Radical Christian Process Theology, Part 3 - Living Radical Love

Process-based Ecological Societies work together with one another

Radical Christian Process Theology, Part 3

Living Radical Love

Wikipedia - Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian.

Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss of Christianity's monopoly in historically Christian societies to atheism or secularism. It does not include formerly Christian-majority societies that now follow other religions such as Islam.

Some scholars have disputed the global decline of Christianity, and instead hypothesized an evolution of Christianity, which allows it not only to survive but actively to expand its influence in contemporary societies.

Where the Church Is At

When reading the opening paragraphs of Wikipedia's category on PostChristianity below I cannot help but sympathize with it's assessments. The Church as I knew when growing up as definitely changed from what it was. How I knew it is curious in itself as I remember it as a child would fondly remember a grandparent... kind, loving, helpful, gracious. Through the years of childhood to adulthood those impressions have not gone away. But I now am noticing what I hadn't noticed over the years... a strangeness to the church's character which wasn't there before.

Now naiveté isn't really one of my gift... I seem to be acutely aware of my environment, to wit, the fundamentalist tradition I came to recognize and understand... as well as the conservative evangelical tradition it was becoming absorbed by. Positively, I was gaining a broader awareness of the Christian tradition while negatively, I was becoming aware of how the process of Christian "assimilation" was working as well.

Where the Church Is Going (the Societal Evolution Part)

IA. Societal

More recently in the last decade or two my Christian faith needed to do a hard look at itself. Though parts of it was doing so it wasn't fully enough in my estimation. By this I mean that as a past Fundy become Evangelic we did not embrace the progressive movement of the "social gospel" very well. We did, however, interpolate it so that to those who came into our form of church enterprise we cared for and helped according to our rules of conduct and polity. But socially, as an organ of community we remained stiffly outside to its functionings.

Now I say this kindly as this was the kind of Christianity my fellowship understood and knew. The institutions we participated with - from mission agencies, to colleges and seminaries, to the morphing collection of church fellowships joining the evangelic movement - all had this idea of what was, and wasn't "Christian".

When I began to break from these religious attitudes I found myself joined to the Emerging Church movement within Evangelicalism which was but a form and segment of the greater "Social Gospel" movement of decades earlier in the 1920s and forward. I later came to understand that both groups were participating in the evolving Christian streams known as "Christian Humanitarianism" (some unkindly call this Christian "Humanism") of the 1800s. Think of Charles Dickenson's portrayal of Victorian England's working orphans. Or, the Beechers of Boston railing against child servitude in the factories; its work of Suffrage for women voters; and its work of Abolition against black slavery. Regardless, there are now many evangelical churches accurately aware of the progressive role it must play in society at large.

IB. Doctrinal

So this was one development I have been very glad to see. The other development which hasn't come as yet is the need for a broader Creedal advance in the areas of breaking down Westernized dogmas to embrace Christian Progressivism across all societal levels. Now this is being done but in multiple ways. Several of which I'll mention here.

First, is through the abandonment of Christianity as a religious institution for a more spiritual uplift of life in general which may, or may not, include formal attendance to a local church service and participation in it's ministries. This movement has grown quickly over the years and is known as the "Nones and Dones". I do not fault them as Christ and Christ-ian love has seemed to be diminished in the evangelical churches of America even though it's message is Christ and at times, love. But what they have noticed, as have I, is the lack of developing an "evangelical" theology of love. It's Calvinism of God as a transcendent Judge and Wrath giver holds it back. It has taken those aspects of the bible to heart and does not know how to let go of them.

The next group I've noticed is the denominational response to evangelicalism where Lutherans, Methodists, Nazarenes, Wesleyans, Catholics, etc, have doubled down on what makes their Protestant or Catholic faiths real for them. This would also include diverse groups as Disciples of Christ, Anglicans, Mennonites, and various Pentecostal groups. To this they have added community outreach through a variety of social agencies and fundamental helps to their localities. Evangelicals are beginning to do this but find it hard because of their dogmas and sentiments about "secular" society. Even the word "secular" keeps evangelicals from fully embracing who God is and what it means to be human. Their doctrine of sin creates a hardline in the sand to the truth that God is in all even as God abides with all.

For myself, having learned to appreciate the hard circumstances which have forced the Nones and Dones out of dogmatic Christianity. Or the fundamental needs which drive all societies in building and conducting grace-programs of education, feeding, housing, and caring for the poor and displaced. Or, in meaningfully recognizing gender and cultural/religious difference in positive, difference-making ways which are surmounting strict dogmatic beliefs. Then we must admit to the great benefit of beauty and wonder which i) the Nones and Dones and ii) Denomination Faiths have brought, and are bringing, to traditional Christianity. I cannot help but give thanksgiving to God for those who seek a faith beyond the faith they know.

Where the Church Must Go Next

The Problem

Secondly, comes a fundamental shift from the "outside" which I believe Christianity will need to make. It can no longer be simply doctrinal nor progressive but must integrate the two together - the beliefs with the actions. The knowing and the doing. The speaking and the deed. One group I know of is doing just that; the other group has left Christianity declaring God not only dead in the functionings of church care but also dead in an agnostic or atheistic sense. Both are "radical" theological groups but one is Christian and the other is more strictly humanist.

Two Solutions

IA. Radical Humanism ( = Radical Humanist Theology)

My first response here is that I fully support radical humanism in the sense that humanity must learn to love one another more fully than it has over its evolutionary history. To listen and communicate with one another is huge! To share and cooperate with one another would seem like its own positive evolutionary step when embrace nature as cause and progenitor of this act. Radical humanism means we respond to earthquakes, mudslides, sufferings due to civil and national war, unequal justice systems, inadequate education, and all forms of apartheidism. To wit, this doesn't mean a communist or socialist or neoliberal (sic, Trumpian conservatist) government must change. It simply means that a more generously humane and humanitarian socio-political system must and will change when LOVE becomes the moda operandi for any civilization willing to chance it.

My second response it to acknowledge that all religions can have a lovingly humane and humanitarian response towards its members and to those who are not part of its religion. Its what radical humanism implies... the willingness to surmount differences if favor of the greater good. That multicultural societies dealing with polyplural cultural economies must find a way together. To wit, I submit, that the cause for building and developing ecological civilizations could be the common baseline factor in accomplishing this practical - and very necessary - ideal.

My third response is to recognize that for some "spiritualists" and "non-spiritualists" there way to finding and keeping to Love may be outside of any formal religion as strictly humanists to any faith. This does not make them evil but helpful in pointing out to the religious faiths their lack of Love in a world which needs Love. This means that humanists will speak and act in candor about religions such as Christianity - perhaps even using its language and terms in iconographic and linguistic overlays in order to help exploring Christians determine what a loving spirituality might mean either with God, or apart from God. In many ways my next category is altering our religious language as well... but importantly, from within it's religious structures rather than outside it.

IB. Process Christianity = Radical Christian Theology

There are several observations I must make here:

First, Process Christianity is the reformulation of Westernized Christianity from its Platonic/Hellenistic New Testament Christian basis as perturbated through succeeding centuries of Patristic Thought, Scholastic (Aristotelian) doctrinaire, the reductionistic/mechanical era of Scientific Enlightenment, and today's Classic Christian philosophic-theologies eclectically based on all preceding centuries of Christian creeds, confessions, dogmas, polities, worship, and practice.

To propose a process-based Christianity is to embrace previously stated but overlooked ancient and modern philosophies that all is organic, living, relational, meaningfully meaningful, holding value gained by difference, and forming a solidarity with itself from its parts to its whole. This is lately come to be known by Alfred North Whitehead's observations of Hegelianism and then moving it forward in his treatise "Process & Reality". Originally aptly called "A Philosophy of Organism". And those later evolving process metaphysicians are now referring to their cumulative works as "Process Philosophy" as are process theologians who are cumulatively writing what is known as a "Process Theology" (sic, Christian, or Muslim, or Hindi Process Theologies). The baseline is Whitehead's Process Philosophy.

Secondly, progressive Christianity is not a form of process Christianity. But, to be a process theologian is to be both progressive and radically humanist. It means that what other Christians and non-Christians are experiencing, teaching and doing, is what a loving process philosophy and theology expect, inhabit, embrace, and conjoin. Said differently, not all movements and philosophies are processual but within all religious, sectarian, and humanist fellowships can be found processual processes. Process Philosophy and Theology then can be described as Integral philosophies and theologies of all previous and succeeding movements within human society. Just as an elephant's ear is not the elephant, so too Jungian Arche-types are processually acknowledging it's evolving part of the whole.

Thirdly, and in summary, there is a need to rewrite the Jewish and Christian faiths in terms of Process Philosophy. Process Theology is this very undertaking by a number of voices both within and without Christianity. It is a necessary voice in re-integrating earlier religious statements to behave more correctly with the Creator-Redeemer God of Creation. A God of Love above all other godly attributes. A God who abides and indwells as a theology of pan-en-theism well states (as versus classic transcendent theism or the other extreme of Hindi pantheism). Panentheism says that in God's Otherness (transcendentness) he is present and abiding. It leans into the Hindu version of pantheism without losing God's distinctiveness of being Creator. And panentheism further means that within the very DNA of creation is God's Imago Dei which pervades, informs, struggles against, and leads creation towards an end, or teleology, of meaningfulness, value, and Love.

At the last, the Christian God of past philosophical movements, insights, instruction, and beliefs, must relent to a processual God of Love whose is radically apart and radically within creation. Sin is that struggle which creational freedom knows and experiences. It is not a formal part of creation (or ours) nature. It is the result of being endowed by a Loving God his Loving resplendency birthed within our very beings, of which creational freedom is one. And with freedom come bondage and death. Choosing a liberty bereft of Love is to chose creational bondage in however it is imagined and clung to.

And in all things, even in a Loving system, there is death to life. It is the ying to the yang as the Chinese would say. But in Loving death is creational animation, beauty, and teleological movement towards hope filled with a creation coming to embrace generative value and worth of itself and all which lies about it. Though creation is entropic - that is, runs from chaos towards chaos - it has also bourne within it a negentropy which propels life forward in the face of death. This is panentheism... death is embraced but is also lifted up and increased by one towards life. It is why Darwinian evolutional is explained so well by process-based panentheism. Said another way, if the universe were but negentropy alone than it could not develop as it can in an entropic multiverse. It would fill itself up immediately and leave no room for growth (click here for this discussion).

I'm exhausted and will leave off here for today. I have some outdoor work to finish and a surgery later this afternoon.

Do well. Take this in. Re-read it and understand why Christianity must do what it must do rather than stay what it is. Christianity like anything else must grow from death to life. I believe Christian Process Theology will help us get there.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

May 24, 2023

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We must differentiate between saving the life of the Church and
saving the life of an Institution or Institutionalized Religion. - Anon

PostChristianity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian.

Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss of Christianity's monopoly in historically Christian societies to atheism or secularism.^[1] It does not include formerly Christian-majority societies that now follow other religions such as Islam.

Some scholars have disputed the global decline of Christianity, and instead hypothesized an evolution of Christianity, which allows it not only to survive but actively to expand its influence in contemporary societies.^{[citation needed]}

Decline of Christianity

A deconsecrated church in Australia, now in use as a restaurant. Declining attendance can lead to the consolidation of congregations and repurposing of church buildings.

Historically, the majority of Christians have lived in Western nations, once called Christendom, and often conceptualized as "European Christian" civilization.^[2]

A post-Christian society is one in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion but that has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian (and also may not necessarily reflect any world religion's standpoint or may represent a combination of either several religions or none). Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss of Christianity's monopoly, if not its followers, in historically Christian societies.^[3] Post-Christian societies are found across the Global North/West: for example, though the 2005 Eurobarometer survey indicated that the majority of Europeans hold some form of belief in a higher power (see also "Ietsism"); fewer point explicitly to the Christian God.

Despite this decline, Christianity remains the dominant religion in Europe, the Americas and Oceania. According to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center, 76% of the population of Europe,^[4] 77% of North America and 90% of Latin America and the Caribbean identified themselves as Christians.^[5]

In his 1961 book The Death of God, the French theologian Gabriel Vahanian argued that modern secular culture in most of Western civilization had lost all sense of the sacred, lacked any sacramental meaning, and disdained any transcendental purpose or sense of providence, bringing him to the conclusion that for the modern mind, "God is dead". Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton of Emory University drew upon a variety of sources, including the aphorisms of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison, and brought this line of thought to public attention in a short-lived intellectual movement of the mid-to-late-1960s among Protestant theologians and ministerial students.

In public regional and world affairs

This In public regional and world affairs relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this In public regional and world affairs by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Postchristianity" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Postchristianity^[6] is the loss of the primacy of the Christian worldview in public affairs, especially in the Western world where Christianity had previously flourished, in favor of alternative worldviews such as secularism,^[7] nationalism,^[8] environmentalism,^[9] and organized atheism;^[10] sometimes militant^[11] as well as other ideologies such as veganism or ethical veganism,^[12] that are no longer necessarily rooted in the language and assumptions of Christianity amongst many other ideologies. They previously existed in an environment of ubiquitous Christianity (i.e. Christendom).^{[13][14][15][16]}

Alternative perspectives

Other scholars have disputed the global decline of Christianity, and instead hypothesized of an evolution of Christianity which allows it to not only survive, but actively expand its influence in contemporary societies.^[17][18][19]

Philip Jenkins hypothesized a "Christian Revolution" in the Global South, such as Africa, Asia and Latin America, where instead of facing decline, Christianity is actively expanding. The susceptibility to Christian teachings in the Global South will allow the Christian population in these areas to continually increase, and together with the shrinking of the Western Christian population, will form a "new Christendom" in which the majority of the world's Christian population can be found in the South.^[20]

Charles Taylor, meanwhile, disputes the "God is dead" thesis by arguing that the practices and understandings of faith changed long before the late 20th century, along with secularism itself. In A Secular Age Taylor argues that being "free from Christendom" has allowed Christianity to endure and express itself in various ways, particularly in Western society; he notes that otherwise secular ideas were, and continue to be, formed in light of some manner of faith. He stresses that "loss of faith" reflects simplistic notions on the nature of secularization, namely the idea of "subtraction." Thus "post-Christian" is, after a fashion, a product of Christianity itself.^{[citation needed]}

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge wrote God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World, claiming that there is a global revival of faith has started in the late twentieth century.

Other uses

Some American Christians (primarily Protestants) also use this term in reference to the evangelism of unchurched individuals who may have grown up in a non-Christian culture where traditional Biblical references may be unfamiliar concepts. This perspective argues that, among previous generations in the United States, such concepts and other artifacts of Christianese would have been common cultural knowledge and that it would not have been necessary to teach this language to adult converts to Christianity. In this sense, post-Christian is not used pejoratively, but is intended to describe the special remediative care that would be needed to introduce new Christians to the nuances of Christian life and practice.^{[citation needed]}

Some groups use the term "post-Christian" as a self-description. Dana McLean Greeley, the first president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, described Unitarian Universalism as postchristian, insofar as Christians no longer considered it Christian, while persons of other religions would likely describe it as Christian, at least historically.^[21]

New religious movements such as Jesuism incorporate foundational elements of Christian thought in syncretic comination with various enlightenment beliefs ( Ie. secular democracy, equality of historical minorities ) into a coherent post-Christian theology.^[22]

See also

• Religion portal

• Apatheism
• Christian atheism
• Christian existentialism
• Cultural Christians
• Postmodern Christianity
• Postmodern Reformation
• Post-theism
• Secular movement
• A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born by John Shelby Spong

References

1. ^ "Our Post-Christian Society". National Review. December 14, 2013.
2. ^ Philip Jenkins, from "The Christian Revolution," in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002.
3. ^ "Our Post-Christian Society". National Review. December 14, 2013.
4. ^ Including the Asian part of Russia, and excluding the European part of Turkey. Regional distribution of Christians: Europe. Pew Research Center.
5. ^ "Global religious landscape: Christians". Pewforum.org. December 19, 2011. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
6. ^ G.C. Oosthuizen. Postchristianity in Africa. C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd (December 31, 1968). ISBN 0-903983-05-2
7. ^ "Secularism". Humanists UK.
8. ^ Philip Jenkins, from "The Christian Revolution," in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002.
9. ^ "Environmentalism as Religion". Joel Garreau. The New Atlantis.
10. ^ "Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians". Sigal Samuel. The Atlantic.
11. ^ "Has militant atheism become a religion?". Christopher Hitchens. salon.com. March 25, 2013.
12. ^ Paulson, By Gabrielle. "Tag: new religion."
13. ^ Gordon-Finlayson, Alasdair, and Michael Daniels. "Westerners converting to Buddhism: An exploratory grounded theory investigation." Transpersonal Psychology Review 12.1 (2008): 100-118.
14. ^ Kevin Fauteux (1987). Seeking Enlightenment in the East: Self–Fulfillment or Regressive Longing? Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 223-246.
15. ^ Clobert, Magali, and Vassilis Saroglou. "Intercultural non-conscious influences: Prosocial effects of Buddhist priming on Westerners of Christian tradition." International Journal of Intercultural Relations 37.4 (2013): 459-466.
16. ^ King, W. L. (1970). Eastern Religions: A New Interest and Influence. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 387(1), 66–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271627038700109
17. ^ Philip Jenkins, from "The Christian Revolution," in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002.
18. ^ Lewis Ray Rambo; Charles E. Farhadian, eds. (2014). The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195338522.
19. ^ Carla Gardina Pestana, ed. (2010). Evangelicalism and Conversion: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199808342.
20. ^ Philip Jenkins, from "The Christian Revolution," in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002.
21. ^ Daniel Harper. "What is a 'post-Christian'?"
22. ^ jesuans.org

Further reading

• Liberal Religion in the Post Christian Era, Edward A. Cahill, 1974
• The Post Christian Mind: Exposing Its Destructive Agenda, Harry Blamires, Vine, 1999 (ISBN 1-56955-142-1).
• "America's New Religions". Andrew Sullivan. Intelligencer. December 7, 2018.
• "The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era", Gabriel Vahanian, George Braziller, NY, 1961
• Dana MacLean Greeley, 25 Beacon Street, and Other Recollections (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 11–12.
• Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966).
• Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966).
• Bernard Murchland, ed., The Meaning of the Death of God (New York: Random House, 1967)
• Phillip Jenkins, God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis (Oxford: University Press, 2005)
• Phillip Jenkins, The Christian Revolution in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World, Paternoster Press, 2004 (ISBN 978-1-84227-261-9).
• Stuart Murray, Church after Christendom, Paternoster Press, 2004 (ISBN 978-1-84227-292-3).
• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard: Belknap Press, 2007).

Radical Christian Process Theology, Part 2 - "Radical Love"

To the Unknown God

of Radical Love

by R.E. Slater

"What therefore you worship as unknown

this I now proclaim to you." Acts 17.23

Yes, I said to my Christian friend,

I will fellowship with you, and

with the Church, and in the church

    even when away or absent it's pews

    in heart and body but not in soul

    where God lives in me and I in Love.

But I also thought to myself,

No, I can no longer find sympathy

nor fellowship with my faith,

    for I seek another God...

    a God not of the church...

    a God unlike the church....

A God where the church may

find itself at times, but not where

God might find himself oftentimes

    when worshipped as unloving

    judgmental, wrathful; an absent

    Divine unattached to humanity.

This God I seek is a God of Love,

who offers service to the other,

who is against self-serving empires,

    and against empire-like religions

    holding human worth as a crime

    when unlike its own rules.

There is a kind of fellowship I seek

where I might find God's people,

but another kind of fellowship

    another kind of space whereby

    I might find all of God's people

    linked in love and loving fellowship.

The God I seek is the unknown God,

Unknown to us in so many ways,

but not in the ways of presence,

    ministry, advocacy, caregiving,

    promise, nor love; this God is the

    God I yearn to know, to be one.

R.E. Slater

May 21, 2023

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Radical Theology Cliff Notes

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Home / thinking / emergent / Radical Theology Cliff Notes

by Bo Sanders

July 23, 20213

Sometimes you stumble into something so wildly different than anything you have encountered before that it can give you a bit of whiplash.

When this happens in the realm of theology – it can cause a level of trauma to your faith that it feels as if it will never recover.

This is where translators and apologist can come in and play a healthy role.

I am not a practitioner of Radical Theology per-se. I am more of a practical theologian who is in dialogue with (or informed by) schools of thought that might be challenging to the population as a whole (or at least those who occupy the pews).

I received this week’s notes from one Mr. Tripp Fuller that he intended to utilize on the most recent episode of the High Gravity reading group co-hosted by the incomparable Peter Rollins. I took one look at them and thought to myself:

“Self… folks may not know what some of this stuff means. This is sad because much of it has deep implications on living out faith in the 21st century and even deeper implication on the cultural conversation that each of us finds ourselves caught up in the middle of.”

SO I thought it might be interesting to throw a few of the notes out there and to attempt to attach a helpful note on a few items.

Here is what I am up to: if you feel like you are interested in a Radical approach but find it out of reach or unclear … please respond in the comment section and we can either A) figure this out together or B) I will point you in a helpful direction if I know of one.

DEFINITIONS

Before we start – a couple of overly-simplistic definitions:

Radical Theology – a theological approach that is not tied to a congregation, denomination or other sanctioning body. The freedom of not being anchored in a confessional approach allows thinkers to interact with daring, innovative and contemporary schools of thought without consequence of consideration of how the outcome will impact faith communities (at least not primarily).

Confessional Theology – a theological approach rooted in both historic tradition and local expression. Confessional theology takes classical perspective and either tries to update it for the current context or attempts to return to some previous incarnation with the hopes of a purer expression or acceptable orthodoxy/practice.

Theo-poetics – born out of an awareness that all of our god-talk is both perspectival and provisional. When we speak of god/the divine we do so in imagery, metaphor, and symbol. This awareness of our limitations of language release us to confess that our signifiers (symbols) can never fully or truly represent that which they signify. The result is a freedom to explore, innovate, ratify, renovate and adapt our god-language in order to both expose idolatry and inspire creativity in how we express our beliefs.

Big Other – As Tom explains below “(in very simple terms) the set of customs and rules that regulate our horizontal social interaction and belief”. One way of conceiving of this is “That is to say, ‘the big Other’ is the ambience of the situation that comes through human ways of following situational “rules.” That is, without human beings, there is no ‘big Other.’” Addressing the Big Other is often manifest in a critique of a projection of a watcher in the sky sort of conception of god.

---

Here are some of Tripp’s notes:

RADICAL V CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY

1) Radical Theology is parasitic to Confessional Theology… on its behalf. Radical Theology is being faithful to what is harbored in the name of ‘God’ – the event & not the tradition on the tradition’s terms.

2) Radical Theology reserves the right to ask any question. Because Confessional Theology is accountable to a tradition & its institutions there will be places where questions\conversations\operating conclusions will serves as “conversation stoppers.” Places in which that activity of critical thinking puts one out of the building. (ex. Trinity or Same Sex Marriage)

3) Radical Theology seeks to be EXPOSED to the Event w/in the Confessional Theology tradition but not PROPOSE a new articulation of the tradition.

4) Radical Theology rejects both the apathetic silence about the Big Other & the theist\atheist debate about the Big Other. The Big Other does not exist.

5) Radical Theology displaces the boundaries & certainty of ‘belief’ w/in Confessional Theology – the “how” w/out articulating another ‘what.’ Why? Whatever the ‘what’ is w/in a tradition doesn’t correlate to ‘how’ it is enacted.

6) Radical Theology affirms the Event contained IN but not BY Confessional Theology.

7) Radical Theology is a material (therefore a political) theology. God’s insistence is about our existence, here in the world, in relationships, & not about our continued or reanimated existence elsewhere. Radical Theology is about faith enacted for this world, not faith in another.

8) Radical Theology leaves the logos of Confessional Theology behind for theo-poetics. For the Radical Theology there is no divine-logic to be learned or sacred syllogisms to be mastered. When ‘words’ are used to close the circle around the truth, the poet protests ‘words’ enslavement… their demonic possession of the impossible possibilities that vanquished on behalf of the actual – the certain – the final – the verdict of Confessional Theology.

I thought it would be helpful at this point to outline how Caputo frames the turn from Confessional to Radical Theology in his amazing and short book “Philosophy And Theology” . In chapter 5 he illustrates 3 turns that converge together to make the BIG turn.

First up is the Hermeneutical Turn – this a confession we each read a text or interpret our experience from an angle. We all have a location and that means that we all see things from an angle.

Second is the Linguistic Turn – this is a recognition that every discipline and every tradition has its own set of vocabulary and concepts that form the ‘rules of the game’. Just as one can not play ‘Sport’ but plays A sport (football or baseball) so one can not speak ‘Language’ but A language. One can not practice ‘Religion’ but A religion. One must learn and abide by the rules of language game that one is playing.

Third is the Revolutionary Turn – this is an admission that things change… or rather that the way we see things changes. Working off of Kuhn’s idea of ‘paradigms’ and scientific revolutions, we readily admit that even where the data does not change (the universe) the way that we conceptualize it does periodically alter in radical ways.

These three come together to form the Postmodern Turn. They are also helpful for illustrating the sort of thing that Radical Theology is up to.

If you have any questions or comments I would love for post them below!

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I also wish to acknowledge that I left out references to Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Tillich, Descartes, and Kant. We can do all of that in a subsequent post if you want.

Filed Under: Emergent, Latest, Philosophy, Pomo, Post-Something

Tagged With: And Kant, Bible, Big Other, Book, Books, Church, Confessional, Descartes, God, Hegel, Heidegger, High Gravity, Jesus, Radical, Theology, Tillich, Wittgenstein

 

Radical Christian Process Theology, Part 1 - "The Empire is Making You Sick"

"The Empire is Making You Sick"

Radical Christian Process Theology, Part 1

"The Empire is Making You Sick"

by R.E. Slater

"Faith in the transcendent God of traditional Christian theology is no longer possible for the contemporary man. The theologian can no longer work in the church. His concerns are no longer the classical churchly concerns: liturgy, prayer, otherworldly salvation. He must move out into the world, since, like other contemporary men, his fundamental preoccupation is the struggle to maintain human values in the context of modern secular society. He can no longer speak of a God who has become meaningless to contemporary man but he must still speak of Christ. The Christ of the radical theologian, however, is the purely human Christ who is the man for others. Christ's function in contemporary society is to serve as a supremely inspiring human example, Christ is "a place to be" in the struggle for human values." - Excerpt: Encyclopedia.com

Introduction

The whole premise of Radical theology is the deep feeling that the God of traditional Christianity can no longer be known within the church as it holds onto its religious methodologies and belief structures in such a way as to prohibit uncertainty and doubt and humanitarian values most required in a Christian religion popularly believed to require but the highest of forms of certainty and belief.

That this churchly covenant bound in blind trust and dogmatic legalism between itself, and the God it worships, must come first-and-foremost above all other succeeding commitments and behaviors - even that of humanitarian acts of social justice and equality which are most dearly desired across all areas of human endeavor and civilization. That the church's institutes are to be upheld firstly above all else. To be protected and defended by every means possible. And must always be decrying itself to be in a continual state of victimhood to society at large.

Responses to the Christian Church

This is the nub of argument by the secularized modernistic Christian Church clutching to its secularized spiritual faith to which the faithful postmodern Christian response adamantly declares in opposition that "It doesn't know, and wishes to explore, even through speculation, the realms of the Christian faith beyond its own self-avowed dogmatic words and actions." That uncertainty and doubt are the only good epistemic tools in which to do theology and to be Christian in the Christianly sense.

> Radical Theology

It is also where the postmodernal Protestant and Catholic Christian theology of radical theology begins when declaring the Christian faith bankrupt to it's highest sentiments and beliefs when seeking to re-envision the Christian faith "outside of itself" in order to see itself the more clearly. That this critical theological response might more resemble the approaches of non-Christian, agnostic, or atheistic radical responses than their Christianly antecedents when seeking a more holistic, more benevolent, Christian faith than what could be found in the present haggered religious aspects of modernal Christianity become a mere "empire-like" religion rather than a humbling, penitent, living faith.

> Progressive Christianity

At this same time, diverse theological branches arose from within mainline denominational Protestant and Catholic Churches identified broadly as Progressive Christianity. And when it became embraced by convicted evangelical church structures it took on a new identity known as Emergent Christianity birthed between the 1990s-2010s. Afterwhich the mainline and emergent streams of progressive Christianity merged together to simply be known broadly as Progressive Christians more deeply concerned with the positive-and-proactive Christianly behaviors of humanitarianism, social justice, and equality than they were with ostracizing and other-worldly Christian dogmas and sentiments.

> Process-based Christianity

Yet another obscure group was arising from the 1940s and 50s with the same radical and progressive concerns as their compatriots but with a unique signature which declared Westernized (secular) Christianity to be unhelpful and Continental Christianity too widely dispersed to offer any further corrective insight and faith living beyond its own cultural era. This body of Christians came to be known as Process-based Christians but (i) unlike Radical Christians preferred to stay within the traditional garments of the Church when critiquing its hoary structure while (ii) also sweeping up unto itself the many Progressive concerns of denominational and evangelical communities.

The unique signature of a Process Christian went one step farther than the Radical Christian or Progressive Christian when announcing that the philosophical-theological foundations upon which the traditional Westernized church had built  itself upon over the past 2000 years was inadequate to the postmodernal task lying ahead of itself. That in order to break away from its rising secularism it needed to re-examine its own non-processual philosophic-theologies and declare them anathema to the Westernized Church.

That it's traditional theological underpinnings had absorbed all the wrong elements of human belief about God, humanity and creation. That a more organic, more relational, philosophy focused upon the presence of the Divine-Human-World Cooperative must come to the fore of the Church's theology. That a solidarity between God, man, and creation be perceived and taught unlike the church's traditional theistic dogmas claiming theistic absence and wrathful judgment. And if done, then Christian humanism, social justice, and equality would naturally rise up within Westernized Analytic and Continental forms of theology centered in Love and not in proscript. One which would remove religious fidelity to unnatural church laws and church attitudes which had plagued its theologic structures since the days of Jesus.

> Summary

Consequently, the Christian branches of radical theology, Christian progressivism and Christian process theology found a more natural home with one another including a sympathetic nod to those radical theologians who in later generations have found themselves outside of the church doing the work of religious deconstruction and reconstruction for the purposes of recovering a humanely ethic of loving response, cooperative sharing, peace, and goodwill between all elements of humanity embraced by a plurality of religions and enculturations.

Moreover, process Christians believe that progressive Christians would find a greater fidelity with process theology which naturally underlays their beliefs than they would find with evangelical theologies which steer away from the foundational factors of Love into their own foundations of Christian dogma which hold the idea of love more loosely to their version of a God who sometimes loves but not always.

Modern v Postmodern v Metamodern

With the era of modernism came the era of Empire into the Christian faith. In this way the secularism which the traditional church disavowed became accepted and its modis operandi for doing the work of theology and mission.

Conversely, Radical Christians saw worldly Empire for what it was in light of the German Lutheran Churches embrace of German Nazism and its zenophobic and "white supremacy" responses towards non-Europeans, minorities, and ostracized humans. It became a radicalized form of Bonhoeffer's plea to the Church to not submit itself to evil and horror. Radical Christianity took Bonhoeffer's plea from his dead lips as he hung on the German SS gallows and spread his message in deep distrust of the Church's message and motives. It dissented and proclaimed God's death on the hand of those given to preach God's life in the midst of Empire.

Likewise, the Christian humanism which was active across Victorian England was spreading its way westward into America and southward into Europe. It declared that women had value and must vote; that children should not be working but in school; that the Enlightenment society of Western culture was neither so much enlightened nor helpful in breaking down human oppression and the invisibility of those minorities unwanted and overlooked.

To this history of Christian humanism came the Civil Race Riots of the 1960s under Martin Luther King (MLK) which re-established the urgency which Christian radicals had declared of the Church that it not repeat itself in America as it had in Nazi Germany. And in the 1990s the voices of Emergent Christians began crying out that the Christian humanism of the Westernized Church had been absorbed once again and without its former evocative voice for dissent and breakage to the church's embrace of Empire. That the Civil Reforms of the 1960s had been supplanted by the indolences of religion once again.

It was throughout this time of modernism giving way to its necessary and critical partner postmodernism that Process Christianity began to form in the Ivory towers of Christian and non-Christian universities. That Whiteheadian philosophic-theology offered a roadmap between the modernity-traps of Empire Christianity and the postmodernity criticisms of the Church.

That the Christian God was firstly Loving and secondly Holy and Justice. That if either of the last rose to prominence than the Love which is God would lose out to Church practices overly focused on holiness and judgment as reflected in Catholic monasteries and Protestant attitudes towards civil dominions of its own theocratic rules over Constitutional democracies. Neither of which bore God's Love in its centers.

More recently, as metamodern has strode into today's postmodern Western cultures we are seeing the pendulum swings between one form of modernism to the other of postmodernism with meta- (middle) swinging in between these polar opposites. It is here where a process foundation again finds the more promise.

For one, Process Christianity recovers Divine Love in its Theology of Love (as versus a Theology of holiness or judgment):

• It keeps with the best traditions of Radical Christianity in critiquing Christianity as to its lusts for Empire and disregard for loving missionalization of God's Love.

• It picks up Progressive/Emergent theologies wanting humanitarian action, social justice and equality.

• It can work within all forms of civil governments without necessitating churchly religious dominionism (as opposed to crusades, inquisitions, jihads, fascism, acts of gender + minority oppression, etc).

• And, it can discourse with all forms of religious cultures prejudiced towards loving cooperation, sharing of resources, and solidarity of cause such as that of building ecological societies balanced in environmental and societal health in ways Capitalism and Communism, neo-Maoism and Apartheidism cannot.

This then is the promise of Process-based global sphere of loving outlook regardless of religion, economy, or political government when refusing the trappings of "empire" and political division, fear of polyplural enculturation and assimilation in world of climatic, ethnic, and resource turmoil.

Conclusion

In summary, Faith in the transcendent innured God of traditional Christian theology is no longer possible for the contemporary man seeking a God of Loving Presence.

Nor can the theologian work any longer in the church if the church cannot allow uncertainty and doubt which challenges it's faith.

For congregations to be simply concerned with liturgy, prayer, and otherworldly salvation in not enough; it must show itself by its teachings of Love and Loving outreach.

The metamodern Christian, like other contemporary elements of society, must find their struggle in the retention of human values against technocratic societies forcing non-relational, non-organic societies of individuals utilizing connective methods without living out those methods.

In a word, we must continually work at re-etabilishing flesh-and-blood fellowships with one another across our communities, businesses, and nature itself. To be a true Athenian who sought to be Wholly-whole without succumbing to the isolating practices of technocratically dominionistic and oppressive forms of religious and societal culture.

That when speaking of God we recognize God's Loving Presence in the daily lives of ourselves, others, and all parts of creation. That a transcendent God is simply another name for a God who has removed himself from his duties of Love which he can never do as promised to Abram in the covanently cut halves of sacrifice (Gen 14) and the work, ministry, life, death, and resurrection of God's Self in Jesus.

To recognize that like Ghandi, Jesus as the God-man had the high hopes of overturning religion gone wrong. But more than Ghandi, Jesus was also the God who sacrificed himself that Love might Win.

"Faith in the transcendent God of traditional Christian theology is no longer possible for the contemporary man. The theologian can no longer work in the church. His concerns are no longer the classical churchly concerns: liturgy, prayer, otherworldly salvation. He must move out into the world, since, like other contemporary men, his fundamental preoccupation is the struggle to maintain human values in the context of modern secular society. He can no longer speak of a God who has become meaningless to contemporary man but he must still speak of Christ. The Christ of the radical theologian, however, is the purely human Christ who is the man for others. Christ's function in contemporary society is to serve as a supremely inspiring human example, Christ is "a place to be" in the struggle for human values." - Encyclopedia.com

R.E. Slater

May 21, 2023

edited May 27, 2023

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RADICAL THEOLOGY

encyclopedia.com

by G. McCool

Radical theology was the name applied in the 1960s to a widely publicized current in American Protestant theology which was fundamentally skeptical about modern man's ability to speak meaningfully about God.

The theologians most prominently identified with the movement were William Hamilton, Paul Van Buren, and Thomas J. J. Altizer. Several other theologians were closely associated with the movement in the popular mind although their works were less radical in character. The British theologian, John A. T. Robinson, and the American theologian, Harvey Cox, shared a good deal of the radical theologians' skepticism and, like the radical theologians, Robinson and Cox advocated a religion of secular involvement rather than a religion of otherworldly salvation. Gabriel Vahanian, although not one of the radical theologians, shared their preoccupation with the challenge of contemporary secularism to Christian faith.

The theological divergencies among the radical theologians were too great for them to form a school. Nevertheless, their works are marked by a number of common convictions:

• Faith in the transcendent God of traditional Christian theology is no longer possible for the contemporary man.

• The theologian can no longer work in the church. His concerns are no longer the classical churchly concerns: liturgy, prayer, otherworldly salvation.

• He must move out into the world, since, like other contemporary men, his fundamental preoccupation is the struggle to maintain human values in the context of modern secular society.

• He can no longer speak of a God who has become meaningless to contemporary man but he must still speak of Christ.

• The Christ of the radical theologian, however, is the purely human Christ who is the man for others [beyond the Church's pale or Society's interest. - re slater].

• Christ's function in contemporary society is to serve as a supremely inspiring human example, Christ is "a place to be" in the struggle for human values.

The shift away from theological activism at the end of the [1950-60s] civil–rights struggle brought a decline of interest in radical theology. As a movement it did not survive the sixties, but the issues which it brought to prominence in America, e.g., the knowability of God, contemporary Christology, eschatology, and social activity, continue to occupy the attention of contemporary theologians.

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See Also: death of god theology.

Bibliography

t. j. j. altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia 1966); ed., Toward a New Christianity: Readings in the Death of God Theology (New York 1967).

t. j. j. altizer and w. hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis 1966).

h. cox, The Secular City (New York 1965).

w. hamilton, The New Essence of Christianity (New York 1961); "The Death of God Theology," Christian Scholar 48: 27–48; "The Shape of Radical Theology," Christian Century 82:1219–22.

j. a.t. robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia 1963); Exploration into God (Palo Alto, Calif. 1967).

g. vahanian, The Death of God (New York 1961); No Other God (New York 1966); ed., The God is Dead Debate (New York 1967).

p. van buren, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York 1963); Theological Explorations (New York 1968).

l. gilkey, Naming the Whirlwind: The Renewal of God Language (Indianapolis 1969) 107–145.

v. mehta, The New Theologians (New York 1966).

t. w. ogletree, The Death of God Controversy (Nashville 1966).