I’ve recently enjoyed attending a couple of new informal home group discussions about theology, the future of the church, and what it means to be a Christian community. The discussions have involved people from a wide variety of theological backgrounds and the common thread of discussion has been the exploration of more progressive theological views found in many of the recent popular "emerging" and "emergent" books. There have been some surprises as I’ve found several allies in my own progressive faith journey and I’m learning more and more about how to make these conversations more constructive and less combative. I’m also realizing that there are many people in Christianity that are yearning for understanding at a deeper level than the fundamentalist churches that blanket the southeastern United States where I live. It is exciting to watch people “wake up” to the idea that there is more than one option for Christian faith. This process of waking up can be scary. I know this because I’ve been through it myself. At times, it felt like I was abandoning God even though what I was actually abandoning is an outdated image of God and an outdated understanding of scripture. The advice that I always give my awakening friends is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and at some point in the process, you will likely learn to take comfort in the journey more than destination. That level of comfort in uncertainty may even be the first turning point in the process.

One of the keys to beginning a fruitful journey into progressive Christianity is to understand the roots of the fundamentalist approach that we had been taught. My favorite blogging pastor, Bob Cornwall, makes several good points about the roots of fundamentalism that he draws from Krista Tippett's book "Speaking of Faith”. For Tippett, a fundamentalist is anyone who not only has the answers for himself, but also has them for all the rest of us. I agree, but I also think the issue is much deeper and possibly less selfish than that statement may appear. We need to deal with our theological roots without demonizing those people that still cling to those roots. I'm still learning how to do this and my recent conversations have been helpful. I stumbled out the gates on this issue and have a few horror stories and broken relationships as a result.

People of progressive faith value understanding as a process of continuous observation and discovery. Fundamentalists however feel that our understanding about God and the universe is obtained through divine revelation. They would say that we know what we know about God because God decided to tell us through sacred texts and prophetic voices. They feel that the items that are mysterious to us are meant by God to be left as a mystery. Any attempt to move them from the state of mystery to the state of understanding is circumventing the intentions of God. I’m learning to realize that it is unfair for progressives to state that these fundamentalists are intentionally being prideful. I believe that in most cases fundamentalists do not understand these views as “their views” but as the understanding that has been revealed by God. It is important to make that distinction if we are ever going to move past the divisive left vs. right debates about faith.

I'm very excited to have real live conversations about faith. My journey has in large part been filled with long distance electronic conversations with people I've rarely seen face to face. In many ways, I feel like my new conversations are taking me backwards in this process to retread some ground I'd rather forget, but I also feel a deep desire to no longer walk this journey alone.