Patti Whaley examines how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights conceives the person, as bearer of dignity, equality and community, and whether that idea reflects human nature or a response to the Holocaust.
Patti Whaley recommends Michael Tippett’s oratorio A Child of our Time, inspired by Kristallnacht, which treats the Jewish boy as scapegoat and sets spirituals within a Bach-like structure.
Patti Whaley reviews Mary Midgley’s The Myths We Live By, which attacks the myths of social contract, progress and omnicompetent science and holds that we must examine the myths we live by.
Patti Whaley reviews Keith Ward’s The Case for Religion, which rebuts reductive explanations of religion and defends its rationality, while finding Ward does not explain why spiritual reality is so elusive.
Patti Whaley reports on a Westar Institute conference on the Judeo-Christian tradition’s future, with talks by Spong, Cupitt, Geering and Borg, and criticises its top-down format and lack of moral urgency.
Patti Whaley announces the 2004 Sea of Faith conference at Sheffield, marking twenty years since the BBC series, with a marketplace of progressive spirituality groups and a closing plenary.
Patti Whaley interviews Ray Billington about his 1971 conviction for heresy by the Methodist Conference over The Christian Outsider, the reaction, his continued thinking, and why he thinks doctrinal purity no longer matters.
Patti Whaley reviews Why Do People Hate America? by Merryl Wyn Davies and Ziauddin Sardar, on how American power and culture are seen abroad, and finds it describes feelings without testing whether they are justified.
Patti Whaley argues that human rights work and interfaith dialogue each have weaknesses on religious freedom, and that interfaith organisations such as the IARF and WCC can combine legal and faith-based approaches to tolerance.
Patti Whaley surveys the small progressive and liberal Christian organisations in the Roundtable network, including the Modern Churchpeople’s Union, Progressive Christianity, Greenspirit, contemplative prayer groups and progressive Catholic bodies, with their websites.
