Category: Theology

Many people mistakenly think that Progressive Christianity is liberal Christianity. And to many people, this may be true. But not to me.

The Middle Way

Progressive Christianity is the middle path between conservative Christianity and liberal Christianity. It recognizes that truth is not conservative or liberal. The truth is the truth.

The conservative aspect of progressive Christianity, as I understand it, is that we ought to hold to the traditional faith until evidence forces us to reconsider.

At the point of reconsidering a traditional doctrine, you must be careful to conserve the truth of the doctrine while contemporizing its expression.

Translate and Transform

This goes back to the old adage of translating the faith versus transforming the faith. It also goes back to try to discern the essential aspects of the faith from the non-essential aspects of the faith.

We must translate when we can, and transform when we must. But we should not abandon the essentials of the traditional faith. Which means we have to carefully discern what are the actual essentials of the faith, and what is an artifact of the cultural context in which it was declared.

Not Easy

This is not an easy process. But it is a process that must be done if we want to be honest with the facts of science, history, and modern scholarship.

The liberal aspect of progressive Christianity, is that we translate and even transform the faith based upon the best available evidence. Ultimately we are in the pursuit of Truth, because all truth is God’s truth.

The Buddha Discovered God

“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.” (Udana 8.3 Ānandajoti Bhikkhu).

I studied Buddhism in depth for over a decade. I can tell you that the Buddha discovered God. Not as a supreme being, but as the unconditioned Ground of Being.

I believe that the reason the Buddha did not identify this Ground of Being as God, is because in his culture gods were supreme beings, limited in their ability, and situated in heaven. None of the gods he knew from his culture fit the reality that he discovered.

Now compare his understanding of the ground of being with the best Christian definition of God by David Bentley Hart:

God “is the infinite fullness of being, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, from whom all things come and upon whom all things depend for every moment of their existence, without whom nothing at all could exist.”

See how well this matches the Buddhas definition of “an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned.” You can see from this the Buddha did in fact discover God.

We must understand that the Buddha did not have revelation. He discovered God through meditation. He therefore was limited in his understanding of God. He did not understand all that is revealed in Scripture, in Christ, and through the church.

In the words of Kwame Anthony Appiah:

“In sum, identities come first, with labels and ideas why and to whom they should be applied. Second, your identity shapes your thoughts about how you should behave; and, third, it affects the way other people treat you. Finally, all these dimensions of identity are contestable, always up for dispute: who’s in, what they’re like, how they should behave and be treated.”

Notice that “your identity shapes your thoughts about how you should behave.” Think of the times we are told, “Little girls don’t act that way.” Or “big boys don’t cry.”

Says Who?

Now ask the question nobody is supposed to ask, “Says who?” Who says boys can’t try and girls can’t play with trucks? Well, who decreed it?

The patriarchy sold it to society, and now it is a social construct. By patriarchy, I mean “a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it” (OED).

Yes, patriarchy is a real thing. And yes, patriarchy is bad. “For centuries,” writes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group.”

Do I really have to tell you that this is wrong? That is why I am a feminist. I believe women have equal rights with men and should be allowed to do whatever men do, with the same rate of pay.

Women and LGBTQ+

Identity also “affects the way other people treat you.” I was happy that 2021 saw Kamala Harris sworn in as the 49th vice president of the United States.

It took so long because, until recently, women were not considered capable of leading. But the role of women is slowly changing. Unfortunately, under the Trump administration, we’re taking steps backwards.

But the LGBTQ+ people are still struggling to improve “the way other people treat” them. And of these people, the trans community is the least accepted. They are the most persecuted group in the United States today, and they’re some of the most loving people.

This ongoing and unslowing epidemic of violence committed against transgender and gender non-conforming people continues to climb and claim the lives of too many each year in the United States and across the globe (GLAAD).

As Kathryn Gonzales and Karen Rayne explain:

“Gender is a social construct that assigns people roles, tasks, responsibilities, and expected ways of being in the world.”

Biological Sex

Biological sex is not the same thing as gender identity. This is the hardest thing for some people to understand.

Biological sex is not something you choose. You are born with male or female genitalia. Some are born with both.

Gender Identity

Gender identity is one’s own internal sense of who they are. They know this to be true regardless of what others say. This is also something they do not choose. They are born that way.

Gender identity is not just a masculine and feminine thing. It is more complicated. I will only mention nonbinary here as an example.

Now, in a small minority of people, their biological sex and their gender identity do not match. These people are known as transgender. This is how they were born. It is not something they choose.

Honor Trans-People

Just because you do not have this mismatch of sex and gender, doesn’t mean that everybody is like you. That’s just ignorant. It is important to honor people for trying to be honest about who they are.

It’s frustrating to see them persecuted, when they’re hurting nobody. They’re just trying to be who they’re created to be. They are real and their experiences are real. I don’t care what bigoted Christians say.

References

Kathryn Gonzales and Karen Rayne, Trans+: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You. Washington, DC: Magination Press, 2019.

“God is not a man” (Numbers 23:19 NKJV).

The true God does not have a body, and therefore does not have male or female sex organs. God has no biology, so God cannot be a biological male or female. God is not literally a Father, Mother, Son, or Daughter.

Sex and Gender

But if we are going to talk about gender, we must make a distinction between sex and gender. “Gender,” states the World Health Organization, “refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed.”

Sex refers to a person’s physical anatomy such as sex organs, sex chromosomes and internal reproductive structures. Gender identity is the inner feelings of whether you’re female or male, both, or neither. This is separate from biological sex.

Is God a Male?

So what gender is God? It depends, are we talking about God’s self view or are we talking about society’s projection unto God. Because of the male patriarchy, God is usually portrayed as male. This is not God’s self identity.

The fact is that in the Bible, God is never directly referred to as being female. This is probably because all the authors were males with a male centric view of things. However, there are times when the feminine slips in under the radar.

The Feminine

For example, it says that “God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Gen 1:26–27). Here, God’s image is both “male and female.”

And God as seen as a Mother, for it is “God who gave you birth” (Deut 32:18). And God comforts Israel “As a mother comforts her child” (Isa 66:13). In the Hebrew language, the word for Spirit (rûaḥ) is a feminine noun. And even Jesus compares himself to a mother hen (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34).

God is Gender Fluid

So what gender is God? God is gender fluid. For God, gender is a social construct, therefore God has no sex or gender. However, when related to humans, God dresses up in a gender that suits the social context. In saying that God is gender fluid I mean God may identify as male one day, female the next, both male and female, or neither.

The Way of Accommodation

However, all this talk of God’s gender being fluid is in the way of accommodation, not actuality.

Personality is a limitation, God is unlimited, therefore God is not a person. God is not a being, but rather is the Ground Of Being.

So God is beyond limiting attributes. So literally God is without personhood, gender, or any other limiting quality. It is just that we cannot relate to an abstract. So ultimately it is language that dresses God up so we can relate to God as a He, She, or Them.