“The mission is to put love where there is no love.”

– St. John of the Cross

The Curian Network (formerly opentable.network) is a denominational space credentialing and resourcing pastors, chaplains, spiritual directors, and counselors in this wild day and age we live in, which is as extremely irreligious as it is hyper-religious.

We believe that what works out on the extreme edges and all the spaces in between is love. Not love that simply makes space for people within the terms set by existing structures, but love that allows difference to enhance the entirety of who we are.

Top-down religion is no longer viable in a world shaped by algorithms, micro-communities, and interconnected networks. What’s needed is something relational and rhizomatic—a way of being that sends out roots in all directions, grows horizontally, and has no fixed beginning or end.

The Curian Network connects faith leaders and communities without demanding conformity to specific creed or covenant. We are networked rather than hierarchical, woven together by relationship across digital and physical space—an ecosystem emphasizing the one thing that matters: faith expressing itself through love. (Gal 5:6)

We are a 501(c)(3) organization and a recognized endorser with The Board of Chaplaincy Certification and The Association of Professional Chaplains.

Culture Values

This is how we live out our mission day-to-day.

We value tribes rather than tribalism.

We value decentralizing as much as possible.

We value localized innovation and missional impulse over global conformity.

We value human beings within the queer community.

We value the victim even as we try to be aware of our victimizing ways.

We value environments where faith leaders are esteemed, resourced, in relationship with others, and encouraged to create boundaries.

We value learning, change, and the humility to be in process.

We value the entanglement of the divine within the evolutionary story; all of creation matters.

Despite all these words, we value orthopraxy over orthodoxy.

Theological Paradigm

By faith, we believe that God is love and that love is the hope of the world.
Love didn’t come from somewhere else; it’s always been with us.
Love doesn’t have plans to separate from us; with love there is no separate.

Love encourages us to see our neighbor regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual identity, age, ability, political, or national persuasion.
Love compels us to see our enemy, for it’s there we see ourselves.
Love invites us to regard humanity as neither worthless nor flawless, but a complex and holy amalgamation of problems and possibilities.

We’re uninterested in violent atonement theories, dogmatic hierarchy or controlling omnipotence. We’re interested in love: its irrepressible-creativity, its consensual-strength, its weak-power.

We’re understanding this power in light of the forgiveness offered by a homeless, brown-skinned man, executed in a state-sponsored act of violence. We’re finding in him a better way to be human (and a better way to be God.) We’re interpreting his death in terms of his solidarity with the victim and the revelation of the scapegoating mechanism; his resurrection in terms of love’s validation of this solidarity and revelation.

The future isn’t settled; rather, its emerging at the intersection of the past, our choices, and the agency we have to make such choices. In other words, our hope isn’t in a predetermined violent apocalypse; our hope lies in our willingness to reorient ourselves around the possibilities of love.

By faith, we believe God is love.

Board of Trustees

Jonathan J. Foster

Un-Executive, Executive Director

Jonathan J. Foster is a partner of one, a father of three, a former church planter, and someone who’s spent years thinking deeply about faith and community.

When he’s not writing or podcasting, he’s the chief advocate for lovehaiti.org, an organization doing healthcare and education in some of the most overlooked and underserved areas of the Western Hemisphere. He holds a doctorate in theology from Northwind Seminary, where he studied under Thomas Jay Oord. His dissertation turned book, is titled Theology of Consent: Mimetic Theory in an Open and Relational Universe. His book indigo: the color of grief has been featured on dozens of podcasts and endorsed by a host of progressive Christian thinkers and authors, including Peter Rollins, Jack Caputo, Rob Bell, Paul Young, Catherine Keller, and Brian McLaren.

After thirty-plus years of ministry—including being asked by his former denomination to surrender his credentials over his insistence on full LGBTQ+ inclusion—Jonathan experienced firsthand the tension between love and institutionalism. This led him to co-found the Curian Network, which resources and credentials pastors, chaplains, spiritual directors, and counselors who are interested in love-driven local mission over dogma-driven global conformity. To learn more, see his About Page on Substack.