Adaptation of Christianity

A second goal of the course is to show how Christianity distinctively is shaped by, and gives shape to, diverse political and cultural worlds. In the final lecture, we will see that the designation of Christianity as an “ever-adapting religion” is entirely appropriate. Christianity has been, from the start, astonishingly adaptive to its environment.

Over a period of two millennia, it has grown, spread, and constantly changed, now appearing in every land and every language. It is the largest and most universal of the world’s religions. Many Christians assume anachronistically that current forms of piety and worship and even the current shape of their Bible have been in place from the beginning, when in fact, they have gone through complex development over time.

The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

Professor Luke Timothy Johnson

Candler School of Theology, Emory University

Life After Death

After reading an article in the Washington Post, I thought about how some Christians find life meaningful because there is life after death. I think we've been granted this wonderful time with our consciousness and it doesn't need to be continued after death to be meaningful. I think that's one of the thoughts I've had for a long time that is contrary to common Christian beliefs. Explorations in Zen Buddhism have clarified my thoughts on this.

Coincidentally, Geoff Dawson spoke about this on August 31, 2025. He reflected on the topic of death and mortality, beginning with a discussion of Irvin Yalom's book, **"Staring at the Sun,"** which uses the sun as a metaphor for acknowledging death only in brief intervals. The speaker shares a personal realization that recognizing **imminent death** can enrich life, especially when **loved ones pass away**, making the reality of mortality more palpable. 

"It's not something you want to be contemplating all the time. But you need to know that it's there, do you know, and um? It's the fact that we're going to die.

And recognizing every day that we're going to die is what makes our life. Potentially, so fulfilling and Rich so that we really appreciate every moment. That we have with, like Mora. Um, we're all going to die sooner or later, you know, and? Um. When people close to you die, it brings that.

Closer to home. Do you know? So like more with someone is just having fun and doing a work and. Enjoying a family and going on walks and going to the beach and then. No more. And that will be our experience as well."

Geoff’s meditation on death extends to a discussion of a book detailing **nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction**, which the speaker read after returning from a trip abroad. This unexpected book offers a **comprehensive and explicit minute-by-minute** account of a potential nuclear catastrophe.

Diana Butler Bass: 30 years ex-evangelical

Excerpts from her substack, The Cottage August 29, 2025

I converted to evangelicalism in the 1970s as a teenager in Arizona. I chose the church; I chose to join. Evangelicalism wasn’t something forced on me or inherited. For various reasons in my young life, the choice made sense. And American evangelicalism itself was somewhat different in those days. Most of the really bad stuff was yet to come. There was ... a Jesus-y cultural post-hippie hangover with radical movements like Sojourners, Evangelicals for Social Action, and evangelical feminism. And there was an extraordinary crossover in theological worlds with liberation theology. In other words, I was under the impression that evangelicalism was a deep personal commitment to love Jesus for the sake of making the world a more just and beautiful place for all of God’s children. 

In many ways, the eighties confounded me. To a recent convert (and one living in California to boot), the Moral Majority didn’t make any sense. I thought that Jim Wallis was the norm and Jerry Falwell was the aberration. 

In those last three decades many more have left. If you are one of them, maybe I just want you to know that you’ll be alright. More than alright, I hope. That you’ll prosper and that you will find your spiritual center and true vocation. I don’t want to save you (no more savior complexes for me!), but I’m happy to just stand at the edge of your journey as (perhaps) a guide or companion or cheerleader. Keep on, keep on. I’m glad when my words help. There’s also some sort of urgency I feel these days — to resist revenge and retribution again. 

The rise of MAGA and Trump are entwined with evangelicalism. Project 2025 was deeply alarming (and has proved disastrous). When Trump won that second time, I literally wailed, “I’ve spent thirty years escaping these people and now they’ll destroy all that I’ve come to love.” And so, I find myself increasingly surrounded by a world of evangelical political desires made manifest, the worst possible of incarnations. There would be no Reformation of the evangelical movement that I witnessed go astray; instead, America itself would become captive to a Deformation of both generous faith and inclusive democracy. All that I feared evangelicalism was(and what I feared was terrible), it has turned out to be. Perhaps even worse than I feared.

Our True Nature Ezra Klein Show

I started out in my career working for a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, Herbert Benson, who did the physiological measurements of transcendental meditators showing that their blood pressure could be lowered and their heart beat slowed and their carbon dioxide output diminished, you know? So, I understand the value Of, oh, this is a real thing. Science tells us it's a real thing, but my experience of going on. My first couple of Silent meditation Retreats, which you know a week or 10 days of not talking, not making eye contact and just looking at my own internal experience. That's what showed me that meditation was a real thing. experientially. Oh, my mind is capable of more than just my usual thoughts, you know, there's a whole vast, both interior and external experience that I have never allowed myself. That is opening up. science if it was going to try to document that might be able to measure my heartbeat, but it couldn't get close to the Poetics of the experience. You know

If science can't find it? How would you describe what it is that science can't find?

Love 

in meditation? 

Yeah, and meditation like it. The great revelation that can come out of meditation is, Oh, you start to experience yourself as a loving being. 

Why do you think that is, 

I don't know, I think, because we are fundamentally loving beings. And you know, That's our true nature.

Why does my mind keep thinking that?

The Ezra Klein Show July 11, 2025

Start around 15 minutes 

Contemplative practices are pathways into the direct experience of divine presence and love.

Contemplative practices are many things. Our Christian tradition teaches us that they are pathways into the direct experience of divine presence and love. Contemporary neuroscience adds that they are also pathways into self-regulation…. Contemplative practices—both solitary and communal—help us resist conformity with wisdom and courage.

Studying biases and authoritarianism is also helping me understand in a deeper way why contemplative practices, and especially contemplative practices in community, are so important right now.  

I am thinking about these authoritarian patterns not only to better understand what’s happening now in my country. I’m also trying to understand my own country’s history—how millions of so-called Christians in [the United States] consented to the genocide of Indigenous peoples and then consented to the enslavement of kidnapped and trafficked Africans and then consented to American apartheid in the Jim Crow era and then resisted the civil rights movement.   

Protecting Our Own Light

Richard Rohr, March 31, 2025