Renewing Faith When Politics Becomes Religion with Sheri Kling

In this second part of her conversation with Robert Nicastro, theologian and spiritual teacher Sheri Kling deepens the discussion on how process and open and relational theologies can reshape our spiritual lives.

What does it mean to pray into immanence rather than plead to a distant deity? How can our rituals and symbols come alive again when they're held with spaciousness? And what does faith beyond belief look like in a world longing for depth and connection?

Sheri shares how process theology transforms worship, preaching, and community life—and offers tools for religious leaders hoping to revive faith without falling into dogma. From quantum entanglement to Ezekiel’s dry bones, she invites us to imagine a God intimately present in all things, calling us toward healing, renewal, and co-creative hope.

Later in the episode, Sheri reflects on spiritual maturity, recovering from toxic religion, and why deconstruction must give way to reconstruction rooted in wonder, trust, and love.

ABOUT SHERI KLING

“We are a fragmented people in a fragmented world—but when we begin to think with a more integrative, relational vision of reality, faith can come alive again. We discover that we matter, we belong, and we can participate in the sacred work of a whole-making cosmos.”

Sheri D. Kling, Ph.D., is a writer, theologian, songwriter, and spiritual teacher who serves as director of Process & Faith with the Center for Process Studies, interim minister of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bradenton, Florida, and teaches regularly for the Haden Institute and Claremont School of Theology, from which she earned her doctorate. She is the author of A Process Spirituality: Christian and Transreligious Resources for Transformation and editor of Renewing Faith: Reigniting Faith and Ministry through Process and Open & Relational Theologies. She speaks, teaches, and leads retreats on spirituality, theology, and transformation, and her work can be found online at sherikling.com and her Substack, The Sacred Everywhere.

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Transcript

Robert: Welcome back to Hunger for Wholeness. Last time, Sheri Kling and I explored how emerging theologies, like process and open and relational thought, are shaping lived experience and bridging faith with a modern scientific worldview. Today, we turn to prayer. What might the overlap between quantum entanglement and relationality reveal about our private disciplines? Later, Sheri shares her hope amid a time when political ideologies threaten to become religions. But first, we return to a central idea, the vital role of free will in our co-creation with God. 

This idea also raises an interesting question about prayer and a person's prayer life, especially when co-creation, working with God to bring the full powerful vision that God has for the world, at least earthly life, to completion. So what does that mean? Again, always juxtaposing it with traditional theology so people can as clearly as possible see the significance of how open and relational and process theology renews faith. 

How does this open and relational understanding of God actually transform our prayer life? Because certainly in a traditional sense, many folks would have this idea that we're asking for God's intervention for something in particular. God, make that light turn green before I get to that stoplight, or please God, make sure that I win the lottery, etc., etc., etc. And I'm sure many people still believe that. So, how does open and relational theology help us break through those archaic images of asking God for things, and maybe partnering with God for things in terms of prayer? 

Sheri: Yeah, and there's actually a couple of really great essays. I won't necessarily be able to call out every single writer in this book, but I will say there are a couple, especially about prayer, that are really beautiful, and on so many other topics as well. But if we see God as an off-planet entity that is just intervening in the world supernaturally, then our prayers have to be about getting on the the cosmic telephone line, getting God on the line, putting in our request, putting in the order, and then seeing whether or not God deigns to maybe answer that prayer, right? 

Now I'm not saying that there's not, I do believe that God has a greater perspective, a greater vision, a greater sense of the whole than any one of the individuals in this planet can ever hope to have. But if we move away from that idea of the off-planet God, and if we see the sacred as inherently interwoven in the whole, right here in this actual reality, and that everything here itself is also sacred and also interwoven into this active, living, dynamic, creative field of potential that we are always actively moving in, then prayer can be and first of all, I'll say in our homes, we have lamps, right? And so if I have a lamp that's gotten unplugged from the power source, it's not gonna light no matter how many times I turn that button on and off, it is not gonna light up. It has to be plugged back into the source. So if in our lives we have gotten unplugged from the source of life, of vitality, of creativity, of dynamism, of energy, if we've gotten either unplugged or only partially plugged into that field of power, then we're not going to light up no matter how many somersaults we do. 

So I think prayer is a way of replugging in everybody's lamps. You know, it's a way of reconnecting ourselves and the people we're praying for into the field of power, into the source field of everything, of creative possibility. And we're not just getting on a telephone line that has to go out to the off-planet God. We're actually praying into the field. And so we are maybe, maybe we're possibly activating every player in the scenario that we're concerned about. 

This is a crazy story, but you know, what is it? HGTV they've got their contests every year about their fancy schmancy houses and you can win and they show you this beautiful home and there's usually the house and a car and some money in some particular place and they're always amazing. There was one in particular, that it was a little house in Asheville, North Carolina. It wasn't ridiculously humongous. It was modest in comparison, but it was beautiful. I was like, I really would like to live there. Man, I really want to live there. I didn't win it. Obviously, these prayers were not successful in getting me there, but I took the perspective of, “What if I tried to speak to the land that house sits on and the trees that are in its backyard and the wildlife that live in that area to say ‘I want to come be with you.’ ‘I want to come live with you.’ ‘I want to be in relationship with you.’ ‘What can you do to help me get there?’ ‘Can we make this happen together?’” 

And so maybe when we pray for someone who's ill, maybe we're actually capable of communicating with the cells of that person's body, with the doctors that are working on them, with the medicines that they'll ingest, with their own mindset, maybe we're able to affect all of those things simultaneously. So it's not any longer about reaching out to some external transcendent God that has to supernaturally change the laws of nature in order to coercively change the world, but actually praying into the field itself, praying into the world to activate everything involved in a way that's beneficial and creates and causes the flourishing of all. 

Because I do think, and this has been a lifelong journey for me because I've been struggling within my own life of disappointment and suffering and things that I wished turned out differently my whole life and like Job, sitting on the ash heap of my troubles, fighting them and not being able to necessarily just move with that flow. 

So it's been a journey for me. But where I know I want to be is to have a sense that yes, this world is wounding. It is. That is the nature of embodied life. It will wound us and it is impermanent and that's just the way it has to be. But even in that is this grace, this healing, this greater presence that loves us, that actually seeks our flourishing. And that flourishing requires us to move out of anything we are holding onto that is blocking our full expression. And so whether or not we suffer just because of things that just happen randomly, or whether because we're suffering because maybe we're holding on to trauma patterns or beliefs that are self-sabotaging, or we're grudges and resentments against people or the world, anything like that that we're holding on to that doesn't serve us will be dismantled by a transforming God if we allow it, and that will hurt because it requires us, like Jesus, to die to everything that doesn't serve our true life and the divine life. And we have to die as humans who are still living and not actually crucified physically, but we have to do that every day. We have to be willing to die every day to the things that block us and prevent us from our own true divine flourishing.

Robert: There's really no escaping the Paschal mystery. There's no life without death, and as you mentioned, it comes in small ways and certainly large ways. Sheri, as you were talking, I thought of two quotes that kept ringing in my ear. The first is from Paul Dirac, the physicist Paul Dirac, in reference to quantum entanglement, this great web of relatedness of which we know God is a part in this vision. And he says, "Pick a flower, move the farthest star." So there really is this sense in which we are absolutely connected at even this deep metaphysical level. 

And also Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote, "Nothing here is profane for those who know how to see,” and also speaking in terms of this great interconnected tapestry of which an integral part as human beings. 

We're talking in a very real way in a theoretical construct, but one of the strengths of this book is that it is very practical. Process theology is very practical, particularly in giving us guidance for worship, prayer, community, life, et cetera. So let's maybe bring it into that dimension for a moment. And you give us an example or examples, if you wish, of how this vision actually changes what happens, say, at Sunday morning worship.

Sheri: I want to mention real quickly that when we look at faith, the idea of faith, some people equate faith and belief. And I've learned to not equate those two. Because I remember I read a book called Faith vs. Belief and the Difference Between… or Faith and Belief and the Difference Between Them by, I think his name is Fred Cantwell-Smith. It's an older book, but we read it in a class I was in, in Claremont School of Theology. The class was on the Bhagavad Gita, and it was taught by a professor who was a Westerner who became a Hindu, and he became a Hindu priest. 

He talked about there's faith, and then there's belief, and beliefs fall into the category of the stuff of religion. You know, beliefs, dogmas, doctrines, rituals, hymn books, rituals around sacraments, the vestments, those kinds of things, liturgies, are all the stuff of religion. And that changes, that always changes, and that we can't hold too tightly to. But faith is really underneath all of that. Faith is, to me, is more about trust in the flow of life? Do we have a trust in the flow of life, a trust in the whole of life that ultimately it is for our flourishing, it is on our side? And so our beliefs can change. We can completely lose our beliefs. You know, this is my, the beef I have with a lot of people who, a lot of prominent people who've moved through a deconstruction and they walk away from a tradition, but then they don't realize that they don't have to walk away from faith, that faith, and I've experienced this myself, that when things I believe completely fell to the dust a different kind of faith emerged out of those ashes that was a living thing. It wasn't a dead doctrine or a dead letter or a dead text. 

The symbols that we use in religions are what need to be alive because the symbols are like an icon. The symbols are something that carry the light of divinity or carry the energy of divinity, but we can't concretize the symbols. We get too attached to the symbols and to the texts that we lose the living divinity within them. It's like if we focus on the manger only, we lose the living baby that's in the manger. And so I think process theology and open and relational theology allow us to hold those things that are the forms that give our faith, our traditions, that give them their structure. And if we can hold them as forms, they have a function as a form. They have a role as a form. But they're not the source of identity. I'm drawn from Doug King here and his work in his Presence podcast, his integral theology, where he differentiates between the forms and the formless source of identity. 

Process theology too, it lets us look at liturgies and texts and see them as more translucent to the divine if we don't hold so tightly to them, but give them some breathing room, they can still carry divinity. They can come alive again. The liturgies can come alive. The texts can come alive. The preaching can come alive. When we're not holding onto it like concrete, but we're letting it live, we're letting it breathe, we're letting it be spacious and open and dynamic and moving. Because the Spirit of God is not static. My God, the Spirit of God is moving. Where is the Spirit of God moving today? Right? So what is our liturgy? How is it a vehicle that helps us move with the Spirit? How are the texts a vehicle that help us move with the Spirit? How are our liturgies? How are the lessons in the lectionaries, if we're in a lectionary tradition? How are they the vehicle that let us move with the Spirit? To me, that's the final answer on all of that.

Robert: Where is the Spirit of God moving today? And how can we renew and reignite faith by bringing these ideas into our communities? Next, I ask Sheri how she approaches this as a minister. And later, whether these theologies can still inspire hope, and how she resists when political ideologies begin to take on religious power. 

As a minister yourself, this is certainly a question that is probably very near and dear to your own heart. So I'll put it to you in light of what you just said. What advice would you give to pastors, ministers, lay leaders who want to introduce these ideas to their own communities?

Sheri: Yeah, I would say to not go down rabbit holes of trying to teach whitehead, for example. Now, I mean, in a Bible study or in an adult education, you could definitely do that. You could say, "We're going to do a book study on a certain text about process theology." 

You can use this book, Renewing Faith, as a beautiful group study text because the chapters are not very long, so you could easily read a chapter and discuss it. Actually, there's probably enough essays in this book to be a full year program, a weekly adult education program. And there's a question at the end of each essay or two to prompt discussion. So it'd be a perfect study guide for a group. 

But rather than if you're talking about preaching, if you're talking about within a worship service, I don't introduce all the language, all the jargon around process theology. I stick to key ideas like God is in every moment. God is in every moment of our lives. God is here and the world is real, that incarnation is the key idea of Christianity. And that's not just in the human Jesus, but in every moment of creation, God is still creating at every moment and incarnating in every moment. And God's self is present in every moment of our lives. So it's those kinds of things that I bring in. I'm serving a very small Lutheran church in Bradenton, Florida. 

Now there are other ministers who are more definitively coming and speaking really clearly and openly about process theology, like Jeff Wells, he's retired now, but his church in the Church of the Village in New York City was very much oriented toward open and relational and process theologies, and they spoke about that very deliberately. And there are other ministers doing that as well. I'm not currently doing that in my church setting because I don't think it's appropriate for my current church setting. But like I said, I bring in these core ideas that are transformative for me and I think for others.

Robert: I think you're absolutely right. We shouldn't want to go into our parishes using the lofty language and thinking that that will penetrate the psyche and stir the waters of the heart. Often it does just the opposite. So I agree, making this stuff as accessible as possible is the way to go.

Sheri: Yeah, and I will mention too quickly that this Renewing Faith book, and the subtitle is "Reigniting Faith and Ministry Through Process and Open and Relational Theology," so it's about both. But I see it as kind of a companion book to an earlier text that came out last, I think last year, called Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God. And while that book had some chapters around worship and music, most of that book is really about preaching. So I see these two books as beautiful companion books that for any leaders of congregations, they could use these two books as great resources.

Robert: And I would certainly agree. I think that would be very important. How does this theology or this holistic vision of God, person, and world sustain hope for someone when everything feels like it's falling apart? That's part one. And part two of that question, I would want to make it more personal for you if you don't mind. What gives you the most hope about the future of Christianity?

Sheri: I think that what these kinds of theological approaches do is they first of all place God right in the midst of this, in the midst of this world, that there is this living sacred presence that is available to us all in every moment, universally, no matter what we call that. I heard recently, I heard at a conference, I think in May, where someone was quoting Barry Taylor, who was the former road manager for ACDC, who said, "God is the name of the blanket we throw over the mystery to give it shape." And so if God is as Whitehead or other process people describe, if God is this presence that is active in every moment of becoming, that's available universally to every person, no matter whether they believe in that God, no matter whether they are a Christian or a Hindu or Buddhist or Jew or anything else. 

There are people writing in all traditions about these process approaches to theology. And so you can find many resources in other traditions as well. It's not just a Christian movement or perspective. So I think, yeah, first, that God is right here, active and present and loving in the midst of all of this, that there's new possibilities offered in every moment, that if we listen and have discernment and really try to tap into God's vision for this world, our creativity can be leveled up. You know, up leveling is a big thing right now that people talk about, a way to level up our creativity, if process and open and relational theologies show us that every single thing that lives and exists has inherent value for itself. So this is a very ecologically friendly way of looking at things and in a time when we're so seeing us poison our world so horribly and really hurt ourselves in the process, If we can begin and have the sense of wonder and love for everything in this world because the sacred is in every being and everything has inherent value, we have inherent value. 

And that means too that there's a challenge in that. That means that we have to respect all of our neighbors. We have no right to call anybody deplorables or call anybody in this country any kind of disparaging name. We are all children in the eyes of God and equally loved by God and equally carriers of the sacred divine image and identity. And that is the bottom line. You know, everything else is surface. 

I have a song I wrote called "I Am Human" and the first verse is like "I am human, I belong to heaven and earth, that is my highest identity. I was formed through people, places, and time, and the spirit of God in all entities. I am human, I am human." And then it goes through other, whether it's nationality or skin color or anything, our first identity is that we are human and a child of God. And so we have to see everyone around us as equally bearing that divine image, men, women, people of other races and ourselves, of other political persuasions. 

If we can, I think, recover a faith that speaks from this place of renewal, I think we are less inclined to try to make our political ideologies religions. Because political ideologies, when they become religions, they become deadly. And when religions become political ideologies, they become deadly. Because they become exclusive pathways that deny the humanity and the sacredness of others. But when we can keep that expansive view, and I think these kinds of theologies help us to do that, that to me is the hope. we can love ourselves, love each other, love the world, love God, know that we are held always in every moment. That is what gives me hope personally, and that is what I think these kinds of ideas can bring to others as well.

Robert: I have two final questions for you, Sheri, and one you're already alluding to, if not addressing. If someone listening to this podcast episode has been, say, disillusioned with the Church or traditional theology, what would you want them to know about the possibility of renewing their faith?

Sheri: I would say that a lot of people are in what's called deconstruction, where their inherited beliefs, their inherited traditions no longer fit and they're rejecting or critiquing and that's all well and good and needed. But then there has to be something else, something new that grows out of those ashes has to emerge, something that gives us life. And so I think that we can't get stuck in deconstruction and just stay there mad at the traditions. I mean, and some people have every right to be mad at traditions. 

Some people have been really wounded by religion, and there's every right to dismiss and walk away from toxic communities and toxic beliefs, absolutely. But I think to just consider that there may be life-giving ways in which God can show up in our own lives. And I think some of these ways of looking that are in these books that I've just mentioned, our book and then this other preaching book and other process books, really just point to that. new possibilities and when we open our minds to them it can spark new things in us. Did that answer your question?

Robert: It does, and I'm thinking the God who makes all things new and our age and our time in human history, it is in and through us.

Sheri: Yeah, I mean, when you said that, it made me immediately think of the story in the Bible of the dry bones, Ezekiel and the dry bones. I think in so many ways our religions have become dry bones. has become a field of dry bones, honestly, for most people. But the Spirit doesn't stop there. The Spirit is doing something new.

Sheri: I think the Spirit is like, "Yeah, get rid of these dry bones. Let me come to life in a new way."

Robert: And I think even Jesus himself knew that when he said, "I must go now so the Spirit can come." There is something that continues even beyond Jesus of Nazareth, what we might call the Christ or the cosmic Christ in a Christian perspective. So absolutely, renewal doesn't stop. And the only inhibiting factor to renewal is our readiness to engage it. I firmly believe that. And I think that certainly is ringing true in your life, it seems, in this book with all these wonderful essays and the larger process movement in general. Sheri, it's always good to be with you. And thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you, Robert.

Sheri: I appreciate it and just so happy to have been part of this great podcast and thank you. Great conversation.

Robert: Be sure to check out Process and Faith and our friends at the Center for Process Studies for more insightful conversations and programs on process thought and beyond. You'll find links in the show notes along with Sheri's Substack, The Sacred Everywhere. Many thanks to Sheri for joining us and to our team at the Center for Christogenesis. As always, I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for listening.