Save the Church, Let Advent Die
Unpopular opinion: Churches work way too hard to keep Advent relevant. It’s symptomatic of the Church’s larger issues.
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Jesus the Activist
(Author note: From time to time, as my theological perspectives change, I revisit articles that I find important and give them new life with a new perspective. This is one such article). I have an article that I wrote about 4 years ago that is making its way around social medial again. The title of it it “God Did Not Kill Jesus on the Cross for Our Sins.” It starts off by asking, “Why did Jesus die on a cross?” It’s a…
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The Overprivileged Judgement of John 3:16
Most of us could probably quote at least one verse of the Bible and most likely that verse would be John 3:16. It has been called the greatest love story ever to be told. Martin Luther, (the early church reformer) called the verse the Gospel in a nutshell. Someone else once said that “if the Bible was destroyed and only John 3:16 remained, that would be enough information of God’s love that could change the human heart”. It is also by far…
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Altruism and Oneness
Dr. Mohammed Basha of Gainesville, Florida tells the story of a patient of his. He remembers walking through the parking lot and says, “all I could think about was the dire diagnosis I had handed my patient Jimmy: pancreatic cancer.” Just then, he noticed an elderly gentleman handing tools to someone working under his stalled car. That someone was Jimmy. So, he called out to him, “Jimmy, what are you doing?” Jimmy dusted off his pants. “My cancer didn’t tell me not…
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On a Genderqueer God
Naming God is difficult at best, divisive even in its mildest form, and can be thought of as sacrilegious at its worst. I was confronted squarely with this reality as I entered divinity school. I can only begin to tell you how excited I was to be accepted into divinity school at Wake Forest. I had only applied to Princeton, Duke, and Wake Forest, and quite frankly had low hopes of being accepted into any of them. I still remember the day…
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Time to Dump the Dogma of a Dead God
It was 1966 and it was the first time TIME magazine used only text on its cover. The impact of the change only added to the striking question that the cover asked. “Is God Dead?” Three simple words that for a brief time created quite a stir throughout the United States. Many angry sermons were delivered in rebuttal. Even Bob Dylan got in on the action in a Playboy interview saying, “If you were God, how would you like to see that…
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Dear Christian, Vote for Love
Have you ever wonder how an all-loving God condemns LGBTQ folks to hell? It’s something I call the “I’m Special Confirmation Bias.” There’s nothing like taking a group that the Bible is mostly disinterested in (7 or fewer verses out of more than 31,000 verse) and turning them into one of the most vile groups in the eyes of God to really build up your “I’m more special” needs without having to do anything other than be judgmental about other people. See…
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The Un-Christian Reality of Capitalism
In his dictum entitled, Evangelii Gaudium, or The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis puts it this way, “We can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market.” He goes on to call for a redistribution of wealth and reform of economic structures that would ensure greater equality of income and opportunity. The rich, he says, should share their wealth and he even calls for a new commandment saying: “Today we also have to say ‘thou…
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Destroying Nike Sportswear is a Fake Protest Over Fake Outrage
Is this really what we’ve come to? A bunch of conservative white folks with enough money to buy sportswear that’s overpriced because Nike put their little swoosh logo on it are protesting Nike’s selection of Colin Kaepernick as the face of their “Just Do It” campaign by cutting off the swoosh logo or burning products which they have already purchased for far too much money. That’s right – stuff they have already purchased. It’s basically a fake protest. Call it misplaced violence,…
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Non-violently Bending the Moral Arc of the Universe
It is far too easy to believe that achieving true justice through active, non-violent resistance is just a pipe dream. That it is a lovely concept, but that it is mostly ineffective when placed within the context of the modern realities of power and dominance. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that active, non-violent resistance simply doesn’t capture the vast majority of the public’s attention enough to sale ads and commercials, so the majority…
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Rev. Mark Sandlin 