Major Christian Influences

As I have said, Universalist Radha-Krishnaism is strongly influ­enced by pro­gres­sive Chris­t­ian thought.  Some of the major Chris­t­ian influ­ences are:

Matthew Fox: Orig­i­nal Bless­ing, The Com­ing of the Cos­mic Christ — drew me to Chris­tian­ity with his inter­faith, panen­the­is­tic, life-affirming mys­ti­cal views. He demon­strates that orig­i­nal sin is not bib­li­cal and that life is a bless­ing. The Cos­mic Christ cor­re­sponds to Cos­mic Con­scious­ness, the Uni­ver­sal Teacher, per­vad­ing all, and this formed the basis of my Chris­tol­ogy. He prophet­i­cally speaks the truth even in the face of oppres­sion by Catholic Church author­i­ties who would silence him. 

Jim Wal­lis: Sojourn­ers, Call to Renewal — is a pro­gres­sive Evan­gel­i­cal prophet who tire­lessly cru­sades for peace and jus­tice in a broad ecu­meni­cal context.

Mar­vin Chaney: Old Tes­ta­ment Pro­fes­sor and men­tor — taught me to see scrip­ture in a post­mod­ern decon­struc­tion­ist way and still be a per­son of faith able to embrace the myth and its mean­ing for us today.

Mar­cus Borg: Meet­ing Jesus Again for the First Time, The God We Never Knew — first rede­fined Jesus from a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and then rede­fined God from a panen­the­is­tic perspective.

John Shelby Spong: Why Chris­tian­ity Must Change or Die, Here I Stand — one of the lead­ing reform­ers and crit­ics of the church for decades espe­cially around such issues as racism, sex­ism, and homo­pho­bia. He tries to bring the church into the twenty-first cen­tury and dis­cards unten­able first cen­tury beliefs.

Paul Tillich: Dynam­ics of Faith — like Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur, sup­plies an under­stand­ing of faith as some­thing sep­a­rate from belief and allows us to explore the realm of faith with­out cling­ing to out­moded beliefs.

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.: Prophet — pro­vides a shin­ing exam­ple of the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of the gospel to a con­tem­po­rary social context.

These per­sons are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of many oth­ers I had the good for­tune to know per­son­ally and through their writ­ings. All this learn­ing and expe­ri­ence goes into the for­ma­tion of Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism.

– Steve Bohlert

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 19:00 and is filed under Jungle dispatch and tagged with Christian, influences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.