"Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor awaiting execution in a Nazi prison, understood that the three-tiered universe with its majestic God had been swept away by the war and argued that a new 'religionless' Christianity must emerge from history's ashes." (5)
"In the decades that followed, it became increasingly evident that you cannot revive a God for a world that no longer exists. Venerating a God of a vanished world is the very definition of fundamentalism, the sort of religion that is inflicting great pain and violence on many millions of people across the planet and is leading to the rejection of religion by millions of others." (5-6)
"Some stubbornly maintain that a distant God sits on his heavenly throne watching all these things, active as either a divine puppet master or a stern judge of human affairs, ready at a moment's notice to throw more thunderbolts or toss the whole human race into an eternal lake of fire. But this is a vision of God whose time may be up, for such a divinity looks either increasingly absurd or suspiciously like a monster." (8)
"In its crudest form, the role of religion ... is to act as a holy elevator between God above and those muddling around down below in the world. Despite my familiarity with conventional theology, I do have experience of another sort of language for God, for throughout my life something odd kept happening to me. God showed up ... For whatever reason, my soul has a mile-wide mystical streak." (12)
"The language of mysticism and spiritual experience cuts a wide swath through the world's religious traditions, and it presents an alternative theology, that of connection and intimacy." (13)
"The language of divine nearness is the very heart of vibrant faith." (14)
A former Catholic told her, "'But these other things - the Spirit all around, caring and praying for people, working for a better world - they ground me.' Her tale was similar to many stories in circulation about leaving religion behind in favor of spirituality. But it had a twist. She felt grounded by God." (17)
"In Christian theology, the word 'ground' conjures a very particular image. In 1916, a young German military chaplain named Paul Tillich was stationed on the front lines of World War I. The war undid all Tillich's youthful confidence in the world and in faith ... After the war, Tillich made it his work to find dependable theological ground. Eventually, he proclaimed that God is the 'Ground of all Being,' the 'centered presence of the divine'; the 'whole world' is God's 'periphery.' Human life may be finite, destined for dirt and death; but the ground and all that came from it and was connected to it, claimed Tillich, was drenched with the divine, the source of infinite holiness. This insight appears in many of the world's faith traditions. Most tribal religions are based upon the absolute connection of God (or gods) and the earth. Buddhists see 'the world as it is' as the stage of spiritual activity. For Hindus, Brahman is the source of all life, represented by the sacred word Om; the world itself is the expression of Brahman's dream. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share a creation story in which the earth is the embodiment of God's breath and insist that God is present everywhere and in all things ... Indeed, the primary hope of the ancient Hebrews was for 'Immanuel,' or 'God with us,' the God who dwells with humankind in love and justice. Christians refer to God's embodiment as 'incarnation,' God made flesh in Jesus, who is called Immanuel, and believe that God is present through the Spirit sent into the world after Jesus's death and resurrection ... in an age of profound, perplexing, and even frightening change, millions of people are rediscovering from the deepest human wisdom a simple spiritual reality: we're grounded." (17-20)
