Unpublished: The Wounds of Progressive Christians

Jana and I were once members of a new church plant when I was in graduate school. This was a church associated with our tradition but was more progressive, for that time and place at least. What happened was that a lot of people who had been hurt by our churches were attracted to this new church given it's progressive nature. That's a good thing, people were looking for healing. But it also brought with it a lot of anger, hurt and dysfunction. That church no longer exists.

One of the lessons Jana and I learned during that time is that it's hard to build a church upon a foundation of anger, resentment and hurt. It's hard to build a church around an identity that basically says, "We're not like those other churches."

It's often been noted that progressive theology is inherently reactionary, the moon to the evangelical sun.

But if that's the intellectual side of the equation, the hurt and anger is the emotional side.

--an unpublished post about the emotional woundedness that runs through progressive Christianity