“God Will Not Be God Without Us. When anybody in this world is hurt, God is hurt. When anybody in this world gets their lives twisted and out of joint, that radically affects the reality of God. When a culture is bombed and civilizations are dying, God is being bombed, and in human terms, dying.”
The Rev. Dr. Tex Sample served as Academic Dean and Emeritus Professor of Church and Society at the Saint Paul School of Theology, and currently writes books and travels as a freelance lecturer, workshop leader, consultant, and storyteller. His books include Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living with Will Rogers, Uncle Remus, and Minnie Pearl, and co-editor of The Loyal Opposition: Struggling with the Church on Homosexuality. He is currently the coordinator of the Network for the Study of U.S. Lifestyles and a contributor to several Living the Questionsprograms.
Tex Sample asks, “I often wonder where the people who are marginalized in the world, where the people who are poor, where the people who are outcast, can find those that they can trust. Is it you? Is it me? Can it be the church?”
Allan Knight Chalmers
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Allan Knight Chalmers was a Professor of Preaching at Boston University School of Theology and a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. While at Boston University, Chalmers was the president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and was involved in Civil Rights struggles and Civil Rights action all over the United States. It was professors like Chalmers and Dean Walter Muelder who intentionally sought out African American students from the South to train them for the Civil Rights challenges that were to come. During his tenure at Boston University, Dean Muelder was responsible for the training of more African American PhD students than any single university in the country. One of those was Dr. King.
Montgomery, Alabama. 1965. 100,000 people demonstrating for voting rights. Tex Sample was there.
Finally the time came for Dr. King’s speech. I still regard that speech in Montgomery as the equal of the one that he had made in Washington in 1963. And when Dr. King enters into the last part of that speech, he began a kind of a call and response with himself, initially. He shouts out: “How long?” and he responds to himself, “Not long! How long? Not long! How long? Not long because no lie can live forever! How long? Not long! Because while the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends toward justice!” “How long?! Not long!” “How long?! Not long!” And then he shouted at us, “How long?” and those thousands of people got up off the ground and on their feet and shouted back, “NOT LONG!!!!”
Although the day culminated in Dr. King’s inspiring speech, there were other profound experiences of grace along the way…
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Former Academic Dean and Emeritus Professor of Church and Society at the Saint Paul School of Theology, Sample is a freelance lecturer, workshop leader, consultant, and storyteller. His books include Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living with Will Rogers, Uncle Remus, and Minnie Pearl, and co-editor of The Loyal Opposition: Struggling with the Church on Homosexuality. He is currently the coordinator of the Network for the Study of U.S. Lifestyles.
Excerpted from Living the Questions 2.0,
Episode 16: Social Justice:
“Realizing God’s Vision”
(Available as both a Small Group study and in a Home Edition for personal use at www.livingthequestions.com)
Pastors David Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy, along with the voices of top Bible scholars and church leaders—including Marcus Borg, Diana Butler Bass, John Dominic Crossan, Helen Prejean, and John Shelby Spong—provide a primer to a church movement that encourages every Christian to “live the questions” instead of “forcing the answers.”
Based on the bestselling DVD course, "Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity" tackles issues of faith, dogma, and controversial subjects that many churches are afraid to address. "Living the Questions" is the most comprehensive survey of progressive Christianity in existence today.
Available at www.livingthequestions.com, through online booksellers, and as a Kindle download!
“A welcome book that is bold (without being contentious) and courageous (without needing to be triumphant), Felten and Procter-Murphy give voice to a faith that provides a profound alternative to the dominant ideology of ‘American Christianity.’ Attention should be paid!”
— WALTER BRUEGGEMANN, PROFESSOR EMERITUS, COLUMBIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
The Rev. Dr. Tex Sample served as Academic Dean and Emeritus Professor of Church and Society at the Saint Paul School of Theology, and currently writes books and travels as a freelance lecturer, workshop leader, consultant, and storyteller. His books include Ministry in an Oral Culture: Living with Will Rogers, Uncle Remus, and Minnie Pearl, and co-editor of The Loyal Opposition: Struggling with the Church on Homosexuality. He is currently the coordinator of the Network for the Study of U.S. Lifestyles and a contributor to several Living the Questions programs.
Living the Questions 
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