The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology
Ebook
The Great Open Dance offers a progressive Christian theology that endorses contemporary ideals: environmental protection, economic justice, racial reconciliation, interreligious peace, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ celebration. Just as importantly, this book provides a theology of progress--an interpretation of Christian faith as ever-changing and ever-advancing into God's imagination. Faith demands change because Jesus of Nazareth started a movement, not a tradition. He preached about a new world, the Kingdom of God, and invited his followers to work toward the divine vision of universal flourishing. This vision includes all and excludes none. Since we have not yet achieved the world that Jesus describes, we must continue to progress. The energizing impulse of this progress is the Trinity: Abba, Jesus, and Sophia, three persons united by love into one perfect community. God is fundamentally relational, and humankind, made in the image of God, is relational as a result. We are inextricably entwined with one another, sharing a common purpose and a common destiny. In this vision, we find abundant life by practicing agape, the universal, unconditional love that Abba extends, Jesus reveals, and Sophia inspires.
“I love this book! Jon Paul Sydnor offers an open and agapic vision whose specifics I sometimes agreed with, sometimes disagreed with, and often learned something new. Thanks to it, I finally understand what Sydnor means by nonduality. But what I liked most was Sydnor’s insistence on the centrality of love. This is a progressive Christian theology for the head and heart!”
—Thomas Jay Oord, author of Pluriform Love
“The Great Open Dance is a lucid testimony to a Christian faith that journeys through our world with its eyes wide open to all the good and bad around and within us. Jon Paul Sydnor brings a lifetime of learning, living, and loving to his reflections, yet he keeps his account light and inviting, accessible to a wide range of readers. His views on Christ, the church, and the faith are quite strong and pointed, but always presented with real charity, for the good of persons and communities of faith today.”
—Francis X. Clooney, SJ, professor of divinity, Harvard University
“Engaging gender-expansive language, emergent understandings of the universe, vital inter-religious conversations, and the complex Christian theological inheritance, Jon Paul Sydnor presents a fresh, confident vision that will surely shape a generation of progressive Christian thinkers.”
—Michelle Voss, professor of theology, Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology
- Title: The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology
- Author: Jon Paul Sydnor
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781666775174, 9781666775167, 1666775169, 9781666775150, 1666775150, 1666775177
- Resource ID: LLS:9781666775174
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-05-07T23:14:52Z