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Progressive Brethren Summit wrap-up

November 13, 2008 · 4 Comments

Did you attend the Progressive Brethren Summit in Indianapolis this past weekend? Any burning thoughts or questions you want to share? Post a comment and let’s keep the discussion about how progressives can keep the faith alive!

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4 responses so far ↓

  • Travis // November 16, 2008 at 7:58 am | Reply

    I’ve been thinking a lot about progressivism sine I left the conference. I wrote a blog post about it. I still have to add thoughts about progressive faith, but I think the basic ideas still hold.

    Here’s the first paragraph:

    Progressivism is, at its root, a political approach of contextual pragmatism grounded in a far-ranging vision for the good of the community. There are three basic components to this approach: vision, action and community. Additionally, it is non-ideological (nonpartisan), questioning, and emerging.

    You can read the rest of it at
    http://blog.travispoling.com/2008/11/who-are-progressives.html

  • Audrey // November 17, 2008 at 10:17 pm | Reply

    Thanks for sharing this link with us. This is really good work here.

    One thing I wonder is whether the term ‘progressive’ is the best for our purposes. What happened to being ‘radical?’ Could we be radical progressives? Progressively radical? (Those almost sound like oxymorons.) But as a member of the radical left wing of the Reformation, I kind of want to claim that, claim our restorationist beliefs, just as much as I want to strain forward for progress. I think our radicalism (i.e. the way we go to the ROOTS of Churchhood) is one of the ways we really differentiate ourselves from other, mainline churches with ‘progressive’ beliefs. We really do offer something different than newer, emerging churches, or at least, we could…

  • anna lisa gross // November 18, 2008 at 6:58 pm | Reply

    Thanks for these thoughts, Travis and Audrey!
    Progressive is certainly a step up from liberal, a word that I only use disparagingly.
    I wrote about the insidious sexism I experienced at the conference at my blog: http://www.thefeministreview.com.
    “Being progressive together would be far more meaningful and enlightening if we first poured energy and insight into the way we gather together – who does the work, who gets the credit. What we eat, what we eat it on. Where we gather, and how we get there.” Read the full post.

  • Jan Eller // November 29, 2008 at 7:03 pm | Reply

    As one who was sick and couldn’t attend the conference, I’m interested in these comments. My first thought is–when did liberal get to be such a bad word? When I was younger, we were proud to call ourselves liberal. Now, all of a sudden, the younger generation has decided that liberal is a bad word and we should use progressive.

    My other response came after reading Anna Lisa’s words about women in leadership. I remember when I was part of a planning committee for a Women’s Event in La Verne in 1988. We were challenged to provide honorariums for women in leadership. As one who has planned several conferences over the years, it seems like a great idea, but the reality is that churches can’t raise their registration fees enough to give cash to every leader. I think it’s a grand objective, but in reality, it doesn’t work very well. The reasoning was that women provide much of the background work and small group leadership, but are rarely in charge of forums or lectures or other large gatherings. If we valued the leadership of women, then we ought to provide them with an honorarium. It would be wonderful to be able to do so.

    Having said that, I heard from several who attended that the 3-hour plenary session about the Bible led by a man was one of the highlights of the conference. It would have been great for a woman to have been the session leader, but that’s not how it worked out. So I’m not sure we ought to be throwing brickbats at the planners because the lead session was led by a man. Audrey’s response about the whole conference being basically white folk is also a concern.

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