Progressive Churches Have a new Chance to Be real: Parabolically

Churches have spent a long time in the land of institutional danger. We fight. We split. We have different ideas about just about everything. Some of us love politics and see them as part of religion. Others think that politics and religion don’t mix. Jon Dominick Crossan, theologian and one of the founders of the Jesus movement, argued that Christian religion has something to do with Jesus. In fact, it has everything to do with Jesus — and whatever else it talks about is “adiaphora.” Adiaphora is Martin Luther’s famous term. It means the nonessentials. The pews. The roofs. The plumbing. The kind of pastor they want — male, good looking, 2.3 children and preaches a lot of sentimental happy H.S. The President could send federal troops into his neighborhood to “keep” the peace and you’d not hear a peep about it from his pulpit. “Too risky,” he would say, using language that Jesus would equate with cursing.

Unfortunately, the adiaphorists have ruined religion. Most religious institutions were in mortal danger before the double pandemics and are now in hospice. Private ministry, parochial ministry, “my” church ministry have shown their uselessness. People prefer their kids’ soccer to Sunday School. They aren’t wrong. Parochial, privatized religion, the kind that makes no peeps, makes no people either. It leaves us spiritually stranded…