An Urgent Call To Church Leaders
Instead of emphasizing your differences and the unique merits of your particular "brand" of Christianity, help us together to rediscover a "big tent" Christianity, one that emphasizes the gospel of hope that we share and not the historical differences that have divided us.
We, the ordinary people in churches, do not need a new Creed or manifesto. We need to hear in visionary terms how the core message of the Christian tradition can still speak powerfully to our world. More and more of us are pragmatic idealists. We are not interested in detailed doctrinal disputes, in negative campaigning on behalf of traditional theological distinctions, in intolerance and exclusivity. We want relevance. But we are also quick to recognize when content evaporates and churches serve up nothing more than re-warmed values of the surrounding culture, accompanied by the remnants of traditional Christian practice.
Listen to us also! We really believe that Jesus' message continues to be relevant to our contemporary culture, that it has something powerful to offer to a world in crisis. We believe in a gospel that is neither conservative, in the sense of exclusivist and reactionary, nor liberal, in the sense that it forsakes all content, despenses with God, and merely covers over pop psychology or political correctness with a thin veneer of vaguely Christian language. Lead us in finding and formulating a middle way between these extremes, since we believe that the heart of Christianity lies here!
from: "Transforming Christian Theology: For Church and Society", Philip Clayton, Fortress Press, 2010