Progressive Christianity

You've heard that church attendance and the number of people claiming to belong to any organized religion-Christian, Abrahamic, or otherwise-have fallen drastically. Meanwhile, politicians lie and the media are biased. Even the people who go to church are discriminatory and seem to be stuck in the 1950s. What's a progressive to do? Are we forced into safe cocoons, reaching out only to other progressives? Can secular humanists join in?

Progressive Christianity: Caterpillar to Butterfly focuses on the five individual behaviors taught in the New Testament. Author Gary Gocek asks whether he loves God, loves his neighbors, lives humbly, lives righteously, and serves others. In the course of reflecting on these questions, four spiritual disciplines are discussed: worship, prayer, study, and vocation. Finally, ten pathways forward are presented, independent of each other, but culminating-through the help of divine grace-in emergence as a butterfly wearing the full armor of God.

Along the way, the difficulties of trying to be inclusive and radically humanizing are discussed. Traditionalist criticisms are considered. A definition of patriarchal Darwinism is offered in order to argue against systems allowing only male leadership with women in subordinate roles. A substantial annotated bibliography is included.