"The process is the product." That is one of my favorite insights from years of peacemaking. Naturally, I was drawn to the subtitle of your post: "process vs content."
I was not disappointed. Great points and great quotes from the book Holy Hell by Derek Ryan Kubilus. Thanks for those.
Regarding boundaries, yes, I think progressive christians and pluralists are trying to draw them anew. Fortunately, proto-christianity gave us clear boundaries in the form of the beatitudes.
Distilling the essences of Matthew 5:3-10, we get some boundaries for how to be in this world (and promises for the "next" world):
1. selflessness – openness, understanding (land of god's love)
2. sorrow – sensitivity, mindset (comfort)
3. humility – spirit (earth)
4. determination – action (satisfaction)
5. mercy – compassion, harmlessness (mercy)
6. purity – diligence (knowing god)
7. peacemaking – mindfulness (children of god)
8. concentration – equanimity (land of god's love)
Interesting article. Two things have shaped my thinking over the past 50 or so years. One, a quote I believe from Herbert Butterfield that one of my professors, Dr. James Stuart often reminded his students: “Hold to Christ, to all else remain uncommitted.”
Second, in his book The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann writes,”Thus christology is essentially unconcluded and permanently in need of revision.” (Pp 106-107). I expanded that idea to say that all theology is provisional.
Hence, I have had very little regard for boundaries. I see myself holding my beliefs with open hands, not clenched fists.
Great discussion. I was surprised at what the NT says about this when I looked into it as our church disaffiliated from the UMC (which I was opposed to). There is VERY strong language against division, and of course very strong language about boundaries as well, so it's not an easy tension to manage.
I think one major shift in the last century is that institutions hold no real power over individuals. Everyone is free to believe whatever they want, with no real potential for coercion. At most, a church can say "You can't come here any more" but when society's religiosity is dropping like a rock, there doesn't seem to be much upside in kicking people out.
We're now so far away from burning people at the stake that I wonder if it's worth even revisiting whether Christianity should be thought of as a religion, when perhaps seeing it as a philosophy might be preferable.
Another angle: today we seem to have very few real disputes over what people believe, and are much more concerned with whether they believe at all.
Among those who do, it's much more likely that people will simply not have thought at all about a particular issue than that they believe something that falls outside a particular boundary.
Policing boundaries requires, to some extent, that people have coherent beliefs in the first place, and that turns out to be a pretty high bar. We're happy just to have people show up and generally agree that being in church is a good thing.
Interesting, thoughtful, helpful. I wrestle with this issue because I am not a theological progressive in the Episcopal Church.
"The process is the product." That is one of my favorite insights from years of peacemaking. Naturally, I was drawn to the subtitle of your post: "process vs content."
I was not disappointed. Great points and great quotes from the book Holy Hell by Derek Ryan Kubilus. Thanks for those.
Regarding boundaries, yes, I think progressive christians and pluralists are trying to draw them anew. Fortunately, proto-christianity gave us clear boundaries in the form of the beatitudes.
Distilling the essences of Matthew 5:3-10, we get some boundaries for how to be in this world (and promises for the "next" world):
1. selflessness – openness, understanding (land of god's love)
2. sorrow – sensitivity, mindset (comfort)
3. humility – spirit (earth)
4. determination – action (satisfaction)
5. mercy – compassion, harmlessness (mercy)
6. purity – diligence (knowing god)
7. peacemaking – mindfulness (children of god)
8. concentration – equanimity (land of god's love)
BTW, I believe that these beatitudes align with the ennobling eightfold path. I have written a little about that here: https://medium.com/love-god/noble-eightfold-beatitudes-part-1-dcf4dcf1ce8a
Regarding modern spiritual communities embodying boundaries, I think the Bruderhof and Plum Village are good examples, especially the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the latter https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness/the-14-mindfulness-trainings.
Interesting article. Two things have shaped my thinking over the past 50 or so years. One, a quote I believe from Herbert Butterfield that one of my professors, Dr. James Stuart often reminded his students: “Hold to Christ, to all else remain uncommitted.”
Second, in his book The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann writes,”Thus christology is essentially unconcluded and permanently in need of revision.” (Pp 106-107). I expanded that idea to say that all theology is provisional.
Hence, I have had very little regard for boundaries. I see myself holding my beliefs with open hands, not clenched fists.
Reminds me of chess, or baseball. Boundaries are the rules of the game.
Great discussion. I was surprised at what the NT says about this when I looked into it as our church disaffiliated from the UMC (which I was opposed to). There is VERY strong language against division, and of course very strong language about boundaries as well, so it's not an easy tension to manage.
I think one major shift in the last century is that institutions hold no real power over individuals. Everyone is free to believe whatever they want, with no real potential for coercion. At most, a church can say "You can't come here any more" but when society's religiosity is dropping like a rock, there doesn't seem to be much upside in kicking people out.
We're now so far away from burning people at the stake that I wonder if it's worth even revisiting whether Christianity should be thought of as a religion, when perhaps seeing it as a philosophy might be preferable.
Another angle: today we seem to have very few real disputes over what people believe, and are much more concerned with whether they believe at all.
Among those who do, it's much more likely that people will simply not have thought at all about a particular issue than that they believe something that falls outside a particular boundary.
Policing boundaries requires, to some extent, that people have coherent beliefs in the first place, and that turns out to be a pretty high bar. We're happy just to have people show up and generally agree that being in church is a good thing.
I address this in another post: https://lorenrichmondjr.substack.com/p/why-churches-need-to-be-more-exclusive
So ask people to do more and actually be involved, vs. having more litmus tests. I like it.