Author: Jill

Challenges / Featured

Deconstruction

  I am in a writing group aptly named, “Post-Evangelical Writers Group.” Unless you have been to church you may not know about the current exodus happening from American Christianity. The 2015 book, “Church Refugees: Sociologists Reveal why People are DONE with Church but not their Faith,” by two sociologists, Ashleigh Hope and Josh Packard, declared that 30 million formerly active Protestant American church goers are “Done” with church and 7 million are on the way out.  I don’t know what the current statistics are, I’m guessing they have grown. My group is putting together a book to publicize the reasons...

Featured

Hopeful Reality

I heard an interview recently with John Phillip Newell who has been writing about contemplative and Celtic Christianity since the early nineties.  He was of interest to me as he was talking about his publication, “The Rebirth of God.”  He makes a great case in exposing the drastic change that occurred in Christian thought and practice after Constantine legalized Christianity in the 300s.  His work as the Warden of Iona Abbey in the Western Isles of Scotland painted a beautiful picture of peaceful Christian practice.     In Christopher Page’s writings, which I found at thomasmertonsociety.org, he shared this from...

Featured / Just for Fun

IRL

I love social media. I have met some kickass people who loved me from a distance, or through their art, or intelligence or vulnerability or smiley faces during a shit hard time in my real life. I wouldn’t exchange them. Oh geez, nothing out of the ordinary that I’d need a “go fund me” for, but a shake up. That being said, I feel fortunate that it wasn’t around when I was a kid. Real life is hard enough as a teen, without a constant barrage of more things to think about. As an adult, I have been accused of...