In solidarity with working people on Labor Day weekend, a cohort of BLC folks report back to the church about their experience going through the “Solidarity Circles” course run by Vanderbilt University’s program in Religion & Justice. (Image from bioneers.org)
Read MoreWeek 1 of BLC’s August church-culture experiment following the ”Revised Common Lectionary” for our inspiration. For this week’s Bible passages, think Luke Skywalker from ”Star Wars”…
Read MoreBringing to a close our focus on "Neighboring" (loving our neighbors as ourselves), Vince interviews his old friend Hannah, a community organizer with Chicago's ONE Northside.
Read MoreLike Jesus, we can be thoughtful about what images we let (and don't let) form our personal images of God. In our current moment of global war crimes, mass economic exploitation, and collective deconstruction of versions of faith that no longer work for people, we need mothering images of God more than ever before. (Mosaic: Jesus as Mother Hen -- Dominus Flevit Church in Jerusalem)
Read MoreA natural response to suffering in church settings is: “I’ll pray for you.” Which is great! But it can also lead to disappointment, or even (dare we say it) embarrassment. How can prayer to alleviate suffering be an important and deep part of our lives and communities? Are there popular beliefs about prayer we need to unlearn?
Read MoreBeginning with the famous "Invisible Gorilla" study by Daniel Simons, Vince suggests a prayer practice for experiencing transcendence in the midst of our exhausting, pressure-heavy lives, which can feel simultaneously instinctual AND extremely hard (or strange) against the backdrop of Modern Life.
Read MoreReveling in the creativity and power of storytelling can unlock some of the most life-giving applications of the Bible to our modern world. At the same time, divorcing BiblIcal narratives from their roots in storytelling can trap people in some of the most terrorizing applications of the Bible. (Image from Evan Turk's The Storyteller)
Read MoreThe Bible is everywhere in Western culture, in all of its beauty, and in all of its problematic imagery. Vince suggests some options for feeding life-giving applications of the Bible, and starving terrorizing applications of the Bible.
Read More60% of American adults believe in the idea of soulmates, according to a recent YouGov poll. But romance can be a fickle, crappy, unforgiving thing to put one’s trust in. Unfortunately, much of American religion reinforces the belief that to be single is to be incomplete. How can a community like BLC counter such beliefs?
Read MoreSpecial guest and old friend of BLC Kristen Daly-Mosier unpacks three movements the Jesus tradition encourages us to make as a capitalistic, materialistic, colonizing culture: (1) From "stewardship" to "solidarity", (2) From "uses" to "gifts", (3) From "classification" to "revelation".
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