The Organic, Processual Development
of Process Philosophy & Theology
Intro by R.E. Slater
People Can, and Do, Change
I come from a fundamental Baptist, and later, conservative evangelical Christianity. My training was at first dispensational through bible churches, and later, covenant Reformed theology from a Baptistic evangelical bible college and seminary (GARB, ABWE, et al). I carry an undergraduate major in Psychology with an extensive minor studies in biblically-informed inductive and systematic theology. In a previous state university which I attended through my junior year, I held substantial studies in applied mathematics, organic chemistry, classical physics, literature and humanities, ancient bible cultures, Attic Greek, and basic engineering courses. In another life I would've completed my mathematics studies and moved into the quantum physics realm which years later I have taught myself.
My working "career" existed for 30 years in the small business information services and consulting which included an additional 30/60 graduate hours completed on an MBA level at the Seidman School of Business. Too, my seminary studies carries with it a Masters of Divinity degree with a Pastoral minor (130? cr hrs). As a lay minister I taught, developed, and mentored high school, college and career, and single adult ministries, including worship ministries participation, small group development for adult ministries, and campus ministries. Also, I served as a deacon in a mega church, developed grassroots congregational ministries, and worked in evangelic street ministries of various kinds. All in all I served 34 years in Christian ministries and another 25 years in public school projects and committees; city and township boards and committees; ditto with the county and quasi-political regional ecological / environmental promotion and development with the public, area colleges, and corporations. I also served on a dozen+ environmental groups utilizing a Master Naturalist certification which I gained as part of a hands-on curricular program through Michigan State University's extension board.
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Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures
The "emerging church" movement is perhaps the most significant church trend of our day. The emerging church offers and encourages a new way of doing and being the church. While it largely resonates with an eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old audience--the first fully postmodern generation--it is also gaining popularity with older Christians and encompasses a broad array of traditional and contemporary churches. Emerging Churches explores this movement and provides insight into its success.Filled with the latest research and interesting, anecdotal testimonies from those on the cutting edge of ministry, this book provides pastors, church leaders, and interested readers with an insightful glimpse into the thriving churches of today--and tomorrow.
The Haves and the Have-Nots
Over the past several decades I had become aware of the lack of positive movement in the local church, and nationally, in its ability to reach out to the public in any meaningful way. My last church, Mars Hill under Rob Bell, became active in the emergent Christian movement as a way of introducing to an institutionalized Christian religion a personal and community-engaged form of spiritual formation and ministry. In essence, I found a church willing to engage the public on a societal level even as I was already practicing on a personal level. And like myself, it too had become weary of the church ostracizing people by critical societal judgments and church rules which demanded a form of Christian observance which leaned into the legalizing attitudes formed within church fellowship of the haves-and-have-nots. Exclusion was never Jesus' intention. In response, the Jewish leadership persecuted Jesus unto death and in like manner church leaders have been doing the same over the past two millennia of church ministry. With the emergent Christian movement of the 90s and 10s the Christian faith was to cease from these actions and reach out to the excluded, the unwanted, and the disenfrancised. And so it did, and when it did, the conservatism of evangelicalism doubled down on its own divide of what was "truth" and what was "love" as it decided those "Christian" qualities to be.
Time to Re-form our Un-Reformational Attitudes
Recently, about ten years ago, and after a personally difficult and extensive period of deconstructing my own sincerely-held dogmatic beliefs and stricter forms of Christianity (which actually began back in my earlier college years, though I was at that time much less religiously in-formed), the Spirit of the Lord burdened me to take my retirement and write of a "New Christianity". One which held to its "biblical" roots by leaning into God's love, and by placing Jesus back into the center of faith worship, rather than centering my faith in the bible itself per se in what can only be described as "the worship of the bible over its Author" (sic, known as bibliolatry).
Whereas my former faith system was binding me away from the world and making it wholly improbably, impractical, if not impossible, to teach Jesus within its limiting dogmatic systems I was an active member of; and though my fellowships believed themselves to be "progressively minded" in their own ways of faith construction and observance; yet they had intentionally constructed - and were living within - a very regressive form of religion made in the image of modern-day religious man. Thus and thus, my very long period of deconstruction, both informally through my lifetime, and later formally, during the early years of writing out my dilemma on this website of my own theological dissent to evangelicalism's form of the gospel. It was un-reforming in its faith's energies, uncritical of its dogmas, and had become too separate from the world by its moralising judgments and socio-political hypocrisies. It was finally time to speak up.
By being patient to the guidance of the Spirit, and patiently examining what my Emergent (and later, Progressive) Christian fellowships were saying (even as the very short lived Emergent Christianity of the 1990s came-and-went) I was able to see more clearly what needed removing and what needed greater emphasis in a Christianity become more religion than vibrant faith and spiritual encounter. Like my more well-known compatriots, Rachel Held Evans, Shane Claiborne, and Thomas Jay Oord, Richard Rohr, and even Stanley Hauerwas, my own faith journey was joining their faith journies during those early years of reconstruction by building upon what had been laid down by Jesus and moving it forward a bit at a time.
Are you dissatisfied with the church, unsure of how to think about the Holy Spirit's power in light of the evil in our world, or wishing that worship engaged your imagination? In "Pass the Peace: A New Paradigm for Christian Community," Dr. Chet B. Gean translates Christian theology into meaningful practice. Pastors and laypersons are encouraged to: Apply spiritual practices and disciplines. Define and work with parish dynamics. Harness the power of the Holy Spirit. Unmask evil in the world. Engage imagination in worship. Transform grace into service. Dr. Gean, denominational leader and church consultant, calls for a new paradigm of church leadership and community involvement. His message embraces the mystical energy of God, transcending religious institutions and flowing freely into the world that we are called to serve. His is a call to peace; to the mystery of inner healing; to wholeness; and to our God, who alone loves in a manner unique and perfectly suited to each one of us. Gean discloses his love, respect, and solicitude for the church in "Pass the Peace."
A New Christianity Needs A New Christian Foundation
What I wish to show here is a new kind of Christianity which is no longer based upon the older, out-of-date, Hellenized forms of Greek Western culture, but in essence, the retrieval and recapturing of the even older Hebraic cultures which leaned into the organic forms and movement of God's continuing actions in creation through eventful narratives and personal encounters as the God who is the Lover of our Souls.
Further, there has been a great amount of confusion within traditional church doctrine in its embrace of the Christian philosopher Kant and his Newtonian ideas of a creation working as a clock-like mechanism. Consequently, I have redirected some of my bible studies on this site to include the chaotic world of organically evolving creationism known as (quantum) evolution and (processual) societal development utilizing a Hebraically-minded, but newer, contemporay organic philosophy known as process philosophy before Roman and Greek thought had removed Hebraic thinking from the church in favor of Hellenism.
As such, neither Platonic/Aristotelian Hellenism nor Englightenment-based Modernism are worthy foundations for a "biblical" theology nor theology's future development. And though I could find parts of Continental Philosophy more helpful than Western Analytical Philosophy of the American church, I realized I needed something broader, more organic, more chaotic, less certain, even mystical. All this and more I have found in Alfred North Whitehead's development of the "Philosophy of Organism" (later to be known as Process Philosophy which naturally includes Process Theology; essentially they came together in Whitehead's Victorian form of Process Christianity in the early 1900s).
A philosophy which has steadily grown and developed over the past three of four generations of input by process philosophers, theologians, scientists (sic, metaphysical quantum cosmologies and creationally-respondent evolutions), the humanitarian arts such as psychology, sociology, metamodern medicine (neurology), technology (quantum computing and blockchain development), anthropology (both ancient and cultural), and even postmodern literature.
As with any philosophy, process thought is but a waystation leading to further studies and insights as society can move along with it (as example, should we decide to build ecological societies and cultures instead of greater industrialized cultures). But for now, its time for the church to let go of its older, unuseful philosophical foundations, and to move forward utilizing broader conceptualizing tools for such integral areas as philosophic theology, entrepreneurial eco-societal development, and the various global solidarities of pluralistic humanitarianism as can be found with one another. Which is what this site is attempting to do in its reappraisal of the Christian faith in correlation with other process theologians and thinkers, both religious and non-religious.
Conclusion
Today, Andrew Davis presents another view of Process Thought from his own perspective, even as I have attempted to illustrate through other voices and research institutions over the past recent years. If Christianity is to become a more meaningful voice with other strident voices speaking peace and love out across the world instead of imperial forms of dogmatic Christianity, then it needs to positively re-engage in the areas of metaphysics, ontology, morals and ethics, and in societal practicalities which hopefully bleed out peace, love, goodwill, equality, social and ecological justice. This is what God's love and Jesus' atonement brings to today's world.
In Christ, we are, but we are also becoming. And as we are in Christ, so we are to be in the world... as voice and witness, fellow laborer and co-servants to the love of God.
So let's hear from Andrew today, consider his approach and appraisal of a processually reforming (or reformulization of) Christianity, and see if it might help each of us towards greater solidarity within our own personal, familial, economic, political, corporate, community, social, and religious faith involvements.
Peace,
R.E. Slater
March 21, 2022
"The Global Philosophy of Religion Project"
by Andrew Davis
Subject: Process Theology
Dec 21, 2021
Today, we explore Process Philosophy and Theology with Dr. Andrew Davis, a philosopher, theologian and scholar of world religions. We stress understanding Process Philosophy and Theology, and Metaphysics, in its own context, and then, if and where relevant, in comparison with other religions.
Andrew M. Davis is a philosopher, theologian and scholar of world religions. He is Program Director for the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology at Willamette University. He holds B.A. in Philosophy and Theology, an M.A. in Interreligious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology. An educator and advocate of cross-cultural knowledge and religious literacy, his studies have led him to a variety of religious contexts and communities around the world, including India, Israel-Palestine, and Europe.
The Global Philosophy of Religion Project aims to make the philosophy of religion a truly global field by promoting the scholarly work of researchers from underrepresented regions and religious traditions. It is led by Professor Yujin Nagasawa and hosted by the University of Birmingham. This interview was conducted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, host of Closer To Truth. Learn more about the project: https://www.global-philosophy.org/
This project was made possible in part through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this video are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.