3. Meet the Author
I’m Keith Thompson. My wife, Claire Childress, and I live in Westminster, Colorado (a suburb of Denver) with our Labradoodle, Gracie. We retired from active United Methodist pastoral ministry in the Rocky Mountain Conference in July 2010. Upon my retirement, I decided to expand my teaching ministry by creating this website where I can share what I’ve learned about a subject I’m really passionate about--Faith and Politics. It will also allow me to continue my life-long learning in a radically new way through the comments that you and other readers make about my selection of resources and my interpretations of them you’ll find on this website. |
In this last section of my introduction, I want to inform you--up front--about me and why I feel called and particularly situated to create this website. In our postmodern world, it’s important to flesh out a little about the historical, economic, social, political and religious locations of my faith & politics point of view. In other words, why do I identify myself a Euro-American, leading-edge Boomer, heterosexual (straight ally) male, married, graduate school educated, INTJ Myers-Briggs personality type, clergy person as well as primarily a “postmodern, Wesleyan, evangelical, liberal Christian” and secondarily as a life-long, loyal but critical, center-left Democrat?
Please take a look at the following overview of the five pages in this section.
Just click one of the hyperlinks to explore its content. On that page there’s a hyperlink to the next page in this section or you come back here to chose any of the other pages in any order.
Please take a look at the following overview of the five pages in this section.
Just click one of the hyperlinks to explore its content. On that page there’s a hyperlink to the next page in this section or you come back here to chose any of the other pages in any order.
Page 3.1 - A Few Basic Family, Temporal & Geographical Locations
This page shows how my family life helped shaped me to have what I now call my basic temperment of “realistic
idealism” and my first groundings in what I came to see as--and have faith in--God’s amazing kinds of love and justice.
Page 3.2 - Education: Physics, Philosophy, Theology
This page traces my formal educational journey from physics to philosophy to theology as well as the influences of my
continuing self-education on my developing postmodern philosophical, theological and political faith stances.
Page 3.3 - Professional Life: Teacher, Pastor, Social Justice Prophet
This page indicates how my professional life moved from lay teaching ministry in local churches to ordained ministry and
how my growing concerns for social justice led to my present retired calling to work for healthier faith and politics.
Page 3.4 - Faith Journey: Evangelical, Agnostic, Liberal, Postmodern
This page summarizes my faith journey through a rich variety of religious and secular faiths, which has helped me
understand them “from the inside” and, hopefully, be more fair to all of them than would have been possible otherwise.
Page 3.5 - Politics: Sidelined Left to Involved Center-Left
This page shows how my family life helped shaped me to have what I now call my basic temperment of “realistic
idealism” and my first groundings in what I came to see as--and have faith in--God’s amazing kinds of love and justice.
Page 3.2 - Education: Physics, Philosophy, Theology
This page traces my formal educational journey from physics to philosophy to theology as well as the influences of my
continuing self-education on my developing postmodern philosophical, theological and political faith stances.
Page 3.3 - Professional Life: Teacher, Pastor, Social Justice Prophet
This page indicates how my professional life moved from lay teaching ministry in local churches to ordained ministry and
how my growing concerns for social justice led to my present retired calling to work for healthier faith and politics.
Page 3.4 - Faith Journey: Evangelical, Agnostic, Liberal, Postmodern
This page summarizes my faith journey through a rich variety of religious and secular faiths, which has helped me
understand them “from the inside” and, hopefully, be more fair to all of them than would have been possible otherwise.
Page 3.5 - Politics: Sidelined Left to Involved Center-Left
- This page outlines the evolution of my political involvements and commitments formed in the 60’s left movements, frustrated by our country's reactionary moves to the far right in the last three decades and gradually moved to the center-left since the turn of the century.
(Click any of the page titles above to go to that page.)