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Reflections on John Hick

Tuesday 14th February 2012 | Author: Matt Hicks

This article is written by Matt Hicks, a regular contributor to the PCN forum.

For many people who tread a humanist path, there is often a history of a traumatic and initially disenfranchising break from the religion of their upbringing. For many others, and myself there is one man who either eased the break somewhat or gave their faith a stay of execution. So it is with sadness and fondness that I reflect on the influence of John Hick who passed away yesterday.

Charity as Beside the Point (Part 2)

Thursday 12th January 2012 | Author: Andrew Parker

In the second of two articles on the condescending nature of charity, Andrew Parker claims we should ask not what we can do to for others, but what we can do for ourselves. Those who have been marginalised can already see what we cannot see; how we much are tied into the existing domination system.

You must not get caught up in the wishy-washy liberal view along the lines that as the bourgeois revolution was focused on helping the middle-classes find life in the teeth of some pretty awful oppression so the socialist revolution was focused on helping the proletarian classes and likewise the marginal revolution will be focused on helping the marginals. Such an understanding misrepresents not just the Bible but also the modern class revolutionary battles as well...

Charity as Beside the Point (Part 1)

Wednesday 11th January 2012 | Author: Andrew Parker

This article by Andrew Parker was written over a year ago for a church magazine in Suffolk but somehow never got published. Was it just too radical? Given the growing support in the Church of England for the Occupy campaign, one hopes that the editors of the parish magazine might now think again. But in case they don’t, here it is for all to read. He wrote a follow up which will be available here soon.

Christianity and Judaism are nearly always associated in people’s minds with charitable works and pity for the poor. Because of this I found it interesting to discover that neither Jesus nor the revolutionary Hebrew writers considered charity as the object of the exercise they were involved in which was ‘world salvation’ or as we would put it ‘the transformation of human civilisation’...

Jim Adams, founder of the first progressive Christian network

Wednesday 28th September 2011 | Author: John Churcher

This tribute to Jim Adams, who died in Sept 2011, is by the PCN Britain chair, John Churcher.

Progressive Christianity has lost another important guide and encourager with the death of James Rowe Adams on 13th September, 2011. Jim established the first progressive Christianity organisation [The Center for Progressive Christianity] in 1994 while he was Rector at St Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.