A Sound of Sheer Silence

We have discussed this before: Some people actually mean "right body" when they say "orthodox". — Broderick Greer (@BroderickGreer) April 27, 2017 Yesterday in the Twitterverse, or at least in the portion of the Twitterverse I interact with, there was a long discussion of an article by Rev. Tish Harrison Warren , a priest of the Anglican Church of North America (which is relevant to this discussion, but more on that later).  The claim of the article is that the Christian blogosphere (which, I suppose I should disclose in case it wasn't obvious, includes me, I guess) is run a muck because all sorts of people are writing things without being subject to proper authority.  And the person offered as the poster-child for this problem was Jen Hatmaker .  I will confess to not being familiar with her work prior to yesterday, but evidently Hatmaker recently come out in support of LGBT relationships in a Christian context , provoking the now-predictable backlash . ...

All theology is contextual. Don't let anyone tell you that yours is contextual just because you're a minority. — Broderick L Greer (@BroderickGreer) April 2, 2017 Rev. Greer, in a short and pithy tweet, sums up the substance of the second big idea in progressive theology—all theology is contextual theology.  Upon further reflection, I have come to believe that this principle represents the biggest departure from the theology that has come before, and the biggest challenge to our more conservative brothers and sisters.  The fighting that we see between “conservative” or “liberal” has its origin and draws its strength from this divide. To begin, we have to talk about what contextual theology is.  In general use, and this is the thing Greer is challenging, contextual theology is used as a catch-all category for theological projects that come out of, and are explicitly done in reference to, some particular group of people who are coming out of some particular experienc...