{"id":15839,"date":"2013-07-14T08:38:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-14T12:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=15839"},"modified":"2013-07-14T08:38:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-14T12:38:38","slug":"progressive-christian-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/07\/progressive-christian-truth.html","title":{"rendered":"Progressive Christian Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Kimberly Knight wrote the following words in the conclusion to her post, \u201cA lesbian and a fundamentalist walk into a bar\u201d<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n

\"\"We as progressives tend to bend over backward to affirm all paths as equal. But to be raw and honest, I believe there is a capital T truth and I do not believe it is on the path that Billy currently is following. The true north of Scripture is Love, a love that is active with in-breaking Grace, a love that liberates us from the small minds and wills of men to live into the Spirit of freedom and justice for all. If I really, really believe this, then I can not claim that Billy\u2019s truth is True any more than he can acknowledge my truth to be True.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nClick through<\/a> to read the context.<\/p>\n

I think that it may be because many of us who are progressive Christians started out more conservative, that we tend to recognize that sometimes it takes time to develop and mature in one's views. And having changed our minds, particularly if we now think that we were previously mistaken, we may be hesitant to insist that now we have got things all sorted out.<\/p>\n

Figuring out when to be adamant and adopt a hard line, when to simply agree to disagree, and when to recognize a viewpoint as legitimate for the immature while unhealthy in the mature, can be challenging.<\/p>\n

Take for instance the Mr. Deity video which Hemant Mehta shared on his blog recently, asking whether one can be a good skeptic and believe in God<\/a>. Its answer is a sarcastic roundabout \u201cno.\u201d But the video ignores that \u201cGod\u201d can denote more than one idea, and focuses most of its attention not on the existence of God, but on dowsing rods and other such things which skeptics who do and do not believe in God would be allied in debunking.<\/p>\n

There have been plenty of Deists and Pantheists who have been not merely skeptics, but leading<\/em> skeptics and freethinkers. To claim that belief in God is incompatible with skepticism seems to fly in the face of the evidence, and to sow division where skepticism and critical thinking might have the potential to bring people together.<\/p>\n

But maybe that just my misguided attempt to assert some progressive Christian Truth with a capital \u201cT.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kimberly Knight wrote the following words in the conclusion to her post, \u201cA lesbian and a fundamentalist walk into a bar\u201d: We as progressives tend to bend over backward to affirm all paths as equal. But to be raw and honest, I believe there is a capital T truth and I do not believe it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,163],"tags":[1086,1088,2564,2566,2568,3616,3618,4005,8671,8673,11376,11379],"class_list":["post-15839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-religion","category-progressive-christianity-religion","tag-belief","tag-believe","tag-deism","tag-deists","tag-deity","tag-freethinker","tag-freethinkers","tag-god","tag-pantheism","tag-pantheists","tag-skeptic","tag-skepticism"],"yoast_head":"\nProgressive Christian Truth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kimberly Knight wrote the following words in the conclusion to her post, "A lesbian and a fundamentalist walk into a bar": We as progressives tend to bend\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/07\/progressive-christian-truth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Progressive Christian Truth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kimberly Knight wrote the following words in the conclusion to her post, "A lesbian and a fundamentalist walk into a bar": We as progressives tend to bend\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/07\/progressive-christian-truth.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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