Category Archives: Evolutionary spirituality

Darwin was half-right. Man’s understanding of nature, mankind and the whole Cosmos are evolving from the simple and the physical to the complex and metaphysical. Don’t just take our word for it. Check out these postings!

If Darwin Prayed – God as Beloved Other

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From “evolutionary Christian” Bruce Sanguin – There is still a lot of confusion out there around the distinction between God being “a” person and God being personal. Sanguin writes in a recent column on his If Darwin Prayed website, how he navigates the difference in his thinking.

It’s a helpful way to explain to atheistic thought as well as Christian perspectives both “progressive” and “traditional.”(Gotta love those labels!)

“Progressives want to dissociate themselves completely from the mythic Old Man In the  Sky of the Bible who intervenes episodically to rescue us,” Sanguin writes. “This is also the God that atheists reject . . . Real Christians believe that God, and any other image is just a watered-down attempt to save religion from modernism, but is nothing more than a stop-gap measure. These atheists are quite determined to freeze God at this stage of spiritual intelligence, thus giving them an easy target.

“A solution to the problem arises when it’s looked at through an evolutionary lens,”says Sanguin. Read his column on If Darwin Prayed.

 

 

Religion in Human Evolution

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Robert Bellah, one of America’s most distinguished sociologists, caps off his luminous academic career with Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, a painstakingly researched book (800 pages) that delves deep into the roots of humankind’s encounter with mystery and the search for meaning.

Underwritten in part by funding from the John Templeton Foundation, Bellah’s book, out recently from Harvard University Press, is the fruit of 13 years of research and analysis. Guided by the latest findings in the biological and social sciences, Continue reading →

The Emerging Church

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Bruce Sanguin is a Vancouver minister who for decades has written and preached about what he calls “evolutionary Christian Spirituality.”

He is passionate about raising public awareness that “there is a form of Christianity beyond the belief-based, biblical literalism that is associated with traditional ‘church.’”

Among other books he wrote The Emerging Church: A Model for Change and a Map for Renewal (Woodlake Publishing, 2008). Rather than resist change by going back to the good old days, Sanguin uses the tools of Spiral Dynamics Integral to show how a congregation can navigate the swift currents of evolution in society, spirituality and how people are experiencing God.

In The Emerging Church, Sanguin uses “evolutionary theology” to tell the story of the congregation he has served over the past 14 years. He describes the principles, practices and programs that have brought this congregation back to life, despite being located in a neighborhood that consistently rates the highest in North America polling in the category of “no religion”.

He writes, “We believe that along with the rest of life, we need to creatively adapt to changing life conditions, or suffer the evolutionary consequences – which we’re seeing with the decline of the mainline churches. This creative adaptation and innovation is driven by Spirit. Everything and everybody is involved in a sacred, evolutionary process, including the Christian faith. What might it look like for a church to consciously embrace and celebrate the ‘blessed unrest’ that is coursing through us as a work of Spirit?“

For more information visit his website, www.fdarwinprayed.com. His latest book is If Darwin Prayed: Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics.


Spiritual Evolution and A Sustainable Environment

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Futurist Jeremy Rifkin writes about the deep tectonic changes in our civilization. At first glance this seems just a article on economic and political evolution that can restore balance in our environment. Having almost finished his tome, The Empathic Civilization, I realize that what he describes here is a great example of Divine Love and Mind at work, hurrying along our spiritual evolution (what Mary Baker Eddy calls “the gradations of human belief.”)

Listen to what Rifkin writes in Odewire, “news for intelligent optimists.” (Link at the bottom of this post): “The great economic revolutions in history occur when new communications technologies converge with new energy systems. New energy regimes make possible the creation of more interdependent economic activity and expanded commercial exchange and facilitate more dense and inclusive social relationships. The accompanying communications revolutions become the means to organize and manage the temporal and spatial dynamics that arise from new ­energy systems.

“The Internet revolution and emerging renewable energies (are) about to merge to create a powerful infrastructure for a Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) that will change the world.”

Read the full article on Odewire, “Viva la revolution!”

Thank God for Evolution

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Thank God for Evolution, How the Marriage of Science and Religion will Transform Your Life by Michael Dowd (2007). Dowd is an ordained United Church of Christ minister. He began his career strongly opposed to evolution theory, but has since become an “Evolutionary Christian.” In this book he uses evidence from astrophysics, geology,  anthropology and evolutionary psychology to writes passionately about the emerging common ground between evolution and religion. Using Bible scholarship he reinterprets Genesis and other passages to help more conservative theological thinkers come to terms with the scientific evidence at hand. He describe some of what Science and Health says about religion and science, including the chapters on Genesis and Creation.

A Good Read. Thank God for Evolution is proving very useful for environmental advocates to reach out to conservative Christian thought. In a very entertaining and compelling way the book breaks down doctrinal barriers between traditional, modern, and post-modern Christian thought. Dowd also has several informative DVDs, and speaks across the country. Visit www.thankgodforevolution.com for more info.

The Empathic Civilization

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The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, by Jeremy Rifkin, 2009. Examines the “radical new view” of human nature that is emerging in biological and cognitive sciences, and creating controversy in intellectual circles. Recent discoveries in brain science and child development are forcing us to rethink the long-held belief that human beings are, by nature, aggressive, materialistic, utilitarian and self-interested. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” homo sapiens is evolving into homo empathicus, who will survive and flourish because it has empathic skills of compassion and collaboration that are more effective than the competitive skills of past generations.

The dawning realization is that we are a fundamentally empathic species. Continue reading →

Case for God

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The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong  (fall 2009). In her book The Case for God, the author — a former nun — argues that religion is a practical discipline that can teach us to discover new capacities of the mind and heart. I heard Armstrong interviewed by Terry Gross on “Fresh Air.” What struck me was her impassioned sense that true religion is more about compassion than about beliefs.

Evolutionary Spirituality

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For a pretty good history on evolutionary spirituality, visit  http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/evolution-of-spirituality/.

Enlightennext.org is a Lennox, MA based organization dedicated to catalyzing evolution in consciousness and culture, including spirituality and religion (Christianity and Eastern).

NOTE: To access free content on this site, you might need to provide an email for access but it’s worth it!

Spontaneous Evolution

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Our Positive Future (and a way to get there), by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., and Steve Bhaerman, 2009. Lipton, an accomplished biologist, explains how states of consciousness actually form and guide the physical body, with the bottom line that this means that we are not victims of DNA or biology, but have the power to make choices for health and wholeness of ourselves and the planet.  Great ideas you can use for encouraging people to try spiritual healing.