Progressive Faith Sermons - Dr. Roger Ray

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 goi...

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...

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!

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 decrimi...

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 r...

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 sty...

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 positiv...

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 g...

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 meanin...

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 ro...

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,...

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,...

October is Domestic Violence Awareness of Month and, unfortunately, it is as necessary as ever. A look at how domestic violence was normalized and accepted until relatively recently helps us understand the vital importance of transforming attitudes and cultures about gender, violence, and love. Together, we can work together to support lasting and healthy change, until everyone has a home that is...

In one of my favorite stories in the gospels, Jesus disappoints a rich man. The encounter invites us to consider the tension between the rich man, who wants to be moral while also hoarding wealth, and Jesus' insistence that economic justice is a prerequisite to healthy community (the kingdom of God). In the 21st century, we still wrestle with huge and growing economic and social disparities, despi...

Ironically, though we have talked a lot about learning to be sensitive to matters of race, gender, sexual identity, and class, somehow, in most of society, "fat-shaming" is still allowed. Those of us who have struggled with weight for all kinds of psychological, physiological, medical, or work reasons know that losing weight and being more healthy is complicated, difficult and sometimes, virtually...

For most of us, our lives are dominated with messages that reduce our worth to productivity, exhaust us with constant comparisons and competitions, and trap us in a ruthless cycle of praise and blame. This simple chant from the Buddhist tradition - 'My very life is sustained through the gifts of others' - invites us to reflect on how we relate to life, one another, and the earth with more gratitud...

Whistle blowers are modern prophets. You don't have to be a minister or a famous politician to do the work of a prophet, you just have to be willing to speak truth to power. Just don't expect to have a statue raised in your honor. Most whistle blowers are shunned in public in their own time, if they are lucky enough to not be put in prison or murdered. Still, progress is made by being the unreason...

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the USA, and the violent response that has shaped so much of the world during the last twenty years. With outrage over the tragedies accompanying the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, we also take time to reflect on the world we have created during two decades of occupation and war. And we remember the words of Daniel Berrigan, who, along w...

The owners of Purdue Pharma have been released from any liability in the deaths of a half a million people in the opioid crisis because they were willing to give a fraction of their ill-gotten gain to the victims of the opioid crisis that they helped to create. When did you ever hear of a drug dealer getting a suspended sentence for giving a donation to an addiction treatment program? We see billi...

Though most public school history classes are silent about it, there was a serious insurrection attempt made in 1932 to overthrow the administration of Franklin Roosevelt and install a fascist leader who would reverse the New Deal legislation in favor of a wealthy ruling class. Although the coups was stopped, none of the finances and planners of the coups were charged or tried…. familiar names lik...

The oldest known written story is the Gilgamesh Epic, the four-thousand-year-old tale of an ancient king who becomes obsessed with finding the secret to eternal life. From the dawn of civilization, humans have tried to grapple with the awareness that we are mortal, some turning to entirely unsubstantiated religious promises of life after death but some, like Gilgamesh, discover that eternity is be...

As Dr. Ray turns 65, he and David Ketchum will begin to share the preaching load equally. On this special Sunday, Dr. Ray reflects back on his 43 years in the pulpit (so far) with some important observations on the nature of parish ministry with all of the wonders and horrors that come with trying to break out of merely being a priest and striving to become a prophet, leading the community of fait...

The history of forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples, such as residential schools, has often been hidden or excused in popular memory. By looking at the historical context that brought about these institutions, we can understand how a cultural shift is needed to move away from the attitudes and ideas that were prominent in the history of colonization and continue to be embedded in our collecti...

The realities of residential schools and the tragedies of forced assimilation have filled the news this summer, to our grief, rage, and shame. So while we welcome Secretary Haaland's investigation into these schools and their impacts on Native children and their families, we also recognize our own work that needs to be done. All of us who are not Indigenous, especially White Christians, need to ho...

While many of us long for greater social equality, moving past the identity politics that emphasizes race, gender, and sexual orientation, often times at the expense of discussing ideas, budgets, policies, and infrastructure development, we cannot pretend that such divisions do not exist or that they do not matter. Perhaps one of the most lethal expressions of white, male, hetero dominance is to c...