Evolutionary Spirituality

We evolve.
Just as every human being passes through developmental stages of life from infancy to adulthood, so we may move through worldviews of increasing complexity in response to changing life conditions. These worldviews determine our “reality” – our beliefs, assumptions, purpose, and values – what appears to us as good, true, and beautiful. Reality is defined by our worldview. Each emerging worldview transcends, yet includes, previous worldviews. One is not “better” than another.

Truth evolves.
This doesn’t mean there is no truth; rather there is no single, fixed, truth. As we evolve, our capacity to see and integrate new dimensions of truth becomes more complex and nuanced. The assumption that there is unchanging truth in which all must believe, or suffer eternal consequence, is contrary to evolutionary spirituality. It has also been the cause of much religious violence.

Divine revelation didn’t stop 2000 years ago in Palestine.
(But Jesus was a particularly radiant occasion of it.) There is a “blessed unrest” at work in the universe and in our own lives that causes us to yearn for and realize an awakening of consciousness to Spirit, and deeper expressions of compassion. Revelation never stops.

The future is open.
There is no divine blueprint that predetermines the future. God’s main “plan” is for us to keep growing in love, and in our capacity to see our lives and our world through enlarged perspectives. 

The future is coming, though us!
Natural selection has become actual selection in humans. Creation didn’t happen once upon a time 14 billion years ago. (The Big Bang was just the beginning). God is still creating – through us! Humans enjoy the unique spiritual vocation of consciously co-creating the future.

We are the universe.
Humans are concentrated amalgams of the entire universe. Based upon the best evolutionary science available to us, we are biologically kin with all of creation. When we wake up to this, we begin to love all creation from the inside out.  We naturally participate in the repair of our planet by cherishing our kinship. 

 

Evolution is Spirit’s nudge. Love is Spirit’s pull.
The evolutionary dynamic represents the non-coercive presence and intention of the Sacred for all of creation to grow into, and express, the fullness and freedom of Spirit. Love’s intention allures us from an unformed future towards God’s dream for creation (the Kin-dom of God). To open to this push and pull is to be in God.

Christianity evolves.
Like life itself, the Christian religion is always in the process of transcending, yet including, earlier forms of itself. Traditions, structures, and processes that help us to thrive are carried forward and celebrated while those that stifle spiritual evolution are naturally left behind." (God is not finished with us yet!)

What Colour Is Your Christ?

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By Christian spirituality we mean:

• One that is open-hearted and open-minded

• Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus.
  
  
• Recognize and celebrate that there are other valid paths to God; these paths are true for those who pursue them as our path is true for us.
  
  
• Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life together without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to)
  
  
  • believers and agnostics
  • sceptics
  • women and men
  • those of all sexual orientation and gender identities
  • those of all races and cultures
  • those of all classes and abilities
  • introverts and extroverts
    
    
    
• Know that how we behave toward one another is more important than what we believe, and that how we treat each other is the fullest manifestation of what we believe.
  
  
• Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty; living the questions is more important than having the answers.
  
  
• Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to; striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God’s creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his brothers and sisters.
  
  
• Celebrate Scripture as our primary source of inspiration and guidance, recognizing that we mean to take it seriously but not literally. As well we do not regard the New Testament as being in anyway superior to, or the fulfillment of, the First Testament. The Jewish narratives and history found in the First Testament are employed by the earliest disciples and by subsequent generations of Christians to make meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; this meaning is enriched by our Jewish roots, but does not replace it.
  
  
• Understand the sharing of bread and cup in Jesus’ name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God’s feast for all peoples, and is therefore open to all.