The Loft LA - Progressive Christianity in Podcast Form

This Sunday, we’re celebrating Earth Day by reflecting on and reimagining our relationship with the land. After their escape from slavery and bondage, the Israelites are given the opportunity to build new economies that run counter to the Imperial Domination System they had seen within the Egyptian Kingdom. Against this social background, the wilderness narrative reveals the struggle of a people charged with cultivating a radically...

Throughout his entire earthly ministry, Jesus taught his followers that the kingdom of God had arrived that and now was the time for them to choose which kingdom they would serve, God or humanity. That Jesus was crucified tells us that he was executed by the rulers of the Kingdom of Rome, and that he was resurrected tells us that he was vindicated by God.
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The majority of Christians would probably not use the term “mystic” to describe Jesus. Many Christians, especially those of us in the West, think of mysticism as a spirituality that is disconnected from the everyday experiences of life. However, what we see in the life of Jesus is that his spiritual practices created a sense of Oneness with God and other human beings that deeply informed his beliefs on our responsibilities towards ...

Jesus’s baptism and subsequent time alone in the desert mark the beginning of his ministry. Both events describe profound spiritual experiences of the Divine, whom Jesus names his Father. While these experiences follow patterns similar to previous prophets, his response to the tempter while in the wilderness offers helpful insight into how our experience of the Divine can sustain us if we listen for the still, small voice.

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After having spent time in his community preaching and teaching, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do the people say that I am?” For those of us who grew up Christian, how we answered that question was extremely important. However, as we mature in our faith, an equally important question begins to emerge: how will we tell the story of Jesus? There are many ways to tell the story of Jesus, but how we choose to tell it significantly inf...

We know that there were women whose resources and labor enabled Jesus to travel and heal and preach. We even know some of their names: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna. On this final Sunday of our “Blessed Are the Women” series, we honor their stories, and imagine what they offer to us today. On this final Sunday of our series, we center the stories of these women at the margins (in diverse ways!), who claimed and shared power for t...

This Sunday we will continue our sermon series that focuses on women in the Christian tradition and highlight the work of M. Shawn Copeland, a Black Roman Catholic theologian whose work explores the nature of being human as we recognize Black History Month. What does it mean to be human and yet treated as an outsider, less than human? The story of the bleeding woman forces us to wrestle with this question and explore the gender dyn...

For the next two Sundays, we will be highlighting the work of two pioneering black women theologians as a way of both honoring Black History Month and our current sermon series that focuses on women in the Christian tradition. This Sunday, we will be celebrating the work of Rev. Dr. Delores Williams. When most Christians read the story of Abram, Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael, Hagar is seen as having a small role in a story that ultimat...

Interpreting Eve’s actions in the Garden of Eden as having doomed all humanity is perhaps the foundational claim used by many Christians to uphold patriarchy. Eve has been associated with evil, sin, temptation, and fallenness. Interestingly, but unsurprisingly, none of these claims are mentioned in the biblical story. Join us this Sunday as we read the story of Eve through a feminist and womanist lens and re-imagine Creation’s orig...

This is a special crossover posting from the Progressive Christians Podcast, hosted by Rev. Dr. Carter. 

Los Angeles is suffering from a historical fire. Thankfully, Julia, Westley, Rev. Blair, and Dr. Carter are safe, but we are thinking about and actively working on ways to support our local community. If you are interested in supporting, please check out the links...

Too often, we’ve been told that a successful life is a linear one. But in reality, our lives unfold with many unexpected twists and turns. The Magi follow a star, embarking on a long journey in a foreign land to honor the newborn Christ. Instead of returning to Herod as commanded, they trust their dreams and go home by another way. Their road isn’t straight, but God “makes a way in the wilderness” as they follow their intuition and...