“I Charge you before God and his blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.

“The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw. Whatever part of His will our God has revealed to Calvin, they (Lutherans) will rather die than embrace it; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much to be lamented.

“For though they were precious shining lights in their time, yet God has not revealed his whole will to them. And were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light, as they had received.”

This idea that “the Lord had more truth and light yet to break out of his holy word,” and that Robinson’s own congregation should feel free to find truth and enlightenment beyond that known to him, strikes me as a principle at the very heart of our religious liberalism.

It is an attitude, I suspect, that accounts for why the Pilgrim’s congregation in the New World is today a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

But the Pilgrims’ heritage is one that the United Church of Christ shares with us, as our sibling denomination - - they the Trinitarian Congregationalists, and we the Unitarian Congregationalists, whose paths diverged in the early 1800s.

I have to say that I am proud to call the United Church of Christ our sibling denomination - - and that I find its “God is still speaking” ad campaign truly moving.

You know the United Church of Christ is on the right path from the fact that the major networks banned the first “God is still speaking” ad on the ground that honoring gay and lesbian people as worthy of Christian love conflicts with the Bush Administration’s homophobic policies.

CBS explained that because “the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks.”

The “God is still speaking” commercial can be found here:

http://www.ucc.org/god-is-still-speaking/

And CBS’s explanation for banning it from the airwaves can be found here:

http://www.ucc.org/news/cbs-nbc-refuse-to-air.html

I don’t think that kind of God makes any sense. Instead, if you think of God as being not just outside of us but also within us, continuously active in creation, as continually calling out to us, as offering creative possibilities and divine love at each moment, then you realize that it is impossible for God not to be continuously speaking to us all the time.

I find it more than a little depressing that so many UUs have turned their backs on our forefathers who spoke of continuing revelation all the time. Makes me wonder what Channing, Murray and the rest would think of us today.

He said that revelation was an open door and not a sealed vault (my rough paraphrase from memory).

Whether revelation comes from God or some other source, I think we agree with our UCC cousins that we don’t have the final religious word on any topic.

Louise’s comment on PeaceBang’s article God is Still Speaking hit a strong resonant chord within me. She wrote:
God speaks to me when I suddenly tear up “for no reason.” The message is, “Pay attention. This is important. Find out why …

God speaks to me in the lyrics of a song on my van radio and suddenly my heart is stirred, God speaks to me in the words of a book I am reading and my heart is stirred, God speaks to me in the eyes of a child who runs up and shows me some wonder of nature and my heart is stirred, etc.

As Tandaina said, it isn’t so much about whether God is speaking but rather whether we are “hearing” those messages as coming from God. When I am moved to rejoice in the moment at what a wonderful world this is or to be moved into action to “do the right thing” I know those are messages from God.

I still remember the day I started finally “hearing”. My life was changed that day - you might say I was “born again”.

As someone who studies religion from a sociological perspective, I see it as a marketing campaign from a shrinking mainline denomination that knows it needs a better public image and for people to take it seriously and see it as a strong, vivid, living Christian faith. It’s as if the UCC is saying “Liberal Christianity is alive and reflects the way that God would want us Christians to act and think.”

As a lifelong Mormon until last year, the idea that God speaks still is not a strange or foreign idea at all. It is an idea that is central to Mormon doctrine, belief, and history. I can certainly understand the potential power of it. And the UCC has that nifty comma logo for the campaign.

Steven asks about the difference between revelation, which I define as a spiritual “ah ha” moment that makes the world seem a sacred place, and enlightenment, which I think of as having achieved a level of spiritual wisdom. Hope that helps, Steven. To make it even simpler, revelation is an experience, a “showing” of God as Theresa of Avila would have put it. Enlightenment is an achievement. And I ain’t achieved it yet.