Upgrade and Remix Your Religion

In this first episode, I introduce my vision for raising our religious intelligence through religious education and how you can help, regardless of whether you’re a theist, a nontheist, an atheist, or something else altogether.

Duration: 29 min 48 sec

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Excerpt
“Can I come up with a way to creatively and critically engage religion? Can I come up with a way to participate wholeheartedly in the religious life so that it feeds my body and mind and heart and everything?

Can it be emotionally satisfying as well as intellectually honest? Can I enrich myself even further by bringing even more intelligence, compassion, and creativity into the mix?

Can I bring in science, art, philosophy, psychology, all areas of research and study under the sun? In other words, does my religious life flourish when I add deep honest heartfelt questioning into the mix?

Can it help me come closer to understanding myself, all the people around me, and the world? Can my heart, like Ibn Arabi said in the poem I recited at the beginning, become capable of all forms and become inclusive of all things, all beliefs, all perspectives?

Finally, can I create new words, new perspectives, new models, new images of understanding that will help other people in their own lives?”


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Martin Luther King Jr.

If you want to be important—wonderful.
If you want to be recognized—wonderful.
If you want to be great—wonderful.
But recognize that he who is greatest
among you shall be your servant.

That’s a new definition of greatness.
And this morning, the thing that I like about it:
by giving that definition of greatness,
it means that everybody can be great,
because everybody can serve.

You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.
You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.
You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve.
You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.

And you can be that servant.

(excerpt from his last sermon, “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered on February 4, 1968. Text copyright © The King Center)

I celebrate with all people today the memory, work, and spirit of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968).
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