What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? Quotes

“For Christians . . . an unreflective faith is not possible if we take seriously the injunction to love God with the mind as well as the heart and soul.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“our doctrine of creation, our view that God created the entire world in all of its tumultuous diversity, and pronounced it to be good. For progressive Christianity in particular it is also the belief that God is incarnate everywhere in the creation. Both beliefs mean that the imprint of the divine is present everywhere, and if we look carefully, it is to be found everywhere—in the multiple religions, in the diverse cultures, in the many ideological perspectives, and in the varied political perspectives. No doubt the imprint of the divine is more muddled in some times and places than in others,”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“The reign of God is fullness of health throughout the whole web of life. It is already breaking in upon us through the processes of nature, history, interpersonal relationships, and through our individual lives.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“We create more humane forms of order when the successes and failures of past ones are transformed into better visions—tentative, imperfect, vague, but better guiding visions.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Pride is thinking of oneself more highly than one ought to think; sensuality is thinking of oneself less highly than one ought to think.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Talk about sin should be a means whereby we see ourselves more clearly, act more humanely, and learn to work more effectively for a better future for ourselves and our planet.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Christianity does not offer rules applicable for all times. Our abiding guide is the two great commandments. The validity of other teachings depends on the extent to which they fulfill these commandments in specific contexts.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Just as we “honor through examination” other forms of Christianity, other religions, other social and cultural practices, so we expect ourselves to be critiqued, challenged and, possibly, changed by them.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11. Once upon a time, the story goes, people spoke one language and used words in the same way—they were in agreement on things. This unanimity prompted in them the illusion that they were absolutely right”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Jesus said the degree to which all legal and prophetic traditions are valid for us depends on—“hangs on” (Matthew 22:37)—the extent to which they fulfill these two commandments in their specific contexts.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“it is a task given to humans who are fully a part of the web of creation, not to special beings who are above it.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“God creates this world; humanity is to arrange it.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“And the truth is that the strongest believer may from time to time question various aspects of Christian teaching—and those questions are to be valued—but what binds her or him into this tradition is its understanding of being human.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Who are we to be? How should we live? and, Why do we fail to be and live as we should?”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“The “absolutizing” of religion and religious belief is a sign of fear, a desperate attempt to hide the fact that our fundamental orientations toward life are always interpretive adventures, always a risk.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“God’s role in the universe is to nudge it from less to more adequate forms and processes (which are not necessarily more complex or orderly in character).”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“The free agency of humans and the contingency or chance throughout the cosmic process means that, at any given point in time, the future is to some degree open, unclear, undecided, indeterminate. To the degree that this is so, the future is also unknown to God.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“God makes a real difference in the world; the world makes a real difference in God.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“a patiently working God.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“It will be a God whose reality incorporates the realities of all created life—chance and order, animate and inanimate, human and non-human, living and dying, good and bad, joy and sorrow.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“It cannot be proven; it can only be proffered and tested continuously against everyday realities—personal, social, natural, and cosmic—for its adequacy as a guide to living in the world.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Why, if God is all-powerful and good, is there so much utterly pointless evil in the world—evil that no outcome could possibly justify, and evil, in fact, that we mortals try desperately to prevent?” The most credible reply of these anguished Christians is a commendably honest one: “We don’t have an answer. We do not understand anymore than did Ivan, Alyosha, or the most rigorous denier of an omnipotent deity. We do not know.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Why seek to improve upon the course of events that accord with the will of God? Or, if God has ordained that we should seek improvement on the things that “he” has caused or permitted, why did God cause or permit them in the first place? If that is not an intolerably callous way to run a universe, it is, at the least, poor planning.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“In the crucifixion of Jesus we see the willingness of God to suffer and to die, with and for us, if that is what oneness with the world requires.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“In the birth of Jesus we see the gentleness and vulnerability of the divine. We believe that God works through ordinariness, not shock and awe, and that caring for the divine work of redemption is everywhere placed in our small human hands.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“The divine is at one with the cosmos and all that is in it. God is in and with the world. God is with us and the rest of creation, too—fully God, fully world, fully one.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“Salvation had to be conceived comprehensively because the world was conceived as interconnected.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“the conciliar process was often motivated by political rather than theological interests, conducted via infighting and intrigue, and driven by the needs of empire for unity and control.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“The claim that tradition can be protected from error is false and dangerous. The belief that the Bible is free from error is no less so. Both lead to arrogance and bigotry, and both contradict the facts.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious

“The Bible is the progressive Christian’s authority because in our engagement with it we are authored as Christians.”
― Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious