mcarans

That's an interesting way of describing grace Bill, particularly about how it must be free of preconditions. I also like this from Soma, that the presence of God is a receiving of grace. Thank you both!

I have picked certain passages from Rowan Williams's talk which seem to me to be particularly relevant. They don't seem to conflict with the posts from BillM and Soma. Would these be regarded as compatible with PC? What the New Testament does not say is, 'unless you hold the following propositions to be true there is no life for you'... If we're speaking about the action of God through the Son and the Spirit to bring about a relationship to the Father then clearly how that is culturally expressed – the words and the forms that it finds – are not of themselves what make a difference... God has made us to learn in dialogue. And to say that I have learned from a Buddhist or a Muslim about God or humanity is not to compromise where I began. Because the infinite truth that is in the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is not a matter which can be exhausted by one set of formulae or one set of practices... And does our belief in uniqueness or finality commit us to saying that there is no hope for those outside the family of faith – whether someone of another faith or of no faith? We Christians are very reluctant sometimes to leave things to God to sort out. We have often a vague feeling that God hasn't read the proper books. And sometimes we feel rather protective towards him and make sure that he knows the right policy. I find – speaking for myself – that I'm very content to let God be the judge of how anyone outside the visible family of faith is related to Jesus or is turned towards the Father. There are lives – and we've all encountered them – marked by some of those things I would say are central to the Gospel and for which the person involved has no words. There are lives in which you can say, 'what is going on there has so Christ-like an aura about it, that I would be very foolish to say it has nothing to do with the act of God through the Son and the Spirit.' And yet the person may say, 'I'm a loyal Muslim; I'm an Agnostic; I have no idea what you're talking about when you talk about Jesus'. I am, as I say, content that God should decide what is going on.

How do Progressive Christians view this take on Christianity in a pluralistic world from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams? http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/585/the-finality-of-christ-in-a-pluralist-world (text) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VyMtQsOlKI (video)

I am trying to find if grace has any significance in Progressive Christianity and if so, what does it mean to a Progressive Christian? On the PC website, I found this: http://progressivechristianity.org/resources/progressive-christian-ideologies-on-grace-or-faith/ For the author of that answer, grace plays no part in PC. Is that the general consensus or does anyone here find it relevant to PC?

An approximate way of describing the purpose of life in Eastern religions is that it is to escape the bondage of ignorance and illusion and gain release from the cycle of rebirth. In the case of Buddhism, the individual seeks enlightenment although simultaneously there is no self (an interesting article on this apparent contradiction here: https://philosophynow.org/issues/97/Is_The_Buddhist_No-Self_Doctrine_Compatible_With_Pursuing_Nirvana) It seems to me that one difference between Christianity and Buddhism (and indeed other religions) concerns the the free gift of grace vs the reliance on individual effort. In Buddhism aprson strives for nirvana (and perhaps also follows the "rules" of the eight fold path), whereas in Christianity, grace is given to everyone irrespective of merit or achievement. There's something on the PC website about grace (and also salvation): http://progressivechristianity.org/resources/affirmations-and-confessions-of-a-progressive-christian-layman-grace-and-salvation/ Unfortunately the article doesn't really go into what is a Progressive Christian view of grace.

Regarding Christianity being influenced by Buddhism, I thought that the Abrahamic religions developed mostly separately from the Eastern religions not least due to geography. This Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Christianity says "Though some early Christians were aware of Buddhism, which was practiced in the Roman Empire in the early Christian period, the majority of modern Christian scholarship has roundly rejected any historical basis for the travels of Jesus to India or Tibet or direct influences between the teachings of Christianity in the West and Buddhism, and has seen the attempts at parallel symbolism as cases of parallelomania which exaggerate the importance of trifling resemblances... Marcus Borg states "Scholars have pointed out that Buddhist teachers lived in Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast, by the first century. Some have posited that Jesus might have traveled there, or that Buddhist teachings may have reached cities of the Jewish homeland, including Sepphoris, a major city in Galilee only four miles from Nazareth. Popular speculation speaks of Jesus having traveled to India during "the missing years" the decades before he emerged on the stage of history. There, it is suggested, he came in to contact with Buddhist teachings. But both explanations are unlikely and unnecessary. The similarities are not of the kind that suggest cultural borrowing"

My impression from reading posts in this forum and from some resources on the PC website is that a great deal of inspiration comes from Buddha, perhaps even more than from Jesus (or other teachers): many descriptions remind me very much of Zen Buddhism (at least from my knowledge of it my earlier life and particularly from Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen). For those who are inspired by Buddha, what do you feel are similarities and differences (if any) between Zen Buddhism and progressive Christianity?

I would give up my journey for a shorter one. I cringe at the things I thought in my youth and I regret that I have spent my life serving myself and not God (even during the times I was not atheist). As this has become a long thread, I will move my question about Zen Buddhism into a new one - I hope that's ok. Unfortunately I cannot edit my previous post to remove the question.

I thank you Jen for your posts and in particular for this nugget: "any major choice we make affects the way the brain wires itself...When we make major choices about our religious or spiritual beliefs, we give instructions to our biological brains to go ahead and start rewiring circuits to support and reinforce our major belief systems." : this why it seems to me that guiding someone who is at the start of a new process of spiritual searching is important to them as once they start down a path, it will be hard for them to back out. I know this from personal experience as I was in my late teenage years a very conservative Christian, who abandoned that baggage and became an equally conservative atheist. A spiritual vacuum lead me to Buddhism and Tolle then not finding what I needed there, back to atheism. Now I am a liberal Christian. I want to help people avoid such a complicated journey if I can. Thank you Joseph for the link to resources. From one of the articles on the main organisation site, there's this link which I found quite helpful regarding labels: http://www.christianevolution.com/2014/02/should-progressive-christians-called-Jesusists.html Definitely people are free to label themselves how they choose and I understand that coming out with an entirely new label might well be counterproductive. My point is how someone can use a label that will be helpful in explaining what they believe/think to the uninitiated based on choosing an existing religion that fits more closely the beliefs/values he/she has. It seems to me that if a person draws an equal amount of inspiration from Buddha, Krishna and others as from Jesus, then using the term Christian is less helpful when mentoring or giving personal testimony to others than something like progressive Baha'i which covers all those teachers. My impression though from the posts I've read is that some people seem to draw more inspiration from Buddha than Jesus or other teachers as much of what they wrote seems to me to be quite close to Zen Buddhism (at least from my knowledge of it my earlier life and particularly from Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen). For those who are inspired by Buddha, what do you feel are differences (if any) between Zen Buddhism and progressive Christianity?

I am grateful that so many of you have taken the time to provide answers to my questions. They are very helpful to me and I wanted to dig deeper to get to that concise definition that Bill alludes to which would be useful to anyone trying to understand Christianity without being automatically drawn into conservative Christianity with its "easy" answers. I thought it might help to get towards such a definition by comparing to progressive versions of other faiths, for example a progressive Baha'i faith might not take literally certain instructions such as that women cannot serve in the Universal House of Justice. So progressive X, where X is a religion might be defined as applying context to X's religious texts or not taking literally those texts. Then what makes a progressive Christian different to a progressive Baha'i might give the rest of the definition. But perhaps such a simple definition of progressive Christianity is not possible - it is what the individual wants it to be?

I think my case one might have been misunderstood: when I said that the young person was at risk of being radicalised, I did not mean that they would not be a Christian, I meant that they might join Islamic State or some extreme group. I certainly don't think that anyone who isn't Christian is a radical. I think that personal testimony and mentorship are positive things to bring to such an individual, but from a practical perspective is that enough? Many of the ideas presented in this discussion are on a level that such an individual might not understand. Can we give a simple counter-narrative or do we just give up? On the subject of labels, I will resort to an analogy. Let's say I tell people I am a fan of the Phoenix Suns basketball team. What if I support all the teams in the Western Conference equally? I certainly have not lied but people would have made the reasonable assumption that the Suns are the only team in the NBA that I support. They would be expecting me to say what I like about that team not what's good about the whole Western Conference. If I started talking about what's great about the Houston Rockets and then the San Antonio Spurs, they would get gradually more confused and wonder whether I am a fan of any team. They might stop listening at that point. It would be better to tell them from the outset that I am a fan of all Western Conference teams. So if we replace the Phoenix Suns with Christianity, what would the Western Conference be? It could be New Age Spirituality, or perhaps Progressive Islam, since Jesus is one of a number of prophets in that religion, but perhaps best would be progressive Bahá'í? I don't know much about Bahá'í, but according to Wikipedia, messengers in that Faith include Abrahamic figures—Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, as well as Indian ones—Krishna,Buddha, and others. Why identify as progressive Christian if progressive Bahá'í would be a more fitting label? Then one could present a picture of progressive Bahá'íism to the people in the two cases I mentioned and that would be much clearer to them than trying to present Christianity as somehow encompassing multiple religions equally (in its most progressive form). Would anyone on this forum be happy to be labelled as progressive Bahá'í rather than progressive Christian? If you prefer the Christian label, why?

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to write such thoughtful replies to my questions. I appreciate the time you have spent. Sometimes I like to think in terms of possible real life cases, as that can separate dogma from practicality. The cases I have in mind now are: You are mentor to a young person who has had a difficult life and has many bad influences around him or her. He/she is easily lead astray. You fear he/she is at risk of being radicalised. A close relative has started attending Scientology seminars and seems fascinated by it. He/she tells you that he/she will join soon. You could take the view that for both, it is their own spiritual journey and it's not for anyone to give guidance. You could decide that talking about Christianity is wrong but then you offer no alternative to the path onto which these individuals have stumbled and in my opinion, you leave them open to people who will take advantage of them. You could try just pointing out the negatives of the path they are choosing, but I think that without presenting a positive and specific alternative, they will likely continue down unfortunate dead ends out of which they might not have the chance to escape. How do we combat the certainties and absolutes that these people will undoubtedly be offered (as these are often more attractive than generalities unfortunately)? These are perhaps extreme cases I've suggested but I think that the same logic could apply in other cases. I would be interested in all your thoughts on this.

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. Regarding "any religion or no religion or a dab of each will do and can pave a way to this experience, which is different for everyone" and "reconnect to what? For the theistically minded to god? To the secularly minded to one another? to the scientifically minded to the universe.", I can understand the point that the path is a very personal experience. Jen, I am a little scared at the thought of relying "on your own intuition when weighing the merits of any philosophical system" as how do I know that I'm not leading myself astray? For example, a fundamentalist's intuition is to deny the validity of what everyone except his/her particular group think. Faced with someone seeking spiritual direction, what can I say to help them? If I just say it's all personal experience, then I think they would be disappointed. If I say you have to find out for yourself, then again they will not be happy even if there is truth to both these statements. I feel that I still am not quite there with my second question: how can we make an argument that Christianity (or anything else) is worth exploring?

Thank you Joseph for your welcome and response. I am a Christian struggling with the issues I have raised. If we don't create another religion, but rather narrow down according to your criteria to a set of "spiritual" religions, then logically we should choose the simplest and least ambiguous one when encouraging others to explore their spirituality. That most likely would not be Christianity given the complexity, ambiguity and discrepancies of the Old and New Testaments. Would you agree? Your answer covers my first question, but my second still remains. If a society like Denmark develops many positive qualities while being secular, then how can we make an argument that Christianity (or anything else) is worth exploring? Thanks, Mike

Hi all, I asked Dr. Dominic Crossan about identifying valid paths to God as you can see in the thread below. He answered some of my questions, but left me with open questions which are: 1. Assuming we can use something like distributive justice (from Dr. Crossan's mail) to identify good vs bad religions, when approaching atheists, why not pick something that unambiguously talks about distributive justice without all the difficulties of interpretation that the Bible presents? (And if such unambiguity does not yet exist, why not create such a religion afresh?) 2. I live in Denmark, a country often admired for its low level of income equality, egalitarianism, justice etc. But another attribute of the country is that it is one of the most secular in the world - religion plays next to no part in most Danes' lives. Hence, an argument can be made that lack of religion produces more distributive justice. How can we then make a persuasive argument that Christianity or any other religious path to God will bring about the justice that belongs to all people? Thanks, Mike Hide original message On Monday, 7 September 2015, 8:04, John D Crossan wrote: Hi Michael:First, atheism is A/THEISM and as such is negative, derivative, and parasitical—in itself it exists as opposition to theism—and, as such, is often as correct as it is inadequate. For it to be of any value it should become something positive, powerful, and persuasive. (Can it?) Second, the validity of all religions should be assessed on how they track with evolution because the arc of evolution, though long, bends towards justice (that is why empires have always eventually fallen). Here is the test: does and how does this or that religion create, foster,and enact a vision of distributive justice in a world that belongs to all its people.(The Bible would say: belongs to God for all God’s people). With best wishes, Dominic On Sep 6, 2015, at 9:20 PM, Michael Rans wrote: Dear Dr. Crossan, I have been watching a YouTube video where you and the late Marcus Borg debate about Christianity with two conservative theologians and a topic touched on is Christianity in a pluralistic world. I have been wrestling with this and I hope you don't mind me asking you a few questions. If Christianity is not the only path to God, how do we know which paths are valid and which are not? Can atheism be a valid path? Why tell people about Christianity and not something much easier to understand like what Eckhart Tolle teaches in the Power of Now? Thanks so much for your time. Kind Regards, Michael Rans