Unlike most of the people who seem to be writing to you, I don’t come out of a conservative Christian background. I grew up among moderate Roman Catholics, broke with the Catholic Church because of political commitments I had that conflicted with the church’s policies, and ended up being a tourist at some liberal Protestant churches and a dabbler in Eastern philosophy until I decided that I needed a spiritual home base and ended up becoming a Unitarian-Universalist.
It was, ironically, through the UU church, which has all but abandoned Christianity (at least in practice in most places, which is why I am now a regular at a local Presbyterian church), that I had the freedom to think about my relationship to Christianity and to Jesus in a way that centered on what I did believe in rather than having a doctrine handed to me and starting with the parts of it I didn’t believe. Your work has been a blessing, especially post-election, when I’ve found myself doing a lot of praying for understanding and compassion.
To get to the question part of my question, I was wondering how you think about process theology? It was through reading about process thought that I was able to imagine for myself a Christianity sustainable in the postmodern world, and it is what brought me back to the church. However, once I made the move back in, I realized that, for all of the wonderful insights I think process thought has into God’s workings in the world (and particularly about prayer), it seems to be lacking when it comes to explaining why Jesus is important. For me, that’s where your work has really come in, but I still think there is a lot to be gained from the process perspective, and I was wondering what your take on it is.
Great question. Tielhard de Chardin’s work in process theology has been discredited to some degree by the highly modern tone of his writing, but he was a man of his age, as we all are, and I believe that while he may have gone too far in some ways, still he offers some helpful insights. In many ways, “process theology” has a lot to do with “narrative theology” – both seeking to understand where we are in an unfolding story, rather than in relation to inert states. I am a big fan of John Haught’s “God After Darwin” for the ways he integrates process theology (drawing from A. N. Whitehead) with a high Christology which emphasizes Christ’s “kenosis” or self-emptying. He integrates all this with the “eschatological realism” of Pannenberg et al, which yields, for me, a very hopeful and dynamic approach. I’m glad if my work has been of help to you in this regard. These are exciting times!