It's so very difficult for Christians to build communities of trust and truth when those communities are largely, in our culture, reactionary.
If you're looking to establish a new faith community, don't do it simply because you've been hurt by sisters and brothers. I realize this move is meant to be one for those who are seeking healing. But it's hard to build genuine friendships with God and with others, when you're rationale amounts to: "We're not like those others churches".
It's often been claimed that, given our cultural climate in which you're either "progressive" or "conservative", this makes Christians inherently reactionary. And that may well be the intellectual side of things. (Though I still think both of those are flip sides of one another.)
But the emotive side is just as important: If anger is all you have to bind you together, you don't have much.
This is why churches -- whether they be radically fundamentalist or radically progressive -- tend not to last long.
It's so hard for the fruits of the Spirit to take hold if the ground is rocky with such anger.
If you're looking to establish a new faith community, don't do it simply because you've been hurt by sisters and brothers. I realize this move is meant to be one for those who are seeking healing. But it's hard to build genuine friendships with God and with others, when you're rationale amounts to: "We're not like those others churches".
It's often been claimed that, given our cultural climate in which you're either "progressive" or "conservative", this makes Christians inherently reactionary. And that may well be the intellectual side of things. (Though I still think both of those are flip sides of one another.)
But the emotive side is just as important: If anger is all you have to bind you together, you don't have much.
This is why churches -- whether they be radically fundamentalist or radically progressive -- tend not to last long.
It's so hard for the fruits of the Spirit to take hold if the ground is rocky with such anger.