, says Spong, are heretics.   He charts a course for spiritual thinkers to embrace faith and the modern world. Find his weekly column at www.johnshelbyspong.com.

What do palm fronds, statues of Ganesh, and eagle feathers all have in common?   They are religious objects that pose a challenge for the environment.  Jay Wexler is a professor at the Boston University School of Law.   He specializes in environmental law and church/state issues.   His latest book is When God Isn't Green:  A World-Wide Journey to Places Where Religious Practice and Environmentalism Collide.   With humor and a hope for raising consciousness and finding balance, he makes the case for continuing the conversation between the needs of religious and environmental communities.

Were the authors of the gospels who told fanciful stories about Jesus making stuff up, or did they have faulty memories, or both?   Bart Ehrman, The James A Gray Professor of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina tackles the issue of Jesus and memory.  He is one the most renowned and controversial religious scholars in the world.  He studies the historical Jesus and early Christian writings but is not a Christian.  He has written over twenty books and has appeared on this program twice previously.  His latest book is Jesus Before the Gospels:  How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of The Savior.    Find his blog in which all proceeds go to help the hungry and homeless.

John Caputo is Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University. He is a "radical" theologian.   From his website:  "Caputo treats "sacred" texts as a poetics of the human condition, or as a 'theo-poetics,' a poetics of the event harbored in the name of God."   In this conversation we discuss his book for the popular reader, The Folly of God:  A Theology of the Unconditional.    How to speak of God when God doesn't exist.   Don't miss his exciting spiritual autobiography, Hoping Against Hope:  Confessions of a Post-Modern Pilgrim.