EVERYDAY ATTITUDES
"Being is as much about Becoming
as Becoming is about Being." - R.E. Slater
Process Living is:
upLifting and uniting,
motivating and encouraging,
being and becoming...
bearing all things,
being all things,
becoming all things...
abiding all people,
reviving all relationships,
surviving all difficulties...
when pursuing faith,
overcoming obstacles,
suffering as Grace...
in sacrifice and service,
with diligence extended,
abiding, staying, doing...
reclaiming and redeeming,
renewing and resurrecting,
regenerating all about...
everyone,
everything,
everywhere,
ever and ever...
---
process amplification
is singing, throbbing,
all around and in us,
across heaven and earth,
hearts and lands,
about, within, and from us,
unstoppable,
instoppable,
withheld no hand,
no soul, no land,
we are... as creation is...
as life and death are,
immortal wonders,
are, and are becoming...
R.E. Slater
December 15, 2023
revised December 19, 2023
@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved
What Is In a Christian Label?
Examining Conservative, Progressive &
Processual Christianity
by R.E. Slater
Introduction
When a Christian is advocating for social equality, nature, and justice, they are known as progressive Christians regarding their faith and denominational orientation.
Though labels should be unimportant we use them daily to identify who we are (rightly or wrongly), what is important to us, and why such things are important to us.
When speaking about today's present-tense church many wish to break free of the church-molds we find ourselves in but dare not because of the ostracism which may follow when doing so. Thus we continue to bind ourselves within societal structures which have become meaningless, useless, and unhelpful.
In the evangelical world of church-in-the-present-tense we hear a lot about conservative Christians but very little about progressive Christians... the kind which wish to live in a judgment-free world with people who are allowed to be who they chose to be or, are-in-themselves people who do not need to live up to another's (inappropriate, or binding) standards.
Conversely, progressive Christians are co-operating Christians co-ordinating their faiths with the disseparate (unlike) faiths of others. They yearn to live in co-hesive communities where difference is a strength and not a weakness.
If a progressive Christian attends a mainline church the fellowships therein are usually progressive... as in progressive Methodists, Lutherans, Nazarenes, etc. Here, one may discover diverse congregational attributes supportive of social equality, ecological, and social justice. Where people who have different cultures and backgrounds with one another are usually accepted, welcomed, and embraced.
In the Catholic Church, progressive Catholic faiths may be more equally divided with that of conservative Catholic faiths demographically.
Broadly, a conservative faith is more traditionally-orientated, keeping with the familiar, unwanting change, and refusing racial introspection regarding feminism, gender difference, or race and religious heritage. All congregants are to be as one and to be assimilated into one conservative attitude (much as Picard's crew on the USS Enterprise were assimilated into the Borg).
Hence, some Catholic Churches may be more conservatively evangelical in their outlook or character or they may be more progressively evangelical in the same.
What is Conservative Evangelicalism?
Evangelicalism is a recent descriptor of a traditionalized church's acclaimed creeds and doctrines:
- They generally are Cross-centered in Christ;
- Preach repentance from sin and salvation by Christ;
- Assimilating in outreach community programs;
- Broadly authoritative in their church's social and political structures; and,
- Usually Patriarchal in orientation restricting women to serve under the guidance of men because women are thought to be unequal in the home, church, office, or generally, in society with men.
- This is known as complementarianism:
Wikipedia - Complementarianism is a theological view in some denominations of Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam, that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, and religious leadership. Complementary and its cognates are currently used to denote this view. Some Christians interpret the Bible as prescribing complementarianism, and therefore adhere to gender-specific roles that preclude women from specific functions of ministry within the community. Though women may be precluded from certain roles and ministries, they are held to be equal in moral value and of equal status. The phrase used to describe this is "ontologically equal, functionally different".Complementarians assign primary headship roles to men and support roles to women based on their interpretation of certain biblical passages. One of the precepts of complementarianism is that while women may assist in the decision-making process, the ultimate authority for the decision is the purview of the male in marriage, courtship, and in the polity of churches subscribing to this view.The main contrasting viewpoint is Christian egalitarianism, which maintains that positions of authority and responsibility in marriage and religion should be equally available to both females and males.Roles in the Church: Based on [a fellowship's] interpretation of certain scriptures complementarians view women's roles in ministry, particularly in church settings, as limited. The complementarian view holds that women should not hold church leadership roles that involve teaching or authority over men. For instance, Frank Page, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has written that "...while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of Pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture" while the office of deacon are open to both men and women (excluding Catholicism). According to complementarianism, women are not completely forbidden from speaking within a church since Paul speaks about women prophesying inside the church....
- Further, a conservative faith, fellowship, or church are oriented to living for-and-in the future seeing the present day and its times as having little worth except in waiting for Jesus' thunderous return to put down all evil and wickedness in the Last Days Which is to say that except for providing for one's family or community all other things in life carry little value... such as the restoring of ecology, or ecological living, or building mansions for one's self. All are rags and meaningfully unimportant in light of dying and going to heaven to be with God.
And because Jesus' Return is of high importance to a conservative Christian faith this "biblical" form of governmental structure has carried over into their jargon relative to a preferred form of governance... that of a "theocratic kingdom" over-and-above all other forms of governance... including that of an open democracy.
- A theocratic kingdom is a realm led by a godly king rather than by a people's republic. It is known as a theocracy and is at all times preferred, possible, and desired:
Wikipedia - Theocracy is a form of government in which one or more deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries who manage the government's daily affairs.
Consequently, the idea of the "divine-rights of kings (and queens)" is accepted into the conservative church's "kingdom language"... regardless the king or god.
In the cinema's 2023 flick on "Napoleon" we see the difficulty France had in overthrowing a bad king as they willing tried to establish a "people's government". However, (New) France's revolutions repeatedly failed thus allowing figures like Napoleon to fill in as a quasi-emperor until the French form of democracy could finally prevail and survive.
- Lastly, conservative evangelicalism fails or succeeds in growing love amongst it's assembly and with it's community. Usually they tend to be guarded and isolating to themselves and their practices with like-minded assemblies. At other times a congregation feels relatively comfortable in their witness and cooperative working relationships with their community.
- However, being literal in their reading of the bible - rather than reading the bible as source-literary redactionists qua the bible's era-specific cultures as progressives would do - conservative evangelics seek to emulate / institute a "biblical morality" rather than a societal "humane morality" as relating to all things civilly ethical and equal.
And so, various levels of discrimination are kept and maintained into naturally occurring societal fellowships. Anything less than some form of interpretive "biblical morality" is sinful and of the devil.
- Lastly, conservative evangelics preach a God who is holy first, and loving second. Which means God's holiness informs all the rest of God's divine attributes of God's divine presence or divine separation from an unholy Christian or secular world.
Conservative fellowships live in binary worlds of their own making:
- Holiness through Christ using forms of penal substitutionary atonement; that,
- God may leave or stay, come or go, from an unholy society or sinful Christian; that,
- God's sovereignty is measured in retributive divine power upon all God's enemies or wayward children; and that,
- Outreach and assimilation into their interpretations of the bible and creedal beliefs of God is their main obligations in preparing the world for Christ's return.
And underneath all these character traits of a conservative fellowship is one last attribute... that of revering the past believing yesteryear (perhaps Eden? Victorian England? Etc.) held some form of utopia which made it more preferable than the present societies experiential dystopias.
- That any traditionalism - such as Israel's early kingdom forms in the Old Testament - favoring an unequal patriarchal-based economy along with cultural standards are preferrable to conservative church in comparison to any other form of civil-societal arrangements such as those based upon constitutional forms of governance allowing men and women, free and slave, rich and poor, black, red, white, or brown races to govern themselves in fully equal, fair, and just civil relationships with one another.
What is Progressive Evangelicalism?
In comparison, progressive Christians feel completely out-of-place in an open democracy or an open-form of progressive church ministry. This feeling of unethical treatment of the feared Other is what has motivated progressive Christians towards re-balancing the theological equations in their church or leaving altogether to find fellowships which are welcoming and affirming in their reception of all members of a community.
Wikipedia - Progressive Christianity represents a postmodern theological approach, and is not necessarily synonymous with progressive politics. It developed out of the liberal Christianity of the modern era, which was rooted in the Enlightenment's thinking.Progressive Christianity is a postliberal theological movement within Christianity that, in the words of Reverend Roger Wolsey, "seeks to reform the faith via the insights of post-modernism and a reclaiming of the truth beyond the verifiable historicity and factuality of the passages in the Bible by affirming the truths within the stories that may not have actually happened." [Wolsey's statement confuses me... - re slater]Progressive Christianity, as described by its adherents, is characterized by a willingness to question tradition, acceptance of human diversity, a strong emphasis on social justice and care for the poor and the oppressed, and environmental stewardship of the earth. Progressive Christians have a deep belief in the centrality of the instruction to "love one another" (John 15:17) within the teachings of Jesus Christ.Progressive Christianity focuses on promoting values such as compassion, justice, mercy, and tolerance, often through political activism. Though prominent, the movement is by no means the only significant movement of progressive thought among Christians. It draws influence from multiple theological streams, including evangelicalism, liberal Christianity, neo-orthodoxy, pragmatism, postmodern theology, progressive Christian reconstructionism, and liberation theology. The concerns of feminism are also a major influence on the movement, as expressed in feminist and womanist theologies [I prefer the wider form of theology known as "intersectional theology. - re slater].Although progressive Christianity and liberal Christianity are often used synonymously, the two movements are distinct, despite much overlap.
What Is Processual Christianity?
To conclude, I have personally discovered and chosen a third option. One that is not conservative but one that is also more broadly progressive than an evangelical basis can provide in itself, its traditions, and its histories.
To illustrate, say my heritage and education always preferred to painting with the bolder colors of the spectrum... however, with time's passage and cultural preference, I now wish to paint using the softer, pastel colours rather than with bold colours.
In the former instance I was a "conservative painter" whereas in the latter instance I had become more "progressive as a painter." That is, until science came along with a new "species" of paints fallen into the broader category of "quantum paint spectralysis applications".
In this new science of paints I find I no longer need to be defined by my preference between binary forms of painting but may approach painting in its truer quantum forms of spectralysis application.
And so, I have found a more naturalized foundation replacing the binary forms I was at first acquainted with. Let's call this naturalized process of growth "process-based painting" which speaks to both i) the foundation of the science as well as ii) its application of the science into my beliefs and ways I might chose to live within the many evolving forms of society.
Over the years as I deconstructed by conservative faith and explored others forms of Christian belief and living, I eventually tripped over AN Whitehead's process philosophy of cosmological metaphysics, ontology and ethics.
Much as Westernized philosophical forms have held biblical faiths to unnatural forms of inorganic, binary thinking (such as Platonic Hellenism, etc) so as Whitehead's process-based thinking provided a more natural way of looking at God and creation, humanity and society.
I found it was unnecessary to force progressive beliefs out of a culturally bound, unevolving, binary system of Christian belief such as present day forms of evangelicalism. But in process philosophy I could participate fully and freely in its derivative... that of process theology. It is more organic, naturally relational and intersecting within-and-about itself with greater or lesser forms of processual metaphysics and cosmology. And at its core, process-panpsychism play abouts its being, novelty, imagery, imagination, and becoming.
In sum...
- God becomes less restrictive;
- A Christian theology may be centralized in-and-around a God of love;
- Whose loving divine attribute informs all other attributes of God's divine person;
- God may be both "Other" in Ontological transcendency but always abiding in God's divinely loving immanency within-and-about creation;
- God's always abiding presence recharges creation with God's divine character of love;
- A divine character which creation was born with while not lessening our responsibility to recharge ourselves, our world, and nature about us, with redeeming qualities;
- Divinely loving qualities which are... and are becoming.
Conclusion
In short, our being-ness in God is always in the evolving redemptive stages of becoming-ness:
- Process-based Salvation is what defines Christ's crucifixion and the church's direction to teach love, be love, and do love;
- We are to approach this life in processual hope and energy;
- A process Christianity must always be mindful to nurture it's processual faith which at it's core is always progressive and without need for any withholding (evangelical) theological basis.
- Lastly, any Christian or religious (cultural) background can be re-centered around a loving, processual God and faith. As example, I can take my past (Calvinistic) Baptist (Reformed) heritage and training, remit it, grind it up, and come back with the kind of loving God and theology which Jesus was clearly teaching the rabbis and showing to his countrymen and disciples.
This is how Relevancy22 was birthed and why it is designed to teach processual Christianity from as many angles as I have time to write of all the ways in which Whiteheadian process philosophy may be applied as a third / fourth generational Whiteheadian Christian philosophic-theologian.
So what is in a Christian Label?
Everything and nothing. It may, or may not, describe who we are but cannot inhibit us in our interiority from growing and evolving and becoming more than we once believed we were in our faith, our behaviors, our hopes, and dreams.
A processual ME is the best God-redeemed Me we can be in this life or the next. We are. And are becoming. Praise God !
Peace,
R.E. Slater
December 15, 2023
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| ORT Theology is more properly described as Open and Relational PROCESS Theology |
Building the Basileia: Moving
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Year after year, a familiar narrative unfolds: Church attendance declines, communities wither away, and once-thriving churches shutter their doors. But does this spell the end of Christianity and the relevance of church communities? Absolutely not. We have the power to breathe new life into the church and restore its significance by embracing the ideas of Open and Relational Theology, allowing it to shape our ecclesiology. Within this transformation lies a profound summons – to actively engage in constructing the very kingdom of God, here and now. We are called to partake in the building of the kingdom of God, or the what the biblical writers called the Basileia, even as we keep our gaze fixed on the ultimate kingdom that awaits. This will be the key to new life for churches moving into the 22nd century.
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(from "The Bible for Normal People" Series, Pete Enns)
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