Progressive Spirit

Ned Rosch is a co-founder of the Portland chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.   He says that advocating for justice for the Palestinians has made him more Jewish than ever.  He talks to me, personally, about his own awakening, liberating and painful, and the rift in the Jewish community as they struggle over the meaning of Israel, and the deep challenge facing Israel of what it will be, a true democracy or an apartheid state.

The program is undergoing a name change.  Religion For Life is now Progressive Spirit. It has the same focus on education, spirituality, and social justice, but with a new name!This week, I continue my series, Islam 101: Meet Your Muslim Neighbor. Manar Allatar is a Ph. D. student at Portland State University in the School of the Environment. She volunteers with youth at her mosque, Masjed As-Saber, and speaks with me about Islam and the empowerment of women, Islam and youth, and addressing Islamophobia.

This is part five of my series, "Islam 101:  Meet Your Muslim Neighbor."  I continue the conversation with Paul Kamolnick.  (See Part One).    Paul Kamolnick is a professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at East Tennessee State University.    He writes monographs for the US Army War College.   His latest monograph will be available for free download in the Spring of 2016. It is entitled The Al-Qa'ida Organization and the Islamic State Organization: History, Doctrine, Modus Operandi, and the US Strategy to Permanently Defeat Terrorism in the Name of Sunni Islam.  In this second part of our conversation, he talks about the specifics of these terrorist organizations and the strategies to defeat them.

This is part four of my series, "Islam 101:  Meet Your Muslim Neighbor."  One of the ways to combat Islamophobia is to be clear about the differences between Muslims and violent psychopaths who use religion as a cover for their terrorism.   Paul Kamolnick is a professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at East Tennessee State University. He specializes in Classical Social Theory, Contemporary Social Theory, Political Islam, Counterterrorism, and the Al Qua'ida and Islamic State Organizations.  He writes monographs for the US Army War College.  He published  Delegitimizing Al-Qaeda: A Jihad-Realist Approach in 2012.  His latest monograph will be available for free download in the Spring of 2016. It is entitled The Al-Qa'ida Organization and the Islamic State Organization: History, Doctrine, Modus Operandi, and the US Strategy to Permanently Defeat Terrorism in the Name of Sunni Islam.  He lays out his case in part one of a two-part conversation.

Harris Zafar (Twitter) is the National Spokesperson and Director of Youth Outreach for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA. He lives in Portland and is a member of the Portland Rizwan Mosque.   He has been on national media talking about Islam, human rights, pluralism, and freedom of religion.  Harris is the author of Demystifying Islam:  Tackling the Tough Questions.   He is my third guest in my series, “Islam 101:  Meet Your Muslim Neighbor.”

In the second in my series, "Islam 101: Meet Your Muslim Neighbor" I speak with Joseph Lumbard.  He is the General Editor of The Study Qur'an:  A New Translation and Commentary.   Dr. Lumbard is a professor at the American University of Sharjah in the Department of Arabic and Translation Studies.  He was born and raised in Washington D.C. and brought up in the Episcopal Church. He converted to Islam when a student at George Washington University.  He has published many articles and books on Islamic philosophy, Sufism, and Quranic Studies. Two of his books include Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition and Submission, Faith and Beauty: The Religion of Islam.   He spoke with me via Skype from from Sharjah In the United Arab Emirates to talk about The Study Qur’an: A New Translation.

With the increase in instances of Islamophobia and certain presidential candidates calling for "a ban on all Muslim travel to the U.S.," it is long past time to get to know our neighbors.  For the next several weeks I am presenting a series, "Meet Your Muslim Neighbor."   Ali Houdroge is one of the founding members of the Islamic Center of Portland at the corner of Denney Road and Hall Boulevard in Beaverton.   Mr. Houdroge was born in Lebanon and attended Portland Community College and Portland State University.  He worked as an electrical engineer with the army corps of engineers for 31 years until his retirement.   He has been managing the affairs of the Islamic Center since its inception in 1993, which serves a diverse Muslim Shia community from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and India.

They went into the wilderness to discover religion.  What is it all about?  Why are people religious?  The adventure is recounted in Dr. Tom Boyd's, Lusting For Infinity:  A Spiritual Odyssey.   Dr. Boyd is professor emeritus of philosophy and religious studies at the University of Oklahoma.   Reading Lusting For Infinity is like hanging out with your favorite professor and talking about all the great, honest, and real stuff you never have time for in class.   An important book for those with inquisitive minds and searching spirits.   A study guide is available as well.

John Van Hagen is a licensed psychologist with 30 years experience in a variety of clinical, training, and teaching positions.   In his book  Rescuing Religion: How Faith Can Survive Its Encounter With Science, he offers a way to retain a connection to biblical stories even if the characters never existed and the events never happened.  We can go behind the texts to discover the struggles the authors of these texts faced.  We find they connect with our own.

Steve McIntosh is a leader in the integral philosophy movement and is president of the social policy foundation The Institute for Cultural Evolution.   Steve is the author of Evolution's Purpose and Integral Consciousness and he speaks to me about his latest book, The Presence of the Infinite: The Spiritual Experience of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.  Food for thought for an evolving faith.

Robin Meyers has been the senior pastor of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City for over thirty years.  He has a strong voice for social justice and has pulled no punches criticizing forms of Christianity co-opted by the religious right.  His books include Saving Jesus From the Church, The Underground Church, and Why the Christian Right is Wrong.   He returns to Religion For Life to discuss his latest book,  Spiritual Defiance:  Building A Beloved Community of Resistance.  Based on his Beecher Lectures at Yale, Meyers calls preachers to be subversive and defiant for the social gospel.

Following her last book, Christianity After Religion, religious scholar, Diana Butler Bass, returns to Religion For Life to ask, "Where is God?" The answer that many of the "spiritual but not religious" are discovering is that God is in the world of nature and human relationships. Her latest book, Grounded: Finding God in the World, A Spiritual Revolution weaves personal experience and analysis to point to signs of this theological shift.

Rodney Wilson teaches school at a community college in Missouri. He was the first openly-gay K-12 public school teacher in Missouri and founded LGBT History Month (October).  He has a master's degree in religion and history and he turned his master's thesis into a book, Killing God: Christian Fundamentalism and the Rise of Atheism. In it he analyzes the responses of 1,600 people who left religion for atheism. He found four primary factors that contributed to their "deconversion."   You may resonate.

Twenty-five percent of all the people incarcerated in the world are in America's prisons.  60% of those are people of color.   America is a "carceral state."  Taking on "Lockdown America" a triad of "police violence, mass incarceration and the death penalty" Mark Lewis Taylor, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, has written a second edition to The Executed God:  The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America.   Taylor finds in the symbol, "The Executed God" a "power in and of the people" to resist the state theatrics of terror with a counter theatrics to terror in three parts: "cultivating adversarial politics, creating dramatic actions, and catalyzing social movements."

Peter Steinberger is the Robert H. and Blanche Day Ellis Professor of Political Science and Humanities at Reed College in Portland.  His area of expertise is political philosophy.  But he ventured into a book about the concept of God.  It is called The Problem With God:  Why Atheists, True Believers, and Even Agnostics Must All Be Wrong.   We talk about why it is meaningless to talk about God.  There is no such idea.  Curious?

Joseph Baker is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at East Tennessee State University.   His latest book, American Secularism:  Cultural Contours of Nonreligious Belief Systems, co-authored with Buster G. Smith, explores the rise of secularity in the United States.  Why are more and more people identifying as "non-religious" and what are the forces shaping this change?   Religion and secularism from a sociological point of view.

Mary Pflum Peterson is an Emmy Award winning producer for Good Morning America.  She is a driven, highly successful television professional and former reporter for CNN.   Her childhood, however, was complicated.  Her mother suffered an emotional breakdown and took solace in hoarding, filling the house with "treasures."  The bond that held mother and daughter was symbolized by the white dresses that marked important milestones in their lives.  She tells her powerful and important story in White Dresses:  A Memoir of Love and Secrets, Mothers and Daughters.

Eric Elnes is a minister in the United Church of Christ at Countryside Community Church in Omaha, Nebraska  and author of Gifts of the Dark Wood:  Seven Blessings for Soulful Skeptics (and Other Wanderers).  He is also the author of The Phoenix Affirmations:  A New Vision for the Future of Christianity.  He hosts a webcast called Darkwood Brew. He spoke with me about seven gifts we find in the Dark Wood of our lives.

Val Webb is a theologian and scientist from Australia. She is the author of nine books including her latest Testing Tradition and Liberating Theology: Finding Your Own Voice. She returns to Religion For Life to speak with me about the importance of being critical of theological creeds and finding your path.

Jeffrey Robbins is Chair and Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania. He is the author or editor of eight books.  He is a Westar Fellow and a member of the new "God and the Human Future" Seminar. He along with Thomas Sheehan will be at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Beaverton, Oregon, November 6-7 to discuss God, Christianity, and the Human Future. In this candid conversation, Dr. Robbins talks about the "problem of God" and his upcoming book, Radical Theology: A Theological Method for Change.