Kenneth D. Stephens

Hello readers. I am your friendly writer Ken Stephens, and I will begin telling you about myself today and continue later. I am originally from India & came to this country in 1957 to go to theological seminary. After finishing that, I completed a doctorate in philosophy and taught for a while. Then I went into the ministry to do pastoral work and write a tract in philosophical theology, in which subject I was getting more and more interested. My favorite theologian was and has been Paul Tillich. It was writings like his that sparked my interest in doing religion and theology from a philosophical point of view.

I have written my memoir because I continue to be passionate about a philosophical approach to religion and theology. The broad mainstream theology that I hear in churches, read in the popular press and even seminary publications, and find practiced in today's culture is misleading and can lead a person into beliefs that can imprison one. How important it is for one to be on the margin of today's theologies and receptive to the currents of critical thought as expressed, say, in John Dewey's "A Common Faith", and in the broad stream of our secular intellectual life.

I am not advocating turning one's back on religion, only that we seek to critique it philosophically. There is Wisdom in the world's religions. They contain the Four Noble Truths and the prophetic principle of doing Justice, loving Kindness, and walking in radical spiritual Humility. They teach Love as prior to all other virtues. In them you will find the Sermon on the Mount. But their doctrines are often baseless, their narratives often untrue and even spiritually dangerous.