The point of progressive faith

I recently ran across a comment in John Shuck's blog that objected to any form of progressive Christianity that did not take literally some of the traditional mythologies about Jesus. The commenter wrote, "If being involved in church is just to bring happiness and social change there are simpler ways of doing so." In other words, the claim was that if the church doesn't promote a certain set of theological dogmas then there just isn't any point to attending such a church.

I run across this same objection from time to time. First and foremost, it misses the point. Progressive faith isn't just about happiness and social change, and it is a mischaracterization to suggest that it is. It is, like all religions, about meaning, transcendence, and purpose; goals like happiness and social change are secondarily derived from the ways that progressive faith offers insights into these matters. Orthodox Christianity approaches meaning, transcendence, and purpose by identifying what it sees are a set of problems that revolve around questions of sin, grace, and eternal life. When some conservative Christians look at other forms of Christianity that don't look at sin, grace, and eternal life the same way that they do--perhaps not even identifying them as "problems" to be solved by their respective theologies--they seem befuddled by the situation, and suggest that there isn't any real point to such faiths, since they don't seek to solve the same theological "problems". The fallacy here is an inability to look outside the box for a moment and consider that others may see value in religion because they look to the deeper issues that all religions seek to address, even if the specific paradigm of that faith is different. It is just as wrong for conservative Christians to say that there is no point to progressive Christianity as it is to say that there is no point to Judaism, Buddhism, or Hinduism--all of which are faiths which also address meaning, transcendence, and purpose, but which do so by attempting to solve different sorts of theological "problems" than what orthodox Christianity tries to solve.

There is another problem with the above statement. It makes a problematic leap from "such a church would not work for me" to "such a church is useless for anyone and everyone else." This generalization from personal experience is an unfortunate mistake, and it also shows an unwillingness to really apply the spirit of inquiry. Instead of saying, "I don't get what value you see in church given that you don't accept tenets A, B, and C. Can you explain that to me?" we instead hear, "I don't get what you see in in this kind of church, so therefore you are all wrong to want be a part of it."

If you are already convinced that your religion is the only true one, then of course, you aren't really interested in inquiring of others what value they find in their own faiths. You can simply dismiss their experiences as invalid and assert that they belong to the wrong religions. Such an approach makes for an easy, comfortable religion, secure in its own dogmas and untroubled by anything that doesn't fit into its own paradigm. But ultimately, it is an expression of arrogant tribalism, one that asserts the superiority of one's own tribe (religion) over all others.