When I began my movement out of conservative-evangelicalism I decided to write of my journey from time-to-time.... Here then is the log of that journey sharing as-I-went of my resolve to explore my past through the lens of my contemporary experience. Firstly, into the emergent-evangelical version of my older fundamental - and therefore, pre-evangelical faith - towards its more current process-based progressive form of post-evangelical Christianity (note: Whiteheadian process Christianity is naturally progressive and post-evangelical).
This became necessary when sensing in the 1980s during my final years of graduate seminary (M.Div) and business studies (MBA) the tension and coming conflict between my former church's uncivil politics and it's increasing national breakdown away from traditional Christianity's healthier forms of Christian humanitarianism we now know as progressive Christianity.
Here, both the conservative and progressive forms of the evangelical movement - each of which stood as much apart from one another as they did conjoined with one another - encompassed all the many forms of the institutionalized church from Catholicism to Lutheranism, Methodism, Reformism (in its Calvinistic and Arminian forms), and lately, in it's non-denominational process-based form.
This process-based form is without church name or denominational affiliation except that of a philosophical theology replacing the traditional church's Hellenized-Western philosophical theology over these past 2,000 years since the Christ-event. The Anglican theologian, NT Wright, attempted in his day (the 2000s) to instill into the Gentile Christian faiths of the church towards an appreciation for it's older Hebraic forms from which Christianity was birthed.... And yet, it wasn't enough.
Of late, some of Christianity recognizes that the Hellenized-Western forms of Christian must be reorientated back to the more ancient Semitic forms from which the Jewish faith was birth which then, consequently, gave birth to Christianity. It is here where process-relational forms of the ancient Christian faith begin to be bourne out and is currently transforming the Christian faith so that it's many global flavors may find common ground with one another as a global church as well as with the ancient Christian faith itself.
When starting this Spirit-led journey I little realized the monstrosity of endeavor which would undertake my labours as I deconstructed, and then reconstructed, my Reformed faith towards it's now globalized version of itself utilizing process philosophy and theology as the medium of exchange. Thankfully, along the way, I found myself in the ready companies of processual cohorts travelling similar paths as myself. It's fellowship helped to compare thought to thought as we together toiled towards a simpler, more poignant, and loving faith fraught by the secular church's collapsed into nationalized imperialism - as it had in the past and currently is today. Thus and thus the many articles below evidencing the church's wayward faith away from Jesus' mission and towards the unloveliness of all conscripted faiths.
R.E. Slater
* * * * * *
Index - Evangelical Politics
~~ all articles are listed in chronological order from latest to earliest ~~
Reading the book of Revelation for Today
No comments:
Post a Comment