June, 2003 Calendar In This Issue: St. A's Goes to the Mountains October 3-5, 2003 The Sisterhood of the Naked Turtles A Women's Retreat Reflection Growing the Women's Retreat Scholarship Fund End of the Year Celebration Grand Party - Everyone is Invited! And You Call Yourselves Christian? Join Me Gift from the Soul

by the Rev. Hartshorn Murphy

Recent press revelations about Billy Graham's son making anti-Islam statements have me thinking about definitions.

Definitions can be tough. Although somewhat grounded in stereotypes, we have some sense of what is meant by the label "evangelical Christian." There comes with the title images of being politically conservative, morally judgmental and literalist biblically. At the other extreme are the "mainline churches" (Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians and others). These denominations are increasingly derided by the so-called "Christian right" for being "liberal," by which they mean the stereotype of liberals as being relativistic, sentimental and "politically correct." (The topical singer/songwriter Phil Ochs, in 1966, described liberals as "...ten degrees to the Left of Center in good times and ten degrees to the Right of Center when it affects them personally.") In American political life and in American religious life, the label "Liberal" (the "L-word") is devastating. And while it is clear that St. Augustine's does not fit in the Evangelical/Fundamentalists camp (e.g. we take the bible too seriously to take it literally), we are also uncomfortable in the "liberal camp" if by that we labor under the charge of being "groundless" and without clear and consistent ideological principles.

What is needed then is a new label. Over the last few years, handfuls of Christians across a number of denominations have struggled to articulate a new self-consciousness and identity that exists outside the tired dichotomy of liberal/conservative and Left/Right and which stands in prophetic judgment of both.

That label is "Progressive." What does it mean to be a "Progressive Christian" in this new millennium? The following Eight Principles are an attempt to lay out a foundation of a vision that flows from the experience of engaging Biblical Religion and the Gospel from a progressive world-view. As you read them, I invite you to reflect on whether or not these words speak to your experiences of living the Gospel in this particular place.

In the fall, I'd like to facilitate a conversation around these principles as we discern whether or not to formally declare ourselves to be, with others, a "Progressive Church." These Eight Points were developed by The Center for Progressive Christianity, which can be visited at: www.tcpc.org. By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who:

1. Proclaim Jesus Christ as our Gate to the realm of God;
2. Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the gateway to God's realm;
3. Understand our sharing of bread and wine in Jesus' name to be a representative of God's feast for all peoples;
4. Invite all sorts and conditions of people to join in our worship and in our common life as full partners, including but not limited to: believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, homosexuals and heterosexuals, females and males, the despairing and the hopeful, those of all races and cultures, and those of all classes and abilities, without imposing on them the necessity of becoming like us;
5. Think that the way we treat one another and other people is more important than the way we express our beliefs;
6. Find more grace in the search for meaning than in absolute certainty, in the questions than in the answers;
7. See ourselves as a spiritual community in which we discover the resources required for our work in the world: striving for justice and peace among all people; bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers;
8. Recognize that our faith entails costly discipleship, renunciation of privilege, and conscientious resistance to evil - as has always been the tradition of the church.

Copyright © 2003 St. Augustine by-the-Sea