Contemporary Progressive Christianity and Its Symbolic Ramifications

Defining Progressive Christianity

Before we can get very far here, we need to define our key terms. First, it is imperative to note that although I use the term ‘Christian left’ to contrast it with the ‘Christian right’, both are actually misnomers. Christians (progressive or otherwise) do not take a uniformly ‘liberal’ (or ‘conservative’) stance in any shape or form: one might be theologically ‘conservative’ and politically ‘progressive’ and vice versa. Within Protestantism, there are two critical theological and political axes around which splits within Protestantism revolve: evangelism and race. Though there are significant overlaps and exceptions, there are ‘mainline’ and ‘evangelical’ and ‘black’ and ‘non-black’ versions of both conservative and progressive Christianity. ⁶

That said, contemporary progressive Christianity is best understood as a continuum between two ideal types (see Figure 1). At one end is what I call ‘self-proclaimed progressive Christians’. These folks pointedly embrace the term ‘progressive’ and define themselves in opposition to the religious right, as the following statement from the website of the organization Progressive Christians Uniting makes clear:

The 8 Points [2003 version]

By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who …

1. Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus;

2. Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God’s realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us;

3. Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus’s name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God’s feast for all peoples;

4. Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to):

believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, women and men, those of all sexual orientations and gender identities, those of all races and cultures, those of all classes and abilities, those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;

5. Know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe;

6. Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty – more value in questioning than in absolutes;

7. Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do: striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God’s creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers; and

8. Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly, and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.

(http://progressivechristiansuniting.org/index.shtml; accessed 22 March 2005)

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Continuum of Progressive Christianity

As this mission statement reflects, ‘self-proclaimed’ progressive Christians call attention to the fact that they are ‘progressive’, and they describe and define themselves by noting how they differ from conservative Christians; that is, they welcome ‘all peoples’ to the communion table, including those ‘who have other names for the way to God’s realm’, those ‘of all sexual orientations and gender identities’, and ‘agnostics’; and they embrace ‘questioning’ and ‘understanding’ rather than ‘dogmatic certainty’ and ‘absolutes’. Of course, this celebration of religious pluralism, indeterminacy and inclusivity is a not so subtle jab at conservative Christianity’s notorious ‘dogmatic certainty’ that salvation (and Holy Communion) is not for those of other faiths (let alone those of no faith); and homophobia.

At the left end of the ‘self-proclaimed’ progressive Christian contingent are folks so intent on differentiating themselves from the Christian right that they prefer to call themselves ‘spiritual progressives’ rather than ‘progressive Christians’ (see Figure 1). Because of the negative connotation and ‘baggage’ with the term ‘Christian’, they ‘just as soon let the religious right have’ that term. ⁷ Also at this end of the continuum are progressive Christians such as Marcus J. Borg who unequivocally asserts that historical evidence does not support Jesus as being divine. Borg (1994, 2003) acknowledges Jesus as a great teacher and an embodiment of truth but not as the divine Son of God.

Significantly, the theological fault line between self-proclaimed progressive Christians and spiritual progressives is extremely muddy. The main difference is simply that, in stark contrast to spiritual progressives, progressive Christians are unwilling to cede Christianity to conservatives. On the contrary, as we will see throughout the remainder of this paper, their mission is precisely to rescue the Bible (and Christianity) from fundamentalism (as one of Bishop John Shelby Spong’s book titles makes clear). In so doing, progressive Christians subject themselves to tremendous vitriol from the Christian right, receiving hate-mail, death threats, etc. Interestingly, though it is outside the scope of this paper, conservative Christians are incensed not so much by what progressive Christians believe, but that they call themselves ‘Christian’. ⁸

At the right end of the progressive Christian continuum are ‘prophetic’ Christians, such as Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo (see Figure 1). These folks tend to be more evangelical and theologically less ‘radical’ than their self-proclaimed counterparts. ⁹ Though often equally infuriated by the ‘unchristian’ rhetoric and practices of the religious right, ‘prophetic’ Christians tend not to define themselves in terms of their opposition to conservatives; they prefer to call themselves ‘prophetic Christians’ or ‘Red Letter Christians’ (rather than ‘progressive Christians’ or even ‘progressive evangelicals’). ¹⁰ Prophetic Christians tend to have rather traditional images of Jesus and God, and they may even lament that progressive ‘mainliners’ (such as Borg) ‘demythologize’ the Bible and overlook the need for Christians to be ‘inwardly transformed’ (Campolo 2004: 4–5). In Wuthnow’s terms, ‘self-proclaimed’ progressive Christians tend to be more ‘seeker-oriented’, while prophetic Christians tend to dwell in the House of the Lord. ¹¹ Although both ‘self-proclaimed’ and ‘prophetic’ Christians draw inspiration from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement, the latter term is probably a more accurate label for the actual theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. (see Chappell 2004).

Yet, the point is that this is a continuum of contemporary progressive Christianity; ‘self-proclaimed’ and ‘prophetic’ are ideal types, and many progressive Christians exhibit both ‘self-proclaimed’ and ‘prophetic’ characteristics. Bishop Yvette Flunder is an exemplar in this regard (see Figure 1). A third generation African American preacher with roots in the Church of God in Christ, Bishop Flunder is senior pastor of City of Refuge United Church of Christ, in San Francisco, California, home to Transcendence, the world’s first transgender choir, as well as the Ark of Refuge and the Magic Johnson Clinic, which provide HIV/AIDS education and medical services. The City of Refuge is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a traditionally liberal, mainline denomination at the center of the ‘self-proclaimed’ Christian resurgence in the last ten years. ¹² And typical of the United Church of Christ, as well as ‘self-proclaimed’ Christians in general, the City of Refuge was founded on and celebrates its opposition to the religious right; it ‘celebrates diversity’ and is ‘intentionally radically inclusive’ (http://www.sfrefuge.org). City of Refuge congregants, many of whom are poor, black, and LGBT, call themselves ‘refugees’ and as Associate Pastor Melinda McClain states, ‘this term is not figurative’: many were banned or ‘outcast’ from their own churches or denominations, primarily because of their sexual orientation. ¹³ At the same time, however, the City of Refuge is an evangelical Christian church, and in spirit, language and tone it is just as Pentecostal as it is radically inclusive. For instance, the climax of City of Refuge worship services is the altar call, in which individuals go up to the altar to be ‘saved’. As Bishop Flunder states:

Most importantly, whether they are ‘self-defined’ or ‘prophetic’ (or both), two intertwined spiritual common denominators transcend the Christian ‘left’: (1) an emphasis on Jesus’s life and teachings, and (2) an emphasis on social justice and inclusivity. These are the universally shared and unilaterally undisputed and revered notions around which everything else revolves. A progressive Christianity without an emphasis on Jesus’s life and teachings and social justice is not progressive Christianity at all. ‘Mainline’, ‘evangelical’, ‘African American’, ‘new age’, etc. all converge on this point; all view Jesus (in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s terms) as ‘the world’s most radical nonconformist’ who befriended prostitutes, criminals, Pharisees, women, and other marginalized folks and who would certainly not eschew homosexuals and the impoverished today. Of course, compassion for the ‘poorest of the poor’ has historically been at the heart of liberation theology and the Catholic Workers movement, while concern about the particular oppression of African Americans has been historically at the heart of the Black Church. In my view, the lifeblood of contemporary progressive Christianity (especially the self-proclaimed sort) is concern about the LGBT community, as progressive Christians mobilize around the marginalization and excommunication of the LGBT community not only by society in general but by the Church itself. The mission of many self-proclaimed progressive Christians (many of whom are gay themselves, e.g. Bishops Flunder and McClain) is not only to embrace gay Christians but to illuminate the hypocrisy and destructiveness of homophobia in the church. It is here, in my view, that we find the logistical, symbolic, and theological strength and vitality of progressive Christianity today.

Though, as mentioned in the introduction, these two sacred, theological tenets of the Christian ‘left’ can be said to go all the way back to the Hebrew prophets and the origins of Christianity, more directly, progressive Christianity can be said to stand at the confluence of three theological themes: (1) the Social Gospel movement of over 100 years ago, (2) the 1930s German theologians opposed to Hitler, and (3) the Black theology, liberation theology and, since then, feminist and queer theologies that flourished in the 1960s. ¹⁵ The open-endedness characteristic of self-proclaimed progressive Christianity is most directly rooted in ‘process theology’, a school of thought that goes back to Alfred Whitehead (1861–1947), and according to which the universe is characterized by process and change carried out by agents with free will. ¹⁶

The Decline of the Mainline, and Issues of Structure and Agency

This study about the recent resurgence (but continued dearth) of progressive Christianity in the public sphere is intimately entwined with an issue at the heart of the sociology of religion for the last few decades: the decline of the mainline. Since the 1970s, when membership of fundamentalist and evangelical Christian denominations in the United States began to rise while membership in mainline and liberal Christian denominations began to drop off, scholars have sought to explain why. ¹⁷ Analysts such as Bellah et al. (1985), Wuthnow (1989), Zwick and Zwick (2005) and Demerath (1995) have tended to point to cultural and societal changes beyond the purview of any one group. For instance, Demerath (1995: 463) maintains that ‘liberal Protestants lost structurally at the micro-level precisely because they won culturally at the macro level’. Protestantism’s ‘liberal cultural triumph on behalf of such values as individualism, freedom, pluralism, tolerance, democracy and intellectual inquiry’ proved anathema to sustaining the disciplined and loyal membership requisite to maintaining liberal Protestant organizations (1995: 462). Meanwhile, analysts such as Kelley (1977) put more blame on the mainline Protestant denominations themselves. For Kelley (1977: xi), the problem was not that liberal Protestants began to focus on social problems but that they failed to undergird them in ultimate meaning (which is, after all, the primary business of religion). Ironically, while scholars tend to criticize the mainline for its vacuous modern theology, conservative evangelicals disparage it for being stuck in the rut of stodgy tradition – unwilling to embrace new music (praise), new formats (multimedia presentations) and a new ambience (informal). ¹⁸

This debate about the decline of the mainline intersects with one of the most important theoretical debates within both cultural sociology and sociology of religion today: cultural agency versus cultural autonomy, that is, the extent to which (and how) one ‘chooses’ one’s own beliefs and ideas or not, and the extent to which (and how) action is guided by powerful symbolic structures that are often impervious to manipulation (see Smilde 2007; Alexander 2003). To be sure, no sociologist worth his or her salt would deny that both agency and culture structure are basic elements of social life (i.e. that reality is not only a social but also a cultural construction that acts back on individuals as if it were real, to use Berger and Luckmann’s famous phrase), but there is still significant debate as to the extent to which one or the other dynamic is in play at any particular point in time, and exactly how this process works.

‘Weak’ or instrumentalist approaches to culture focus on the institutions and structures behind the production of systems of meaning (Alexander 2003). In the classic cultural Marxist tradition (e.g. the Frankfurt School) ‘culture industries’ (e.g. the media and the church) create and disseminate systems of meaning for hegemonic purposes.Contemporary frame analysts (e.g. Snow et al. 1986) also tend to take a weak culture approach, focusing as they do on the strategic development and deployment of symbols in social movement organizations.

From a purely instrumentalist point of view, the central problem for the Christian left is that the Christian right literally owns, and thereby dominates, almost all of the Christian media – and thereby, to a large extent, Christianity in the public sphere as well. In addition to the huge media conglomerates such as Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) – whose goal is literally to reach every corner of the globe and bring the Word to each and every person on earth – conservative evangelicals dominate the Christian music scene, have huge ‘Jesus’ festivals and events, and run most of the Christian bookstores in America, and they sell only conservative Christian cultural products. So too, conservative Christian organizations (such as Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and the American Center for Law and Justice) are both well-heeled and highly influential, actively inserting themselves into a wide variety of political and social debates (or ‘culture wars’) in the public realm.

By contrast, as we will see, progressive Christianity is not mass-oriented. Although the number of progressive Christian cultural products has increased significantly in the last ten years, these products tend to be wordy and intellectual. Designed primarily by and for theologians and educated, politically engaged citizens, their goal is to inspire, inform and enlighten – not simply to ‘entertain’. So too, progressive Christian organizations (such as Progressive Christians Uniting, and The Center for Progressive Christianity) tend to have much narrower agendas and relatively sophisticated religious and political concerns. But the question remains: why aren’t progressive Christians more media savvy? Why aren’t progressive Christian organizations more mass-oriented and broad-based?

‘Strong’ culture programs see culture as a strong variable in and of itself. They emphasize the ‘relative autonomy’ of culture, i.e. that ‘cultural forms have a history of their own, a causal force of their own’ (Alexander 2003: 13–14; Lichterman 2005: 384). They stress that symbols are not isolated elements on a blank slate; rather, they are embedded in specific historical contexts, cognitive schemas, discourses, narratives, and memories, and that even the most sophisticated or ‘revolutionary’ among us (OK, except for maybe Jesus) think, work and live within specific historical, socio-economic and multiple other cultural and social parameters, some of which are not amenable to manipulation. To be sure, culture producers (left- and right-wing Christian organizations) attempt to tap into and use symbolic elements to their advantage (e.g. exploiting sacred images and themes). But their success or failure lies not only in their own actions but also in narrative and symbolic contingencies, hence the outcome is never automatic or predetermined.

From a multidimensional culturalist point of view, both progressive and conservative Christian organizations are interest groups whose main goal is cultural production. ¹⁹ Each sets out to influence the symbolic content of Christianity in the public sphere; they seek to define what Christianity is, and assert who the ‘authentic’ Christians are and what ‘authentic’ Christians say and do. They pointedly and explicitly engage in ‘framing’. However, as Lichterman (2005: 388) points out, ‘interest groups are not simply natural or self-evidently logical responses to objective, material reality’. Deeply embedded binary codes about the sacred and profane and intricate processes of boundary-making come into play (see Edles 1998; Lichterman 2005). In the remainder of this paper, I explore some of these symbolic contingencies. Building on Weber and Durkheim, I examine the intertwined processes of authority/legitimacy, rationalism, de-mystification/re-mystification, charisma, and sacralization, and explore their impact on progressive Christianity today.

Progressive Christian Rationalism and Disenchantment

According to Weber (1963 [1922]: 117), humans have ‘an inner compulsion to understand the world as a meaningful cosmos and to take up a position toward it’. Culture consists of the ideas and beliefs that serve to meet this universal need; it provides systems of meaning (or ‘world-views’) that humans can employ to make sense of the world and all their own experiences (Campbell 2007: 11). Religion is the primary formulation that, until modern times, these overarching systems of meaning have taken. However, no ‘religious worldview can ever be entirely satisfactory in meeting this basic human need for meaning’ (2007: 12). No matter what system of meaning is adopted, people will inevitably experience events that they perceive to be ‘meaningless’. According to Weber, this is the problem of ‘theodicy’, and it portends that simultaneous with the human need for meaning is the continuous rationalization of systems of meaning. The trend is toward rendering systems of meaning both more comprehensive in coverage and more coherent in character so that they better ‘explain’ that which had previously been experienced as ‘inexplicable’ (2007: 12). Thus, ironically, the rationalizing tendencies characteristic of modern societies necessarily result in ‘disenchantment’. The West’s elevation of ‘rational empirical knowledge’ drains the cosmos of magic and results in the disenchantment of the world (Gibson 2009: 9).

From a Weberian point of view, progressive Christianity (especially the ‘self-proclaimed’ sort) is plagued by these rationalizing tendencies, much more so than its conservative counterpart. Nowhere is this more readily apparent than in the Jesus Seminar, a group of New Testament scholars who have been meeting periodically since 1985 to examine the Bible ‘critically and historically’, and whose findings can be considered the theological crux of self-proclaimed progressive Christianity. Initially made up of about 200 and now dwindled to about 74 active members, the Jesus Seminarians meticulously scrutinize the Gospels and use beads to vote as to whether they think either that: (a – red) the statement is undoubtedly something Jesus said or Jesus said something very like it; (b – pink) Jesus probably or might have said something like that, (c – gray) Jesus did not say that, but the idea is probably similar to his own; or (d – black) represents a later tradition. The Jesus Seminarians have concluded that only about 20 percent of the statements attributed to Jesus are likely to have been spoken by him. Significantly, both prophetic ‘Red Letter Christians’ and their more self-proclaimed counterparts anchor themselves in this 20 percent of the Bible: that is, what Jesus ‘really’ said and did (hence the term ‘Red Letter Christian’).

In Weberian terms, instead of deriving (or legitimating) their reading of the Gospel using the ‘stamp of religious authority’ (mystical, ecstatic experience) or even tradition (‘the sanctity of time immemorial’), the Jesus Seminarians use reason (a ‘critical/historical’ approach). Contrast the mechanism the Jesus Seminarians use to ascertain the sacrality (or not) of Biblical texts – voting – with that more typically used by religious bodies (e.g. the Church of the Latter Day Saints) – divine revelation – and you see a classic ‘rational’ (based on written rules and procedures) versus ‘charismatic’ (based on ‘gift of grace’ of leader) Weberian (1946: 296) distinction. Moreover, de-mystification is quite obvious in, literally, the de-deification of Jesus by Jesus seminarians such as Marcus Borg. The notion that Jesus was a great teacher but not divine is a gross example of theological de-mystification since it demotes Jesus from the realm of the supernatural to the natural world.

In addition, the rationalistic (rather than mystical) tendencies of the Jesus Seminarians in particular and progressive Christianity in general is also readily apparent in the fact that the Jesus Seminar was (and is) explicitly envisioned and operates as an academic enterprise. Jesus seminarians (all of whom have PhDs) tend to self-identify as academics, and they pride themselves on their objectivity. They extol ‘the Seminar’s ethos of genuine collaboration among scholars’ (R. Miller 1999: 2). Given its academic moorings, it should come as no surprise that the cultural products Jesus seminarians turn out are academic rather than mass-oriented in substance. The first ‘voluminous report’ of the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, was an impressive 500 pages, and cost $30 in hardback. Though the Jesus seminarians proudly report that The Five Gospels was listed in Publishers Weekly Religion Bestsellers for nine months, their pride rests on the fact that they achieved this despite the fact that, as Jesus seminarian Robert Miller (1999: 11) sardonically notes, it ‘gives no advice about spirituality or self-improvement and that is not about angels or family values or lost scrolls filled with secret wisdom’.

Yet, it is not only the books and papers produced by the Jesus Seminar but progressive Christian cultural products (books, newsletters, websites, films, etc.) in general that tend to be intellectually sophisticated. Typical of the genre is John Shelby Spong’s weekly newsletter, ‘A New Christianity for a New World’, with essay titles such as ‘The Bias Against Women in the Judeo-Christian Tradition’ (28 November 2005); ‘Was Jesus a Feminist in a Patriarchal World?’ (7 December 2005); ‘Easter Imagined and Recreated’ (17 May 2005); and ‘The California Episcopal Election’ (31 May 2006). This is a fascinating read for those interested in theological and political debates; but it is not a snazzy mass publication with journalistic ‘hooks’ – or even pictures. Even the funniest, wittiest, best-selling progressive evangelical authors, such as Don Miller (2003, 2004), Rob Bell (2006) and Shane Claiborne (2006), seek to educate and enlighten, not merely to ‘entertain’. Undoubtedly, the most successful of progressive Christian media is Jim Wallis’s Sojourners (a monthly magazine with 35,000 readers, and a combined readership of almost 600,000 readers including SojoMail and Sojo.net ). But 98 percent of its subscribers are college graduates! – and this is one of the most ‘glossy’, ‘user-friendly’ of all progressive Christian media. ²⁰

The intellectual, rationalistic bent of progressive Christianity is also evident in its proselytizing. Sociologists have long noted that conservative Christians recruit far more widely and broadly than their more liberal counterparts, who, as religious pluralists, tend not to feel compelled to ‘save souls’. ²¹ Today, however, progressive Christians are committed to ‘spreading the Word’. Fully realizing that liberal theology was largely constrained to the mainline Christian seminaries in the 1980s when the religious right took center stage, it is precisely this ‘widespread ignorance’ on the part of the lay mainline that the Jesus Seminarians in particular and progressive Christians in general set out to change. ²² Most importantly, progressive Christians seek to save the souls (and often the lives) of gay youth and their families infected by the vitriolic homophobia of conservative Christians. ²³

Yet clearly, progressive Christian proselytizing is educational (not mystical) in nature. In stark contrast to conservative Christian organizations (e.g. Focus on the Family) with broad, all-inclusive names and goals and events that draw thousands of folks, progressive Christian organizations (e.g. Progressive Christians Uniting) tend to have relatively narrow names and goals, and they organize highly sophisticated events that typically draw a few dozen to a few hundred (never thousands) of people – the vast majority of whom are educated, white, middle-aged, and upper-middle class. ²⁴ Of course, this necessarily limits their ability to compete with conservative Christian evangelicalism in the public sphere.

Perhaps even more problematically, however, this intellectual sophistication often morphs into an elitism at odds with the alleged inclusivity at the heart of progressive Christianity. For instance, rather than extol a Christianity ‘for everyone’, self-proclaimed progressive Christians market a Christianity For the Rest of Us (Butler Bass 2006) as one title states. Who are the ‘rest of us’? They are ‘those for whom an earlier understanding of Christianity makes little or no sense’ (Borg 2003: xi) or, ‘those who need a fresh take on Jesus’ (Bell 2006: 14), or to be blunt, ‘thinking’ Christians, as book titles such as Becoming a Thinking Christian (Cobb 1993) and So You Think You’re Not Religious: A Thinking Person’s Guide to the Church (Adams 1989) and slogans and bumper stickers such as: ‘Our faith is over 2000 years old. Our thinking is not’ and ‘LEFT-WING CHRISTIAN … able to pray AND think’, not so subtly reveal.

In other words, progressive Christians (especially the self-proclaimed sort) tend to view themselves as a select group. They see themselves as ‘solitary outsiders’, ²⁵ and progressive Christian literature and propaganda routinely affirm that the progressive Christian path is neither popular nor easy. ²⁶ Their target audience is lapsed or ‘recovering’ religious folks, religious skeptics, and the nonreligious (see Spong 2006); they set their sights on bringing intelligent and inquisitive folks back in the fold, by demolishing the notion that one must ‘check your mind at the door’ to be a Christian. ²⁷ From this point of view, an over-simplified, ‘dumbed-down’, generic, mass or pop version of progressive Christianity is antithetical to the spirit of progressive Christianity itself.

Progressive Christian Re-enchantment

Thus far we have seen that progressive Christianity (especially the self-proclaimed sort) is plagued by rationalistic tendencies. However, one of the central goals of progressive Christianity today is precisely to assert religious legitimacy. Progressive Christians are challenging the taken-for-granted authority of the religious right by insisting that progressive Christianity is not a radical, new age, modern/postmodern, revisionist hybrid philosophy (as the religious right attests), but, rather, the ‘authentic’ Christianity because it is rooted in the actual life and teachings of Jesus. ²⁸ Put in another way, parallel to conservative Biblical literalists, who assert legitimacy by insisting that they are adhering to the immutable Word of God (rather than their own ideas/interpretation), progressive Christians too make claims of ‘infallible’ Biblical Truth (with a capital ‘T’). ‘Red Letter Christianity’ is rooted in the sacrality of ancient texts (and not only reason). Prophetic Christians especially assert that – like it or not – this is The Bible, these are Jesus’ deeds and words. As Wallis states, ‘I care about poverty because the Bible requires an evangelical Christian like me to care about poverty’. ²⁹ So too Bishop Flunder maintains, ‘I preach faith-based sermons. … Mine is a voice that passionately preaches justice and freedom with responsibility; however not to the exclusion of Jesus. Justice without Jesus will not work for me.’ ³⁰

This notion of taking the Bible – and Christianity – back from literalists and fundamentalists is explicit in book titles such as Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (by Bishop John Shelby Spong). This same notion of taking Christianity back is also clearly expressed in the mission statements of progressive Christian organizations. For instance, appalled particularly by the homophobic, sexist, pro-establishment messages preached by the religious right, the progressive Episcopalian group, Every Voice Network, maintains:

Significantly, this grounding of progressive claims in fundamental Christian tenets is precisely the strategy that Martin Luther King, Jr so adroitly perfected. Martin Luther King, Jr shamed America by insisting that it was not living up to its own core, sacred values, both constitutional and Christian. In exactly the same way, progressive Christians attempt to shame the Christian right by pointing out that their exclusionary attitudes (e.g. toward the poor as well as the LGBT community) and enthusiasm for war contradict the greatest commandments of their God. ‘And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?’ (Micah 6:8). In a more humorous vein, as one bumper sticker states: ‘When Jesus said love your enemies, I’m pretty sure that meant not killing them.’

Yet, while both ‘self-proclaimed’ and ‘prophetic’ progressive Christians use the life and teachings of Jesus to assert religious authority, ‘prophetic’ progressive Christians, by definition, tend to be better at it. Rationalism and de-mystification run deep amongst non-evangelical progressive Christians, and evangelical Christians often admonish their ‘self-proclaimed’ brethren to ‘pull up the anchor and let go’. ³¹ This is why, in my view, prophetic evangelicals are a pivotal part of re-mystifying progressive Christianity today – and perhaps why the United Church of Christ is so eagerly welcoming African American evangelicals, such as Bishop Yvette Flunder and Bishop Carlton Pearson, into the fold. ³² The theological dilemmas that these preachers bring to the table (e.g. traditional language about Jesus and God) pale in comparison to the enchantment as well as charisma and collective effervescence that they bring. Flunder and Pearson celebrate a personal relationship with a (divine) Jesus Christ and utilize powerful emotional forms of worship (e.g. the alter call, gospel music), readily tapping into and affirming a sense of the numinous (in the same spirit as their more conservative brothers and sisters). The passion and style and music they tend to powerfully employ is re-mystifying progressive Christianity in general and the United Church of Christ in particular. In addition, as African American preachers, Flunder and Pearson also have a close symbolic connection to (sacred) Martin Luther King, Jr. And because they rely on specifically Christian symbols, they powerfully link the new and the old, and evoke emotions and connections with the past that eastern, ‘new age’ and generic mystical elements (e.g. nature) cannot. ³³ That said, I do not see a wellspring of multiracial, socio-economically diverse progressive churches on the horizon (unfortunately). The infusion of African American and evangelical elements and styles of worship into the ‘mainline’ is hardly effortless or easy. Indeed, all sorts of congregations are still deeply divided about homosexuality, and most churches continue to be profoundly segregated racially and socio-economically as well (see Emerson 2006; DeYoung et al. 2003; Emerson and Smith 2000).

In Durkheimian terms, the problem that self-proclaimed progressive Christians face is one of profanation. In contrast to evangelicals (whether progressive or not) who, by definition, profess and share a distinct and profound, unambiguously mystical experience (i.e. a ‘born-again’ experience of personal salvation) to which they testify often (calling it up and symbolically reaffirming it in Durkheimian terms), by definition self-proclaimed progressive Christians lack these mystical tools and are thus prone to becoming mired in the (profane) political dimensions of social justice in the everyday world. To be sure, the de-deification of Jesus (the idea that Jesus was ‘only’ a man) does not necessarily result in de-sacralization from an orthodox Durkheimian point of view. Whether one believes in his divinity or not, progressive Christians all still set Jesus profoundly apart from everyone else (which is precisely why the ‘Red Letters’ are RED). As Obrery Hendricks, author of Living Water, states, ‘I don’t worship Jesus; I follow Jesus because that’s what Jesus wanted us to do: Follow him, not worship him’. ³⁴ Nevertheless, ‘following’ rather than ‘worshipping’ Jesus sets progressive Christians up for symbolic danger. ³⁵ Saying ‘I don’t worship Jesus’ makes conservative Christians cringe (to say the least) for good reason: in contrast to ‘worship’ (which, by definition, connotes sacrality), ‘follow’ is an everyday word, used in a wide variety of situations. (Indeed, one of the most common symbolic associations with the term ‘follow’ is the mundane childhood phrase/game ‘follow the leader’.) Of course, from a Durkheimian point of view, the very idea that the Scriptures can be mulled over, picked apart and voted on (rather than ‘revealed’), as per the Jesus Seminarians, is, by definition, a process of de-sacralization; for as Durkheim first pointed out, the ‘sacred’ is that which cannot be ‘touched’– it is ‘above and beyond’ the everyday world.

Progressive Christian Uncertainty

One of the hallmarks of conservative Christianity (whether evangelical or not) is the clarity and certainty of their theology. No flimsy, hazy scripture, this; but rather a robust, definitive, authoritative Word. No hemming and hawing and muddy waters here; but rather, certainty: certainty that the end will come; certainty that Jesus will return. Even in its more compassionate, ambiguous guises, e.g. ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’, there is no gray area between ‘love’ and ‘hate’ (and after all, ‘compassionate conservatism’ did not make it in the end). No matter the issue, but particularly in the case of homosexuality, abortion, war – the dividing line between good and evil, right and wrong, and sacred and profane is absolute and crystal clear. As Bill McKibben (2005: 35) states, ‘The power of the Christian Right rests largely in the fact that they boldly claim religious authority, and by their very boldness convince the rest of us that they must know what they’re talking about’.

By contrast, progressive Christians (especially, but not only, the ‘self-proclaimed’ sort) pride themselves on their uncertainty rather than their certainty. ‘To support those who embrace the search, not certainty’, is included in the mission statement of the Center for Progressive Christianity (tcpc.org). Prophetic progressive Christians such as Brian McLaren (2007: 38) see conservative Christian certainty as a ‘cancer of excessive confidence’, and maintain that ‘a new kind of Christian’ is precisely one who isn’t ‘functioning within the assumptions and values of modern, Western, hyperconfident – some might say arrogant – culture’ (2007: 44).

That it is the ‘questions’ (and not the ‘answers’) that are most important is readily apparent in the DVD and web-based study series aptly titled Living the Questions (2007). The purpose of this 12-week course is to start a ‘conversation [about] the relevance of Christianity in the 21st Century and what a meaningful faith can look like in today’s world’; for ‘being comfortable with ambiguity, metaphor, and uncertainty help us get the Divine “out of the box” and rethink theological ideas that have become barriers to our further spiritual growth’. ³⁶ Similarly, in her spiritual memoir, titled, significantly, Called to Question (2004), Benedictine Sister of Erie Joan Chittester maintains:

Of course, theological indeterminacy is also reflected in progressive Christians’ emphasis on a metaphorical (rather than literal) approach to the Bible. By taking the Bible ‘seriously but not literally’, as progressive Christians are wont to say, they explicitly embrace the process of interpretation. Reading scripture is not about ‘finding’ the answers as in an instruction manual, but a process of reflection and discernment. In addition, progressive Christian indeterminacy is rooted in postmodernism – both in the sense of the chronological moment and the theology (as the subtitle of one of Brian McLaren’s recent books: A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/ Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN readily reveals). Finally, progressive Christian indeterminacy is rooted in religious pluralism/universalism. ‘Self- proclaimed’ progressive Christians are not only open to new interpretations of old texts, but new means of spiritual expression, such as dance; such that not only the content of one’s faith but how to practice it becomes a ‘journey’ or a process of discernment.

However, as Durkheim (1912) first pointed out, one of the main ‘functions’ of religion is to provide certainty and clarity in an uncertain and chaotic world. The problem is that, especially in times of trouble, many folks do not want to ‘live the questions’; they want to know the answers, or at least feel that they do. They want to know that God is there; they want ‘a rock and a redeemer’. Even atheists sometimes ‘wish’ they had a strong and certain faith to draw on, reassure them, and pull them through. ³⁷ One progressive Christian pastor at a conference I attended told a poignant story about this very problem. An active church member, whom the pastor had counseled over several months about a personal crisis, ended up leaving his church for a more conservative one. Months later the pastor happened to run into this man on the street, and asked him why left his church. The man said, ‘Your church doesn’t have anything for people in crisis except community’. ³⁸

Put in another way, progressive Christian intellectual uncertainty is at grave risk of giving way to emotional uncertainty. ³⁹ Especially for non-evangelical ‘self-proclaimed’ Christians who do not practice emotional forms of worship or profess a personal relationship with God, progressive Christian rationalism and abstraction can lead to a spiritual dead end. For instance, one (self-proclaimed) progressive Christian activist I interviewed explicitly linked her intellectual, abstract (rather than personal) conceptualization of God with her difficulty with prayer: