By Carl Gregg, Patheos Spirituality Channel Contributor at Carl Gregg When I was 12, the most salient books on my parents’ shelves were two red-bound volumes, The Case of Leon Trotsky and Not Guilty. These made up the report of the Dewey Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow Trials. I never read them with the wide-eyed fascination I brought to books like Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, but I thought of them in the way in which other children thought of their family’s Bible: they were... Read more

By Joanna Fontaine Crawford, M. Div., Intern Minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship Read more

By Jamie Schwoerer, Patheos Contributor I was around 12 years old when my cousin, just a month younger than me, told me I was going to hell because, for whatever reason, I was missing Sunday school that week. After my Dad and I dropped her off at home, I asked him if I was really going to go to hell for missing Sunday school. After all, it seemed to me that a loving, forgiving God who created the imperfect human... Read more

By Leah Libressco, Patheos Catholic Channel Contributor at Unequally Yoked For several years, a lot of my friends have been telling me I had an inconsistent and unsustainable philosophy. ”A virtue ethicist atheist whose transhumanism seems to be rooted in dualism? Who won’t shut up about moral lapses as wounds to the soul and keeps trying to convince us it’s better to be sinned against than sinning? Who has started talking about mortifying her pride and keeps pulling out Lewis... Read more

By Lara Owen, Patheos Spirituality Contributor at A Spiritual Life I lost my religion when I was fourteen years old, very suddenly. It was a Sunday morning and as usual I was in church for Holy Communion. The curate, a likeable man well known to me as a neighbor and friend of my parents, and who had given me my confirmation instruction just the year before, was giving a sermon on the evils of fornication. It was an unusually fire-and-brimstone... Read more

By Sam Alexander, Patheos Spirituality contributor at Christianity for the Spiritual but not Religious Timmy and I were swimming in Lake Luzerne when the lightening struck. I’m sure that if you’d been on the shore you’d have seen the second recorded instance of men walking on water. We were out of there in a flash. Timmy and I were close friends. We grew up together at the Peniel Bible Conference. Late in my Senior year of high school I got... Read more

By David Matthew Brown, Patheos Spirituality Contributor at Wrestling with Yourself There is division within us, each of us, we are here to end the division and know ourselves and that will lead to complete freedom. That is true education. We see that division throughout the world in nationalities, most religions, race, traditions, politics, relationships, etc.. So how can one be free if they are attached to an idealogy, concept, or image. Because freedom is not attached to anything, it... Read more

By Barbara Alexander, Patheos Spirituality Contributor at Awakening What’s Next As a child of the Midwest in the 1950s, religion was part of what I did. Mine was Methodist – reasonably benign theology and very strong community. The church was near our home so I walked or rode my bike to choir practice and youth group. I remember wishing we attended the Congregational Church because they had six choirs to our two! The church was central to our social life... Read more