A Day to Bare Our Souls - and Find Ourselves

THOUGHTS FROM THE PROGRESSIVE FAITH BLOGCON

What a wonderful experience it was!! Tremendous, respectful, energizing people with specific tools to help each other.

I am excerpting a post of XPatriatedTexan's because he so masterfully said what I think many of us there were thinking:

Like many of you, I have grown tired of hearing my faith attached to issues that I find to be tangential, positions that I find untenable, and to a vitriolic glee that I find unholy. I find myself unable to remain on the sidelines, quietly working to lead by example alone. When I began looking for someone to speak for me publicly, I found myself again and again looking into the mirror. As imperfect a tool as I saw looking back at me, it was the only tool I had at my disposal.

YES!!

As a mom of twins who are getting old enough to ask me a lot of questions about not only God (they are being raised Christian by my agreement with their father - while I go on with my stop & start conversion) and questions about why our country does what it does and acts the way it does - I feel accountable. Highly accountable to them. Once again, XPatriated Texan puts this into words beautifully!:

But what is faith? When put into action, faith is a means of guiding your behavior - including a set of ethical and moral precepts by which you determine your personal course of action. In simplest terms, faith is a means of making decisions. It can’t possibly tell you immediately what the preferable course of action is in many circumstances, but it can help define what the acceptable limits of behavior are.

So are we really to believe that we should take this system for making decisions and avoid using it when we try to make decisions that effect everyone around us? That’s insane!

The problem with faith in the public square isn’t that it shouldn’t be there, the problem is that it isn’t fully represented. But to live in the public square, liberal faith must be able to articulate a meaningful dialogue. It must reach people where they live and breathe and motivate them to work for a better, more just society.

Faith should not dominate the public square, but it must have a place there. To fight that is to embrace defeat. This does not mean that faith should have an elevated position in the public square. No, it must join the battle of ideas and be met on its merits. It must carve out a sphere where it can show itself plainly.

This is why I called for - and reached out for the help of good people to produce - the Progressive Faith BlogCon. Starting tomorrow night, we will look into each other’s face and find, not ecumenicism, but plurality. We do not seek to hide our differences for the sake of our similarities, but to celebrate our similarities for the sake of preserving our differences.

Untested faith is not faith, it is hope. A faith unwilling to encounter ideas that do not mesh with it fully is not the bright candle to guide mankind, but the fearful candle that is hidden under a bushel. Similarly, a plurality that is unwilling to allow all people to speak freely of their beliefs and actions is not a plurality, it is a dictatorship.

This reminded me of a line in a speech I heard on the closing evening of the NSP conference in Washington, DC in April. "Are we BIG ENOUGH to include everyone?" Yes, are we big enough to be inclusive rather than EXclusive of those who are tried of their faith being co-opted for political gain? Regardless of religious or party affiliation? Are we? Something to think about for sure.