UCC-related Chicago Theological Seminary kicks off a new course tonight.
“Public theology” is being offered to help prepare clergy to be leaders in the field of public policy advocacy. This is exciting. Our mainline churches have done a terrible job of lifting up and mentoring new leaders in the field of social justice work. Jesus offered hope and called for justice. We’ve been out organized by those on the Religious Right who offer a starkly different vision of the Christian faith in contemporary life.
Part of the assignment for the course: reading this blog. The Rev. Dr. Susan Thislethwaite, the president of CTS and professor for this course, has also invited me to be a guest lecturer later this month.
As a group the class will be logging on tonight to visit here as part of their introduction to the class and as the semester progresses one of their assignments is to develop blogs of their own.
So let me say welcome to the CTS community!
What you’ll find here is a collection of my sermons (like the one from this past Sunday on 9/11 and Iraq), action alerts from various organizations, short essays on various public policy issues, and sometimes my personal stands on electoral politics.
The Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches USA, will be a guest on this site on Monday for a podcast interview about his new book.
You’ll also find – and this is most important – links too many other sites written by individuals and organizations promoting ideas on how we can build up (in Christian terms) the Kingdom.
Some people love this site and others really don't. In the three years this site has been live I've put up 2084 posts, there have been 5534 comments left here concerning those posts and nearly 600,000 hits.
My name is attached to the work written here and I take responsibility for the content. You’ll find that many blogs are written by anonymous authors but I feel strongly that if you are going to take stands based on your faith you ought to be willing to take responsibility for your own words. What is published here does not represent the positions of the church or denomination I serve unless otherwise stated.
There will be more to say later. In the meantime, I have a sermon to finish for this Sunday.
Thank you for visiting!
