The Anti-Manichaeist

Today, Gary Dorrien spoke more about Progressive and Liberal Theology.  He made the difference between the two, allowing that Progressive Theology was more broad than Liberal Theology.  He frames the prevalent conflict as between Progressive forms of Christianity and Orthodoxies that resist changes.  He believes the future of Christianity lies with Progressive Christianity, of course this follows almost like a tautology from the way he’s defined his terms.

He acknowledges that he is influenced personally by Alfred North Whitehead’s Process Theology where becoming is more important than being, though he has moved away from that because he thinks the emphasis on process is undue and prefers to emphasize the need to discern the Spirit of God, while listening to the oppressed, ask what God is doing and follow Christ in our own time. 

He believes the resurgence of Progressive and Liberal Theology has been due to the serious conflicts and the need for a theological understanding to deal with them.  He thinks that it’s an important and interesting time to do theology, since people are fragmenting into groups that insist on dogmatic certainty, whereas the problems we deal with require an openness to change. 

Dorrien illustrated this openness to change by his personal testimony of his own interaction with Evangelicalism.  Apparently his daughter, while internalizing him and his late wife’s values and politics, found the anglican church they had been attending unsatisfactory and decided to attend an evangelical church.  Through her, he has learned a good deal first hand about Evangelical sub-culture and even become familiar with subculture’s Christian music.  He also spoke highly of the ways that evangelicals work hard to get their youth interested in Christianity and the extent they foster and care about evangelical theological debate.  He also spoke of how when he took the time to write about evangelical theology, it opened many doors for him and allowed him more opportunities to have some influence on Evangelical Christians.  He also spoke highly of Jim Wallis and that there are Progressive Evangelicals(I guess I might be one of them, though I prefer the label Pragmatic Progressive as I think many Progressives are dogmatic about their views on what sorts of changes(the ones they are advocating for) are inevitable.). 

A lot of what he said is consistent with some of what I’ve been learning in my seminary.  He spoke of the importance of Hermeneutics for tempering Fundamentalism and Theological Dogmatism.  He spoke of how the search for the historical Jesus as too subjective and not productive and more of the need to appreciate the texts as literature and units as a whole rather than carcasses to be dissected.  He also seemed very committed to following Jesus, understanding him better in light of first century Judaism. 

So, overall, I’d say Gary Dorrien is ironically encouraging liberal Christians to become more like the USEvangelicals in many ways.  I know that Plymouth Congregational Church has undergone a sea change in its membership base, where initially it was quite Unitarian and somewhat deistic, but the major recent influx of reliable members are exiles from Evangelicalism, who retain an appreciation for aspects of where they came from. 

I am glad for this, just as I am glad that my high school biology teacher is attending this church and committed to studying the Bible and learning more about Jesus.  He used to be strongly influence by Bahaism and tended to gloss over or selectively harmonize the differences between the monotheistic religions.  Now, he is more critical of Islam, particularly in light of its recent violence, and skeptical of its potential for reform.  We talked briefly about whether they could turn away from that or whether more muslims might choose to become followers of Jesus and reject the unregulated use of violence. 

dlw