what is progressive christianity?

(Originally published, The Salt Shaker, Newsletter of West Hill United Church, March 2008.) There are a lot of different ways in which the term progressive is applied to Christianity.  For many, a welcoming church that encourages the participation of others who were once barred from full participation—nowadays primarily either women or LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender)—is considered a progressive church.  In that respect, many mainline churches might label themselves progressive and see evangelical and sacramental churches, most of which refuse ordination to particular groups of people, as less so. Others may consider the justice work in which the church engages to determine whether or not it is progressive.  If, in its endeavours to address social, economic, and ecological justice, the church pushes the comfortable boundaries the dominant culture usually assumes, it is very likely considered a progressive church both by its members and those who watch its witness. Such a church will work toward raising the consciousness of its members to the point that they understand and want to address challenging issues, often related to topics that confront and disturb those they engage.  Think of human rights issues, international trade, child poverty, global warming, the trafficking of child labour, animal rights—all things that sustain the standard of living most westerners enjoy and are sensitive topics for many to discuss. For churches that have a prescribed, ritualized worship experience, breaking out of the mould can be considered progressive.  Creative uses of liturgy, the patterns through which a leader and the congregation before her or him move through a service of worship, open up new avenues for communities to explore their spirituality.  Often, the act of creating new forms of liturgy is so challenging to the denomination, that the elements of the service, its prayers, rituals, and overall message, must be approved for use by the church hierarchy. Refusal to do so can bring dire consequences upon any official leaders who participate in such a service. Christian communities have usually progressed sequentially along each of these and many other paths, parallel movement having the potential to be too disorienting. Progressive thinking moves an individual or community to a new understanding of the world in which they live, work, and play.  It threatens ideas that have been traditionally held by exposing them to ideas based on new experience or understanding. In time, often through the very difficult, painful processes of loss and acceptance, progressive thinking completes the move of an individual or community from the comfort of a former belief system, through the disorienting challenge of transition, to a new place of comfort and understanding.  The idea that all human life is sacred is working to overcome the idea that one race, gender, sexuality, nationality, or generation should be privileged over another.  The idea that the limits of the earth’s resources may not be able to sustain a growing population is working to overcome the idea that those resources are limitless.  The idea that there are multiple ways to experience and stimulate one’s spiritual self is working to overcome the idea that a particular way is the only way. Once an idea has been embraced by the larger community, it settles into the realm of the status quo.  No longer representing cutting edge thought about the particular issue it addressed, it becomes accepted as the norm.  It is, however, a norm that is decidedlynot what was formerly believed to be acceptable; indeed the former places of comfort are now places of discomfort.  Enveloping itself in the term “liberal,” the idea identifies itself over and against former perspectives it now classifies as “traditional.” At this point, a community that is committed to the principles of progressive thinking will often look around for the next place to which such thinking might be applied.  Thus, the sequential nature of progress.  Each new understanding of an issue applies progressive thinking and moves what was at one time a progressive idea to a place where it is called liberal, a liberal idea to where it is called traditional, a traditional idea to the category of historical, and finally, on to archaic.  Each new idea pushes the former back along the historical continuum, like beads on a counting string. Churches that have developed progressive postures and that continue to apply them regularly to justice and ecclesial issues, often begin to turn their progressive gaze on the theological beliefs they have traditionally held.   New experience and understanding, supported by contemporary scholarship, call into question many of those beliefs, based as they are on a document, the Bible, that has been found to be humanly, not divinely, constructed.  Although such work has happened outside of church life for most of the century or so it has been developing, it is now affecting the life of communities that are applying it to their understandings of God and Jesus, and the worship life of the church that has made those things central to their faith.  These communities also call themselves progressive. Early on in the development of a church’s theologically progressive thought, the realities of heaven and hell, masculine images of God, Jesus as the divine Son of God, the literal truth of the Bible, and the exclusive message of salvation, are all challenged.  New ideas develop, confront former understandings and eventually replace them.  When those new ideas are accepted as the norm, if the community continues to apply progressive thinking to those ideas as well, they move into the realm of liberal Christianity and the community forges ahead. Some of the earliest examples we have of progressive theological stances are those of a gender-neutral God, the Bible as narrative, and the understanding of its miracles and wonders as metaphor. The acceptance of these progressive ideas has sometimes brought about new ways of speaking and acting in the church: hymns about a Father God are replaced with hymns about a Creator God; the Bible lessons are acted out in modern-day dress and speech; contextual explanations are introduced through sermon and study; interfaith dialogue becomes a focal issue, and so on. But the very nature of progressive thought is that it keeps moving on.  And so it has.  Churches that struggled through the gender-inclusive language debate in the 1980s and 1990s now turn their attention to the beingness of God and challenge the theistically-exclusive language that has been formerly privileged.  Those that contextualized the Bible’s message, now struggle through the idea that it is not only not divinely inspired but that it is potentially dangerous when held up as a moral or ethical authority and should be demoted as a spiritual foundation. Those that have changed the names of God to ones that are less dominated by the traditional pictures the word “God” evokes are now faced with scientific and archaeological findings that challenge the idea of God as creator; philosophical ideas that undermine the ultimate reality of God as a being separate and distinct from human experience; anthropological examination that exposes the human need to create deities and supernatural forces.  They struggle to reflect new understandings within their worship and congregational life, honouring the old ideas they set aside even as they embrace interpretations, new understandings, and new experiences. So it is that the definition of progressive Christianity is a difficult one to make.  Any community that pulls itself outside of its own worldview to question its purpose, its practice, its foundations, and its beliefs will be challenged by what it finds.  Working through the reality of that challenge will eventually cause it to reject one thing (or many things) in  exchange for something else.  Whether it be an understanding of what is just, a belief in a theistic God, or a way of creating a welcoming environment, the communities that employ the elements of progressive thinking, openness, creativity, passion, intellectual rigour, honesty, courage, balance and respect, will see themselves progress along that endless continuum of what Christianity can be. Progressive Christianity cannot be nailed down to one thing.  It lives in flux.  It always will because that is its nature.  It always will because it must.