Welcome, Love.
I hope you'll stick around and that I'll get a chance to dialogue with you. I read progressive Christian material fairly regularly (Fred Clark's blog "Slactivist" at Patheos, and I visit Prof. McGrath's blog on occasion). I have also read Bishop Spong's Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God. However, there are some things I still don't "get" about progressive Christianity, and I hope that I'll get to explore them in dialogue with you.
1) What is the foundation or basis for progressive Christianity? The sacerdotal churches (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Nestorian) appeal to Church tradition and apostolic succession. Fundies claim to base their beliefs on an infallible Bible (while ignoring pretty much everything Jesus is portrayed saying about money). Progressive Christians seem to be...kinda free-floating. Spong is (as far as I can tell from his writings) an atheist-of-the-cloth. He does not believe in any theistic deity, a resurrection of Jesus (except in the most metaphorical of terms), or any of the doctrines that have defined Christianity for most of its history (e.g. the Creeds, etc.). It just seems like there's no "there" there, in the sense of a "Christianity" that differs from "atheist humanism, using cultural Christian language."
2) Why continue to cart the Bible around and be weighted down with all of its baggage (genocides, barbaric patriarchal "morality," teachings of exclusivity, Hell, etc., claims of miracles and "history" that never happened, and so forth) in order to salvage a relative handful of moral teachings you agree with, when you could find much richer bodies of moral teaching in, for example, the writings of Marcus Aurelius or the Buddha?
3) On what basis can you pick out those "nice" parts and treat them as (at least somewhat) "divinely inspired" or otherwise valid and applicable, while tossing the rest overboard?
4) Are there any truth-claims that actually differentiate your kind of Christianity from atheism? E.g., "God exists and does/says [insert deeds/words here], so that his/her/its existence is not indistinguishable from a godless Universe."
It's OK if you don't want to respond to these questions here. This might not even be the proper place. If you'd prefer, I could start a new thread, but I'm also willing to talk about these things here. That is, if you're game for such a discussion.
I hope you'll stick around and that I'll get a chance to dialogue with you. I read progressive Christian material fairly regularly (Fred Clark's blog "Slactivist" at Patheos, and I visit Prof. McGrath's blog on occasion). I have also read Bishop Spong's Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God. However, there are some things I still don't "get" about progressive Christianity, and I hope that I'll get to explore them in dialogue with you.
1) What is the foundation or basis for progressive Christianity? The sacerdotal churches (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Nestorian) appeal to Church tradition and apostolic succession. Fundies claim to base their beliefs on an infallible Bible (while ignoring pretty much everything Jesus is portrayed saying about money). Progressive Christians seem to be...kinda free-floating. Spong is (as far as I can tell from his writings) an atheist-of-the-cloth. He does not believe in any theistic deity, a resurrection of Jesus (except in the most metaphorical of terms), or any of the doctrines that have defined Christianity for most of its history (e.g. the Creeds, etc.). It just seems like there's no "there" there, in the sense of a "Christianity" that differs from "atheist humanism, using cultural Christian language."
2) Why continue to cart the Bible around and be weighted down with all of its baggage (genocides, barbaric patriarchal "morality," teachings of exclusivity, Hell, etc., claims of miracles and "history" that never happened, and so forth) in order to salvage a relative handful of moral teachings you agree with, when you could find much richer bodies of moral teaching in, for example, the writings of Marcus Aurelius or the Buddha?
3) On what basis can you pick out those "nice" parts and treat them as (at least somewhat) "divinely inspired" or otherwise valid and applicable, while tossing the rest overboard?
4) Are there any truth-claims that actually differentiate your kind of Christianity from atheism? E.g., "God exists and does/says [insert deeds/words here], so that his/her/its existence is not indistinguishable from a godless Universe."
It's OK if you don't want to respond to these questions here. This might not even be the proper place. If you'd prefer, I could start a new thread, but I'm also willing to talk about these things here. That is, if you're game for such a discussion.
