-
Why Do We Seek for God – The Kinds of Gods We Create
November 23, 2025
Sermon by Britt Hartley (via Zoom)
Service Leader: Ally BaumanSynopsis: Britt will explore the social and psychological reasons for why we are drawn to different kinds of Gods.
Bio: Britt Hartley is an atheist spiritual director and the author of “No Nonsense Spirituality”. She has a Master’s Degree in Theology and focuses on religious deconstruction, and existential crisis. She lives in Boise, Idaho with her husband and four children.
-
Welcoming the Stranger: A Discussion on Immigration
November 16, 2025
Sermon by Dr. Laura McGuire
The fight for immigrant rights is all around us in this moment. People are being abused, separated, and even killed while our country watches to see how these acts will define our future. How do we, as people of faith and action, show up in this moment? Join us for this exploration into the spiritual value of welcoming the stranger and the praxis of showing up for the communities impacted.
-
Archeology – Preserving the Past in a Modern Landscape
November 9, 2025
Sermon by Dr Michelle Troutman
Roughly half of the employed archaeologists in the United States work in Cultural Resources Management (CRM) which focuses on the identification, evaluation, and preservation of cultural resources such as archaeological sites, cultural landscapes, and historic buildings. Archaeologists in Cultural Resources Management work within state, federal, tribal, and private sectors to carry out compliance projects to meet state and federal regulations for development projects. I will present an overview of this field through an archaeologist’s point of view, following a case example of a project in New Jersey that resulted in the data recovery of a Woodland period (1000 BC to AD 1600) archaeological site.
Dr. Troutman is a member of our fellowship and is a Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA) working at Richard Grubb & Associates, Inc. (RGA). Her experience includes background, field, and laboratory research, sensitivity assessments, and authoring technical reports prepared in accordance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and other municipal and state cultural resource regulations. Dr. Troutman finished her doctoral studies at Binghamton University (SUNY) focusing on Early Archaic stone tool manufacturing practices, and she has experience in archaeological investigations across the U.S. east coast and abroad in France.
-
Not so different after all: Commonalities in the World’s Religions
November 2, 2025
Sermon by Dr. Laura McGuire
The third of our fall member-requested sermon series will look at the beauty of how the world’s religions overlap and intersect. Inspired by a meaningful conversation with a group that was proselytizing in their neighborhood, Dr. McGuire will explore common misconceptions about the “uniqueness” of beliefs as well as deconstructing the often-proposed “proof” that one belief is more accurate than the others.
-
Not so new
October 26, 2025
Sermon by Keith Straley
Our speaker will discuss the existence of trans identities and gender diversity in myth and legend of the ancient world. Despite conventional assumptions, gender diversity is not a novel phenomenon, in fact the gender binary is the relative newcomer, only becoming widespread with European colonization.