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

* * * * * * * *

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).