Well, God isn’t personally appearing so far as I know. But we’ll be talking about God as understood by MLK. We will hear insights based on new scholarship, and his theology will very likely surprise you.

Almost every Monday night I interview a Tikkun author. Last Monday my guest was the remarkable writer and psychotherapist Kim Chernin, whose article “The Long Path Out of Denial: Zionism, Heartache, and a New Vision of Israel and Palestine” is in the current Tikkun print magazine. Kim’s ability to connect with people who asked questions on the call was remarkable, and they were by no means all agreeing with her.

The previous Monday I talked about Mahatma Gandhi with Michael Nagler, one of the world’s leading experts on nonviolent political activism. That, too, was one of the best Phone Forums we’ve done.

Both can be listened to here. Their print articles are not yet available online, but will be January 1. Meanwhile, buy a copy on newsstands or online here.

Next Monday we welcome The Yes Men to the Phone Forum! We have written about them here and in the current Tikkun, where Michael Lerner reviews their new movie, which is on general release. So go see it this week if you can and then have the chance to talk with the Yes Men next Monday night. Find out where it is showing by going to this page.

The Phone Forum is a free call, no phone charge to you, and is our gift to those who have subscribed to our print magazine or joined the Network of Spiritual Progressives or donated to us: which are the ways we survive here financially. So if you haven’t done any of those please join us on the Phone Forum for one time if you like, but then please subscribe, donate or join to help us out financially before you listen in again.

Tonight it is someone not yet well known, who has a powerful story to tell about Martin Luther King. The rest of this post is from an email I sent out about tonight’s call:

King’s God: The Unknown Faith of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

When Rabbi Michael Lerner welcomes atheists to his synagogue by assuring them that “The God you don’t believe in doesn’t exist” and then leads the congregation in prayer, what is going on?

In our time many Jewish and Christian clergy have developed a different view of God from the one most of us learned as children or that many of us rejected as adults. It is clear that Lerner has a powerful sense of God as “the Force of transformation and healing” and his congregation is with him in this.

But, more often than you may imagine, religious professionals today hold ideas of God — based on mystical or kabbalistic insights of old and on modern Biblical criticism and theology — that they cannot openly preach for fear of losing their congregations. This mystical God does not consign unbelievers to hell, nor provide the simpler comforts we desire from a personal God. The Unitarians and Universalists split out from traditional Christianity in a process of centuries. In the mid-twentieth century their congregations were those in which some version of this liberal God was most openly preached. In the 1950s a young Baptist minister and the woman he wanted to marry were both attending Unitarian services. As Robert James “Be” Scofield writes in the current Tikkun,

Dr. King’s liberal faith resonated with the dynamic Unitarian Christian tradition because of his acknowledgment of the truth in all religions, his view of Jesus as an exemplary teacher, and his rejection of biblical literalism. Coretta Scott had been attending Unitarian churches for years before she met and married Martin, and they both attended Unitarian services while in Boston. He ultimately faced the reality that he would probably not be able to play a role in the civil rights movement in this tradition and thus he became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, shortly thereafter being elected to lead the Montgomery bus boycott.

So King became one of those clergy who had to hold aspects of his theology private in order to practice the healing and transformation it called him to — to the extent that most of have no idea what that theology was. New papers have been published that allow scholars to fill in the blanks, and “Be” Scofield’s ground-breaking article in Tikkun draws on this work.

Join the Phone Forum on Monday November 16, at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time (9:00 p.m. Eastern) when I will interview Be Scofield and you can ask him questions and make your own comments. Later you can listen to the interview here.

Just call 1 888 346 3950 and ENTER CODE 11978#.

The Call is FREE! No phone charge to you.

If you can before the call, please do read Be Scofield’s article in your print copy of Tikkun. It is not yet available online, but is on sale at many stores and as a single copy online here. To subscribe to the magazine, please go here.

To get full details about the Phone Forum please check at www.tikkun.org. See “Don’t Miss the Phone Forum!” on our blog.