Update: Accepted as a Poster Session. Slides now available.

Abstract submitted for PassionTalks 2018 on Saturday, August 11th at Convergence House of Prayer in Fremont, CA.

Spiritual Christianity arose from a series of blog posts I wrote to prepare my seven-year-old daughter for baptism.  I wanted her to start out with a faith that was:

• Resilient to disappointments
• Relevant to culture
• Revolutionary to society
• Reviving to the church

I realized I had to discard the religious terminology we have been using to describe Christianity for the last thousand years, and come up with simple metaphors that made sense within her everyday experiences.   I started with the idea of “spirit” as simply the ability to reflect on our thoughts, feelings, and desires.  This developed rather surprisingly into a robust framework for explaining the unchanging gospel using concepts from contemporary psychology rather than ancient rituals. I believe this may actually be closer how the early church experienced Jesus than our modern theologies based on Greek philosophy and seminary training.

In this talk I will present the basics of what I call a “Spiritual Christianity”, and attempt to show that it is fully Biblical yet addresses the shortcoming and divisiveness of the “academic Christianity” that has dominated the Western world since the Reformation.

Professional Bio

Caltech Physicist • Apple Evangelist • Spiritual Entrepreneur

Publications

1. Good News for Modern Nerds (MIT United Christian Fellowship, 1987)
2. Radical Centrism and the Redemption of Secular Philosophy (American Scientific Affiliation, Vol 58, July 2003)
3. Growing Church Leaders: A Guide to Practical Holiness (Westbow Press, Nov 2010)
4. Productive Depolarization: How Transformational Work Can Heal Humanity (PassionTalks, August 2016)

Blogs

1. Radically Happy, a Transformational Bible Blog
2. Radical Centrism, a Unifying Paradigm of Civil Society
3. iHack therefore iBlog, the Politics of Simplifying Technology

Podcasts

1. Passion Chats
2. Mediating Trump

Statement of Faith

1. I embrace the One who created the universe as my Heavenly Father who loves us like Jesus.
2. I submit to continually becoming more like Jesus in my awareness, values, and goals.
3. I receive God’s Word, Spirit and Body to reveal and heal the wounds in my spirit that hinder me from being and loving like Jesus.
4. I value God’s happiness, glory, and relationships more than my own.
5. I practice generosity and vulnerability so others can see Christ in me.
6. I surrender my childlike happiness for the grown-up joy of loving like Jesus.