"An insurrection—instigated by the president of the united states and his enablers and fueled by white supremacy and fragility—happened on live television. As I watched I was both shocked and not surprised at all."

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
"It was disgusting to see how crosses, Christian flags, and all sorts of Jesus paraphernalia were used by these domestic terrorists, as if their ideology is compatible with the Christian Tradition."

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
When I see a hateful street preacher, or when the Westboro Baptist Church spews their hate, or a guy draped in a Trump flag bows before a cross during a coup attempt, my impulse is to say they aren’t actually Christian.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
The problem is, no matter how badly I might want to, I don’t get to tell people how they identify religiously... We really can’t say anything about Christianity as a monolithic institution or system of belief.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
I think we can say something like [this] about the Christian Tradition: "There is no Christianity; there are only Christianities."

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
When we say we are "Christian," we don’t mean Christian nationalism. The idea of Christian nationalism would actually be completely baffling to early Christians.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
The reality is, in America today, Christian nationalism is a baptism of violence and hate, it makes fear a virtue, and its chief sacrament is often the second amendment.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
When we say "Christian," we don’t mean that we believe that everything that needs to be said was said in the 300s or the 1500s, as if the Church creeds and the Reformation put a bow on it.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
When we say we are Christian, we don’t mean that we are hostile to other religious Traditions. We actually celebrate the gifts and goodness they bring into the world.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
When I say that I am a Christian, I mean a couple things. First, I mean that I am compelled and inspired by the story of Jesus. I think Jesus embodies the divine, and calls us to join him in that work.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
In a more conservative paradigm, the central importance of Jesus is that he is born to die on the cross in the place of human beings, opening the way for salvation.

This isn’t how Christians have always talked about Jesus.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
The earliest layer of the Tradition embraced the life of Jesus and saw in his life a call to love, heal, feed, serve, and embrace the world.

In this sense, I want to be radically Christian.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
To be be radical means that you are going to the root of something. I want to discover the values that Jesus and the first Christian communities embraced; they are dramatically different than what became the dominant understanding.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
The earliest Christians were boundary breakers, creating communities in which there were no power relationships. All of the cultural ways people were divided up were undone in the Jesus community.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
It’s interesting that in the beginning, the Church was trying to pull culture further; now it’s the culture that has to try to pull the Church out of the dark ages most of the time (more about that next week!).

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
The Christian Tradition also provides us with a language and a system of symbols... Some words have, in the movement to a progressive lens, fallen into disuse and haven’t made the journey with us.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
Part of our work as a community is engaging that process of reframing and offering people a way to keep the language, but with a reimagined and transformed understanding of content.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
"We can’t reclaim and radicalize (in the sense of going back to the root) these symbols without being honest about how they have been polluted and distorted."

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
What if the cross became a symbol, not of God’s anger and wrath toward us, but of self-giving love? How might a reimagining of the cross energize us to stand against the death penalty, for example?

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
What if we saw our sacraments as calls to community that aren't grounded in power relationships, but equity? The Christian Tradition began not in halls of power and wealth, but with people who were marginalized—the poor.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
GracePointe is a diverse community. You may resonate with some, all, or none of this. My hope is that this invites you to think about what "Christian" means or has meant or what it could mean for you.

@josh_a_scott | #WhatIsProgressiveChristianity
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