“Christians in name only.” That’s what one evangelical preacher calls progressive Christians. He argued that anything not orthodox is heretical. (https://www.christianpost.com/news/is-progressive-christianity-biblical-ministry-leaders-discuss.html)

Jesus’s ministry was consumed debating literalists like him. For them, anything straying from literalism is heretical. So, what is progressive Christianity? Well, it is not heretical, but biblical.

Take the Lord’s Prayer. The progressive Christian teacher John Dominic Crossan calls it “Christianity’s greatest prayer,” “a revolutionary manifesto proclaiming a radical vision of justice.” When it asks for daily bread, it speaks of feeding the hungry. When it asks our debts be forgiven, it speaks of debts that turned free people into slaves.

Although shared by all Christians, conservative and progressive, Catholic and Protestant, priests and pastors and popes, it is a Jewish prayer, taught us by a Jewish rabbi.

Our church, Highlands Presbyterian, teaches and preaches “progressive Christianity.” What does that mean? How does it differ from what they preach across town?

All seek to be relationship with God. Progressive Christianity teaches there are many paths to that experience. Ours is only one, and we respect them all. Jesus provides the path we’ve chosen, but we can learn from the path others choose.

Repeating the Lord’s Prayer is our way of seeking an inclusive community that removes barriers based on skin color, sexual orientation or gender identity, social class, abilities or disabilities, and between believers and nonbelievers.

Progressive Christians do not focus on the hereafter, but the here-and-now. The way we behave toward others is the fullest expression of what we really believe. We take the Bible seriously, but not literally, finding more spiritual growth and a closer relationship with God and one another in asking questions than in claiming to have the answers.

We work for equity and justice for all of God’s creation and commit ourselves to a lifetime of learning. Finally, we believe that all of what we believe and how we act must pass the test established by what Jesus called “the Greatest Commandment:” love God and one another.

With that as context, we see the Lord’s Prayer as Crossan does. It is “a revolutionary manifesto proclaiming a radical vision of justice.”

A revolution from orthodoxy is necessary if the Earth is to become more like Jesus’s vision of heaven, as in “thy will be done, on Earth, as it is in heaven.” Progressive Christianity focuses on attaining the Kingdom of God on Earth, where we live, rather than obsessing with where we hope to be after we die.

If the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer intended to motivate us in the pursuit of divine justice, persistence is the only thing that makes sense. Peace and justice are at stake. From creation through the exodus to the teachings of the prophets to the Gospels, seeking justice is central to the scriptures.

Rather than waiting for what Crossan calls “God’s Great Cleanup” at the end of time, we make the best of the days we are given in our lifetime, always looking through the lens of the prayer Jesus taught us to pray.

“Give us this day our daily bread” is a call for equity for everyone, in everything from dignity to health care, from food on the table to a roof over our heads, peace of mind to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Justice and love are how the Bible creates a vision of a proper relationship among humans as the basis for a right relationship with the God of creation. So, the purpose of the Lord’s Prayer is not simply to give us a key element of our liturgy, but to give us a way of thinking about our responsibilities to God and one another, a revolutionary way.

Crossan uses the coin as a metaphor. The Lord’s Prayer is like the coin. Like the coin has heads and tails and neither can be separated from the other, the Lord’s Prayer is about prayer that cannot be separated from seeking justice. That’s progressive Christianity and it is biblical.

Rodger McDaniel lives in Laramie and is the pastor at Highlands Presbyterian Church in Cheyenne. Email: rmc81448@gmail.com.

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