Progressive Religion is an expression of faith held within the phrase: ‘Nothing Fixed or Final’.*
This is a creed in that Progressive Religion is not without belief, but that belief is always provisional because we are human. It involves a seeking after truth with the humility to admit that if we think we have found such truth, and we are tempted to frame and dogmatise it, then we have missed the point. Our understanding can never be complete, is always dynamic, always subject to change.
Progressive theology is predicated on the provisional nature of this religion and cannot ever be rooted in only one religious expression. While it may draw conclusions these are always open to critique, modification, change or even ultimately abandonment.
Progressive worship gives expression to such theology and it is the nature of liturgy and worship that they are not simply dependent on this theology, but are also the crucibles in which such theology is explored and sometimes formed.
*Sidney Carter once said that his creed was ‘Nothing Fixed or Final’ and I have found this has held for me thus far.
Category: Theology
Nothing fixed or final
Mystery and wonder,
love and compassion have freedom
when we recognise that
no ‘religious’ creed can ever be
fixed or final.
fixed or final.
Then love can encompass those we have,
in our wisdom,
deemed to be beyond love
even if our scripture and tradition
seem to tell us otherwise.
In every face that stares out from the manger
In every face that stares out from the manger,
each person bears the image of our God,
in Christ is human flesh affirmed and honoured,
for God has walked where human feet have trod.
In every face of youth, of age, each baby,
uplifted by the earth life of the Christ:
the stable bed, the cross of common torture,
marked off his life, these markers once sufficed.
And this we show, when we live incarnation,
to make God’s presence real for humankind,
the wine we drink, the bread so freely broken
speak of the love of God so richly mined.
And those who live and suffer in this moment,
the dispossessed, oppressed throughout the earth,
are raised beyond frustration and existence,
to know, in living, their uncommon worth.
© Stainer & Bell Ltd Please include on CCL returns if you have one. Andrew Pratt 28/11/2011
Tunes: O PERFECT LOVE or INTERCESSOR
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