As I wrote in response to Thinking Friend Vern Barnet’s excellent comments regarding my April 30 blog post, I grew up in a rather fundamentalist/traditionalist Protestant church and denomination. My theological understanding changed through the years, though, with the help of a good professor at William Jewell College (David O. Moore) and good profs/scholars at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Eric Rust, Dale Moody, and Glenn Hinson).
Advocating a Radiant Center. My theological position changed
progressively, and now I am pleased to identify myself as a progressive
Christian. As one who has long advocated a “radiant center,” I intentionally
sought to avoid the extremes of fundamentalism on the right and liberalism on
the left. That intention is seen in the two books I have written on the subject.*1
In those two books, I had in mind a continuum with five positions: fundamentalism
on the far right and liberalism on the far left. Then, I titled the tenth chapter of the second book “Between Liberalism
and Fundamentalism,” and I concluded with a subsection called “Advocating the
Radiant Center” (pp. 329-330)
Perhaps it is now time to propose only three positions: liberalism,
the radiant center, and fundamentalism, with the center constituting half of
the spectrum and the extremes only one-fourth each. On such a scale, I now
place myself on the left side of the broad middle, rejecting the extremes of
liberalism but being as far as possible from the extremes of fundamentalism.
Introducing ProgressiveChristianity.org. Mark
Sandlin is a Presbyterian pastor of a small church in North Carolina, but a
prominent shaper of progressive Christianity. He is the president and
co-executive director of ProgressiveChristianity.org. On that website, Sandlin articulates
“The Core Values of Progressive Christianity.”*2
First, though, please bear in mind that a key difference between
progressive Christianity and evangelical Christianity is that the former
emphasizes the importance of this world where is the latter tends to be “otherworldly,”
emphasizing the importance of “saving souls” for everlasting life in Heaven. Progressive
Christianity, however, primarily stresses the importance of life on earth now,
helping people to flourish (with the “abundant life” Jesus promised) in this
present world.*3
Here are some of the values Sandlin postulates:
* We [progressive Christians] believe God is Love, not a distant
evaluator.
* Jesus shows us what Love looks like in human form.
* The Bible is a living conversation and we’re invited into it.
* Salvation
is about becoming whole, not escaping earth.
* Other religions hold wisdom too and that doesn’t threaten our faith.
Introducing Doubter’s Parish. Martin Thielen is a former Southern Baptist who
became the pastor of a large Methodist church. He graduated from The Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982 (20 years after I did) and later received
a D.Min. degree from Midwestern Baptist Seminary in Kansas City.
Since his retirement from the 8,000 member megachurch, he created a
website called Doubter’s Parish. He posts only one article a month, but I
have found them to be well worth reading. Here are some of what he said about
progressive Christianity in his April 7 post titled “A Life-Giving Alternative
to Religious-Right Religion” (see
here; the image above is at the top of that website,
but is location of that church sign is undesignated).
Thielen writes, “Thankfully, we don’t have to choose between
religious-right religion and no religion at all. There is an alternative. It’s
called progressive Christianity. And we need it now more than ever.” Here are a
few of the fourteen benefits he says that kind of faith embraces:
* Progressive Christianity emphasizes grace
over judgment.
* Progressive Christianity is committed to
social justice.
* Progressive Christianity prioritizes
Christian living over doctrinal conformity.
* Progressive Christianity practices inclusion rather than exclusion.
* Progressive Christianity seeks to follow the
example and teachings of Jesus.
* Progressive Christianity majors on living a
life of love.
Since my faith now resonates significantly with the values and
characteristics given by Sandlin and Thielen, I am pleased to say that I am (or
seek to be) a progressive Christian.
_____
*2 I encourage you to click on the following link to that website and see how progressive Christianity is portrayed there: https://progressivechristianity.org/.
The first comments received this morning (before 6:00), were these affirmative words from a local Thinking Friend: "Leroy! I love this blog. Progressive Christian fits me to perfection. It is a label to live up to, around with, and given ground. Thank you."
ReplyDeleteAnd then not long after 6:00, local Thinking Friend David Nelson, shared these comments:
ReplyDelete"Thanks for a well thought out articulation of progressive Christianity. This is the faith that Has nurtured me most of my life. I am proud to be a Christian and have been appreciative to have this faith shared by my parents and the churches I have attended. It saddens me when this is not practiced."
Thanks, David, for sharing these comments. You were fortunate to have been the son of a progressive pastor who was not shackled with the narrowness of the traditional conservative Christianity that some of us (including me) grew up in.
DeleteAbout an hour ago, I received the following comments from Thinking Friend Rob Carr, who is a retired pastor and one who has long emphasized the important contemplative tradition of the mystics in Christianity. (This is the type of response I was hoping for.)
ReplyDelete"Greetings Leroy ... thanks for continuing to offer your thoughts around pertinent matters.
"What I don't see here is how a 'Contemplative Christianity' fits into the larger schema. The Christianity of the Mystics....the Desert Fathers etc.
"What this 'school' of Christianity says is on offer from the Gospel is a transformation of consciousness toward 'being filled with all the fullness of God.'
"Hence, the contemplative spiritual practices are essential as we offer our consent to the Spirit's activity deep in the soul/psyche. Jesus as the supreme example of this.
"The conversation around the differences between conservative and liberal/progressive Christianity seems to center around how people approach Christianity intellectually---parsing out theological and interpretive approaches. There is value there, to be sure.
"But what are we to make of 'if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation.....?'
"Seems to be that Jesus, Paul, and the contemplative mystics are hard to pin down as to the question of their conservatism or progressivism. Or, to put it another way, they defy us to put them in theological boxes or categories.
"Welcome your thoughts."
As I said, Rob, I much appreciate your comments/questions. First, let me say that I agree that talking about conservative and liberal/progressive Christianity does, indeed, center mostly about how people approach Christianity intellectually. And I believe that is something that needs to be done. But I also agree with you that that is not all that needs to be done.
DeletePlease recall what I wrote in my April 10 blog post. I said that Ultimate Truth (and I could also have said the Ultimate) “must be known by personal encounter” and I used the term mysticism “to refer to personal contact with God rather than intellectual reasoning about God.” In that connection, I commented briefly on the mysticism of Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Richard Rohr.
As I’m sure you know, Fr. Rohr founded the Center for Action and Contemplation. It seems to me that is a good blend of the progressive and contemplative forms of Christianity, and I have learned much of benefit regarding both forms from him.
Concerning your last paragraph, I think that being a progressive Christian, among other things, rejects the tendency to place anyone, past or present, in “theological boxes or categories.”
A retired college professor who now lives in eastern Tennessee, sent this brief comment: "Thanks, Dr. Seat, for this encouraging message." And about ten minutes ago, an college classmate from the 1950s, who now lives in North Carolina, wrote, "I loved this blog. I guess I am a progressive Christian and just did not know it!'
ReplyDeleteHere is my response to my old classmate, "Thanks for reading and responding, LeRoy. What you wrote reminded me of the words of an unsophisticated man that I have heard regarding various positions: "I didn't even know what a ... was, and now I are one." Perhaps many of us became progressive Christians before we knew there was such a suitable term for us to use in self-identification.
DeleteHi Leroy, Thank you for your insightful post. I too have been a monthly reader of Doubters' Parish. I look forward to exploring what Sandlin has to say. While I agree with, and would describe myself as, a progressive Christian, I personally have gone one more step to no longer use the term "Christian." When asked if I am Christian, I now reply, "No, I am a follower of Jesus."
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Gary. And certainly most people would not know what you meant if you introduced yourself as a progressive Christian. And I agree that saying you are a follower of Jesus rather than saying you are a Christian, because of the way the latter has been tarnished so much. But I think there is a problem even in saying "a follower of Jesus." That is because the way you (and I) understand Jesus and his message if quite different from the understanding of Jesus by most MAGA Christians.
DeleteSorry, I didn't intend to be anonymous! Gary B.
ReplyDeleteAs others have found, Gary, if you are not signing in with Gmail (or a Google account), it is hard to sign in with your name. I haven't been able to find any way to change that.
DeleteThanks, Leroy, for spelling the basic principles of progressive Christianity. In yesterday’s sermon at Wicker Park Lutheran, our pastor emphasized a couple of the points listed—particularly “grace over judgment” and love instead of exclusion. Rev. Glombicki is definitely a progressive Christian, something reflected in most of his sermons, with which I almost always agree.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this blog entry, Leroy. Your progressive Christianity is what I preached throughout most of my pastoral career. Lately, though, I've found the metaphysics and the liturgical/preaching practices of even progressive Christianity so problematic that I've started attending a Unitarian Universalist church. I find it refreshing to see the emphasis on "inclusion, compassion, and justice" without all the metaphysics of Christianity and the grounding of sermons and liturgics solely on biblical narratives, and typically utilized without hardly a shred of biblical criticism. Thanks, again. I truly hope there is a future for progressive and extreme liberal Christianity in humanity's future. But whether it can get a serious foothold in a world dominated by the authoritarianism and patriarchy of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and fundamentalism-evangelicalism.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate Rob Carr's comment about "liberal/progressive Christianity" centering "around how people approach Christianity intellectually." One could argue that Christianity's "downfall" was not only its identification with the political empire of Rome but also its appropriation of Greek philosophical influences that turned "faith" into believing doctrines. In that move, the existential-mystical realities of a historical-cultural humanity are lost. So it seems to me.
Thanks, Anton, for your thought-provoking comments. You learned about progressive Christianity much earlier that many of us (including me) did. But, as you might expect, I don’t agree with your serious questions about metaphysics “of even progressive Christianity”—although I tend to agree with your questions about liturgical practices (which are quite similar) while wondering what you mean by preaching practices, which if they are truly progressive, can include a wide range of preaching.
DeleteAs the Western world moves more and more into postmodernism, I think there will be a surge of progressive Christianity and a continuing decrease of the present dominant form of the type of Christianity you mentioned. I also fully agree with what you said about Christianity’s “downfall.” Anabaptists, with whom I have long self-identified, have long linked Christianity’s downfall to Constantine. And from their beginning in the 1520s, they emphasized the importance of discipleship (following Jesus in action, Bonhoeffer’s “nachfolge”) as far more important than writing about doctrine.
Here are brief comments received since noon from local Thinking Friend Ed Kail:
ReplyDelete"What a concept! -- Thanks for offering an appealing alternative."