As the world waits to see if a ground war is about to start between Russia and Ukraine, it seems good to give some thought to how we got to this deadly threatening point. How has the spread of nuclear weapons and NATO bases in Eastern Europe led to war always being proposed as the solution to the world’s problems. As Sting once sang, “I’ve never seen a military solution.” We have much better options and spiritual communities should never stop pointing towards the pathways to peace.

Progressive Faith Sermons - Dr. Roger Ray

War Is Inconceivable

Jung suggests that the dragon, a mythological beast common to virtually all cultures, is unconsciously an archetype that reflects human potential. After all, a dragon is a snake that can fly! Spiritual people need to rise above the situational ethics that ignores moral misconduct in others that allows them to slither more than their soar! Remember, a snake doesn't have to bite you to be a snake.

A Snake Doesn’t Have to Bite You to be a Snake

Despite the insistence on being the “land of the free,” the United States is the global leader in both total number of prisoners and per capita rate of imprisonment. The prophetic vision of proclaiming release to captives and letting the oppressed go free is a good opportunity to reflect on the vision and practices of the restorative and transformative justice movements. These approaches invite us to look more intentionally at the world we have, and then ask what kind of world we want to create.

“Trying to Create Safety”: Reflections on Restorative and Transformative Justice

The world as we know it has been shaped by an approach to development and success that has fueled terrible inequality, catastrophic climate change, and now, vaccine inequity. Thankfully, other approaches have been offered that help us re-think how we relate to ourselves, each other, and the earth. The development of a patent-free vaccine called Corbevax is one example of how we can reimagine society to prioritize personal and social well-being and realign our policies and institutions to create conditions where our human potential can be fulfilled.

“Until Everyone is Safe”: Reimagining Social and Community Well-Being

Fiction author, Kurt Voneggut, once pointed out the hypocrisy of many loud conservative Christians who demanded that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public buildings and court house lawns without ever asking to have the Beatitudes publicly posted. He was certainly no theologian but he hit on a very good point. Religion that is "useful" in controlling the conduct of civil society is always going to be popular with the "law and order" crowd but the moral teachings of Jesus about love, hope, forgiveness, generosity, and compassion, those tend to make the self-righteous pretty uncomfortable and therefore are largely ignored.

Ten Commandments vs the Beatitudes

Jesus Seminar founding member, Marcus Borg, first described the message of Jesus as being “radical compassion.” Peer and fellow seminar member, Karen Armstrong, took that concept to an interfaith (or no faith) form of spirituality, saying, The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect. The opposite of spirituality is not atheism. It is, in our partisan, narcissistic, and cannibalistic capitalist society, more akin to sociopathy. The good news is that we get to choose which path we want to follow.

Sociopathy vs Spirituality

Ten years ago, when I was still blond and clean shaven, I delivered this sermon in our former church building to try to give an honest and academic explanation of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. This year I am speaking out of state so we will re-run this video and I will be back next week to share with you the message I am delivering in South Carolina this weekend. Merry Christmas!

Dr. Roger Ray - Christmas Stories

In 1971, in the early days of the “War on Drugs,” then President Nixon appointed a commission to study marijuana and to release their results and policy suggestions. More than 80 people worked for most of a year to produce a nearly 4000 page long report and even though Nixon commissioned the study, the results were that pot was no more dangerous than alcohol and they recommended that it be decriminalized and managed in the same way as alcohol in the interests of public health. The report even named the danger of the growing trend of incarceration on marijuana charges which was likely to make keeping people in jail an income stream within the prison industrial system. Obviously, Nixon ignored both the facts and the recommendations of his own commission but, even worse, every president for the past 50 years has done the same while deaths from lethal drugs have increased by more than 500% since the failed “War on Drugs” began, we still waste billions of dollars in police and prison resources devoted to marijuana “crimes.”

Guess Who Won’t Be At Christmas Dinner

A familiar image from the Advent season is leveling the mountains so that all "may walk safely." One example of this process in our own times has been the increasing emphasis on healing trauma, especially since marginalized people disproportionately experience trauma. From ACEs to trauma-informed care, to emerging approaches that are healing-centered and asset-informed, we wholeheartedly welcome resources to prevent, heal, and transform trauma. At the same time, we recognize and celebrate that we are more than our trauma. Together, we are leveling mountains and creating communities where thriving can be the norm, rather than the exception.

More Than Our Trauma: Healing-Centered Social Change

Stephen Colbert observed that, like most of us, not being a lawyer, it is hard to judge whether 17-year-old, Kyle Rittenhouse, broke any laws when he took a semi-automatic rifle to the demonstration in Kenosha and ended up killing two demonstrators. But, if he didn’t, then the laws need to be changed. Years of progressively liberalized laws regarding open-carry and the availability of military styled weapons is a part of the fabric of a society in which a teenager, imagining himself to be a conservative superhero, ends up killing liberal demonstrators and then being found “not guilty” in the justice system. Clearly, he is guilty of a monstrous crime . . . it just wasn’t “illegal,” which means that state legislatures and maybe even all of us, are guilty of these murders. America must come back from the brink of gun insanity.

Open Season on Protestors? (well, except for Jan. 6 rioters)

Emiliana Simon-Thomas and Jeremy Adam Smith observed that, “Americans are very grateful and they think gratitude is important—they’re just not very good at expressing it.” In our world of constant and chronic stressors, it takes intentional effort to recognize, appreciate, and savor the good things in our lives. But when we do, we create conditions for our relationships to thrive: savoring positive experiences, expressing thanks, and receiving gratitude from others.

Giving Thanks in a Thankless World

As we approach our national observance of Thanksgiving, we are being asked to also give respectful reflection to the Indigenous Nations who were here thousands of years before Europeans sailed across the Atlantic in little wooden ships. Guilt for the centuries of genocide, enslavement, and pathological land theft hardly makes sense in the 21st century. What we need now is understand about how we got here and not some exercise in self-flagellation for the sins of our ancestors (though reparations might make for a good conversation!).

The Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

US borders are almost always in the news, ubiquitous even to the point of invisibility. But the abusive treatment of Haitian refugees last September, from administrative policies to violent border patrolmen on horseback, was a stark reminder of their cruelty. Political borders are real and have real impacts, but they are not objective or neutral. Their history, along with their psychosocial meanings, reflect the inequalities of colonial violence. We need to think deeply about, and act courageously, in favor of honoring our shared humanity and our relationship to the earth.

"Almost All of the Land in the World is Claimed": The Enduring Violence of Borders

While the disappearance of anyone is tragic, the way the media exhaustively covers the disappearance of beautiful, young, white women compared with the silence around the disappearance of tens of thousands of women of color shows more than a media bias, it reveals a self perpetuating racism in the way the public shows more concern about white victims than we do about non-white victims. The real roots of racism hide, not only in our institutions but inside our own brains and that is where we have to go to end the generation after generation education in racism.

The Roots of Racism (Missing White Woman Syndrome)

This pandemic has taken a heavy toll, world wide, in lives, to be sure, but also it has closed businesses, terminated jobs, set millions of students back a year or two years in learning, while it has shifted wealth around the world. As we have focused on lost jobs and shuttered businesses, the world's super rich have managed to used the pandemic panic spending to make themselves much more wealthy, some billionaires have even doubled their enormous wealth in just the past year. As horrible as the pandemic has been for so many of us, we do find ourselves in the fortunate position of being able to change the world for the better, not simply to return to "normal" which wasn't that great for most people, but to redesign our economy, our healthcare system, our education and penal systems, to be more of what we have dreamed of. A time of great social chaos is also an opportunity for meaningful reform.

Halloween, a Holiday of Acceptance and Possibility

Sermons from the Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO. We are believers in Jesus Christ who accept all people without judgment and who desire to work and worship as a community striving for social justice.

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Progressive Faith Sermons - Dr. Roger Ray

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