In the documentary, ”Face to Face with Carl Jung” Part 1,[1] the pioneering Swiss psychiatrist, was asked if he believed in God. Then eighty-four he answered, “That is difficult to answer…I know… I don’t need to believe.” How many of us can say that I know God? I would guess that many would say we […]
When I was growing up in the forties and fifties, in the Christian church things were pretty much set in concrete. One was a Presbyterian(like my family) or Catholic or Methodist or Baptist or Episcopalian. We didn’t entertain other beliefs, we didn’t visit other churches, and certainly if we were Protestant, we would never enter […]
I sometimes think it’s a miracle that I am back in the church, given the church in which I was raised and how far from it I wandered. While I grew from a toddler to a young teen my family belonged to a southern Presbyterian church in Louisville, Kentucky. Every Sunday for those eleven years […]
According to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary which has a branch in Charlotte, in 2008 there were 39,000 Christian denominations in the world with a new denomination forming every 12 hours. In 1800 there were 500 Christian denominations.[1] To me this is an astounding number. If someone had said that there were 500 today, I’d have been […]
Spirituality can be like going down a fairly straight ladder with your back to the rungs, or like facing the rungs and holding on as you descend. Spirituality, being led by the Spirit of God, and religion, a set of beliefs, rituals and a community drawn together by its commonality, form a continuum that depicts […]
I was brought up in a hell-fire and damnation church in Kentucky with the preacher yelling and screaming about how sinful we were and how consigned to hell we were, pounding his fist on the pulpit for emphasis every Sunday. This was a powerful and toxic drama that had these effects on me: 1)a tendency […]
Religion still holds the key to what we want most in our lives: the freedom to be ourselves.