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Why Those 8 Points?


Demas

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Good question. What is the point of trying to marshal a larger community around such a vague conception of Christianity? I'm sincerely not trying to be mean here, I just genuinely don't see what PC offers as a constructive alternative to traditional Christianity. There are many alternatives to traditional Christianity that, while not being monolithic, are sufficiently fleshed out for me to say, Yes, that is my view; or No, it isn't; or some combination thereof.

 

Well, I can tell you that TCPC, at least, is not trying to make progressive Christianity become a phenomenon separate from the many alternatives to traditional Christianity out there. If you look at our affiliates, we have Catholic, Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Methodist, and Lutheran traditions, for example. No "Church of the Progressive". But groups uniting together to show the world they exist. Especially when sometimes their denomination does not accurately describe them.

 

The purpose is not to start something new, but to show the mind-boggling breadth of alternatives that have been extremely well-hidden in recent decades.

 

In my experience is that there are three main reasons for the progressive Christian movement:

 

1) Non-traditional Christians are lonely.

 

Non-traditional Christianity is based more around the concept of community than beliefs that can be written down, yet we are ironically fragmented by geography and denominations, among other things.

 

I've spent the last few years moderating progressive Christian dialogues on Beliefnet, Delphiforums, and elsewhere. Over and over we get the same response "Thank you, thank you. I thought no one else felt like I did. I left my church and now I felt so alone." Or "Thank you, thank you for being here. I started to become interested in religion but all I could find was fundamentalist churches, so I just read a couple of Spong books and didn't share my faith with anyone." Later on they'll often ask how they can find (or start) a group of like-minded Christians in their area.

 

So how do you draw people together who are less interested in doctrine and more interested in the experience of living within a faith? All the different alternatives have been reaching out individually with little success. To truly let people know we are here if they want to join us, we have to speak louder than "calling all Low Church Episcopalians" or "calling all social justice oriented Catholics."

 

A lot of people who may be hungering for a non-traditional community don't even know they exist, let alone how to go about finding others like them. Uniting by saying "We are, besides being Christians and Lutheran and ____ and ____, also progressive Christians" provides people who are totally bemused a way to distinguish non-traditional approaches.

 

Now, we could just call ourselves non-traditional. But then an at least vague explanation of that term would be needed too.

 

2) So many people are not aware Christianity outside traditional Christianity exists.

 

In all my activities I also get a lot of "Wow, I never knew you guys existed. I always thought fundamentalism was not close to Jesus and wondered why there weren't any different kinds of Christians." We have had atheists, agnostics, and other non-Christians say thanks for showing them not all Christians were like the ones in the headlines, and that they have been educated about the choices.

 

How many people on the street know about the witness and examples of Bonhoeffer or Thomas Merton or George Fox? How many know about the historic openmindedness of Congregationalists or the contemplative services of Quakers or the wonderful insights of Higher Criticism or the metaphorical power of the liturgy? Most people don't already know about all the alternatives to traditional Christianity. You do, but most don't.

 

And what do our members do? They point them towards TCPC, sure. But they also point them towards their denominations. They point them towards resources on contemplative prayer, lectio divino (sp?), and taize. They point them towards spiritual works by people in all branches of Christianity, very few of which labeled themselves "progressive Christians" because a lot of them are dead and gone.

 

3) Numbers lend air of legitimacy.

 

Its unfortunate, but numbers make people give us a chance at explaining why we are, in fact, legitimate Christians. It shouldn't, truth should exist apart from numbers, but it does. And I and many others I know have been told to our faces that we aren't Real Christians - and not by fundamentalists. By secular people. Our ability to be open and genuine about our faith is hampered by the fact that the public is convinced there is only one way to be Christian, and that is authoritarian. This way, I can point to one of the progressive Christian organizations and say "Look, the love-based community-based understanding of Christianity (instead of the authoritarian-based way) is bigger than me and even bigger than all Quakers. There are millions of us. We are Christians and we need to be taken seriously as having valuable spiritual inputs into the national dialogue. Don't tell us to speak only from secular positions because we are not "allowed" to speak from a spiritual position. We do and we can and we should and we will."

 

~ Lib

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I think ever one has to write their own "Here I Stand" and maybe keep revising it. Community statements always lack a little of that individual passion which excites us and motivates us deep down to the bones.

 

Here's one I wrote in the 80s which I shared with my congregation, of course. They never got as excited about it as I did! But that's my point.

 

I completely agree with you mystictrek. That's why churches are encouraged to write their own version (smaller community) and also why no one is asked not to have any statement separate.

 

Putting our faith into words is a spiritual discipline that each individual should do separately. I do it by writing a blog and writing on message boards such as these.

 

The Eight Points, or your Seven Points, or CrossWalk America's Twelve Points, aren't meant for anyone to say "Here I Stand." The very diverse nature of a progressive Christian faith prohibits that.

 

Instead, such statements are meant to say "Here is a community within which I exist. It connects me to a spiritual family larger than myself. Now let me tell you about me."

 

~ Lib

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I can understand the value of awareness-raising for PC. I'm certain there are many people out there who are simply dissatisfied, but can't quite put their finger on why, and don't really know what else is out there for them. So in that sense, PC is sort of an instrument for hooking up people with, dare I say, "actual" communities and/or organizations that resonate with their own particular convictions, etc. That, in itself, is probably enough reason to justify PC's existence.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Lib. See, I said I wasn't trying to be mean. ;)

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