It was sometime in 1996. I was at a meeting with a group of other clergy and scholars in Southern California.  I was honored to be included in this group of approximately eighteen people, most of who were well known in their respective fields and endeavors. We were there to talk about forming a new Christian organization that might inspire and help empower mainline churches to respond to the growing influence that the religious right was having on public policy and programs in our governments at the time. I believe there was a second agenda. It was the assumption that if more churches got involved with what were largely social justice issues, they would begin to thrive again. There was also some talk about presenting a more informed, and possibly new terminology for the Christianity that we were going to represent.

In our next meeting I asked if we were ever going to discuss the theological and Christological foundation of this new organization. After all, Christian scholarship was going through a period of de-construction and it seemed to me that if we were going to be effective in the public place, possibly effecting public policy, we should have some clarity about what we believed. In other words, what would be the basis for our actions? Was it biblical? Which part of the Bible...Leviticus or the Prophets? Was it because Jesus instructed us to do these things? Who was Jesus? Was it because we had direct instructions from God? And what do we mean by the word "God?" Or are we simply compassionate, secular humanist. 

Everyone looked at me like I had stepped of a space ship. Finally after several minutes of near silence, the moderator suggested that I write a paper and present it to the group at the next meeting. It is probably no surprise that when I gave my paper, it was not well received. I even had a response that I would call hostile. I was not devastated but I was disappointed. 

There was a tall lanky man at that gathering, I did not recognize, sitting off to the side of the large conference table, quietly observing the exchange. I thought he was a visiting professor from one of the nearby Universities. Unlike some of the other attendees, he was not wearing anything that would suggest that he was clergy-just the same funky blue plaid sports coat that I would see for ten more years and grow to love. 

After the meeting was over, this same man walked up to me and handed me his card. Yes, it was Jim Adams, President of The Center for Progressive Christianity. I did not know it, but this was a turning point in my life. One long letter, packed with information about the new organization he was heading, a follow up phone call and the course of my life had been changed. 

By Janice Gregory

On October 13, 2011, James Rowe Adams, founder of The Center for Progressive Christianity, died at home after a year-long battle with brain cancer. He was 77. Amazingly, his boundless curiosity and zest for life stayed with him until the final few days. Janice Gregory, Vice President of TCPC, member of St Mark's Church and friend, reflects on his creative spirit.

"Some people must ask questions.  They are born that way," said Jim Adams.  And he was one of those people.  "Some people cannot accept Biblical miracle stories as historical fact," said Jim Adams.  And he was one of those people.

By being honest and open about where he was, Jim Adams opened the benefits of honest spirituality and open religious community to thousands of people...including me.  His primary crucible was his home parish church of thirty years, St. Mark's Episcopal in Washington, D.C.  Subsequently, he took that same open spirit to the establishment of The Center for Progressive Christianity.  

READ ON

By James R. Adams

People sometimes ask me about what I believe about God. I finally learned to say that the question of believing does not interest me very much. I'll be glad to talk to you about God but not about belief. As a way of entering conversation, I'll tell you what I mean when I speak of God. I don't mean that the way I talk about God is the same way you talk about God, but if we are going to have God talk, we must be willing to tell each other what we mean when we speak of God.

When I speak of God, I may be talking about what Stephen Hawking had in mind when he announced that the universe began with an intensely concentrated bit of matter about the size of a shriveled pea. Then came the big bang and everything that followed. When I talk about God, I may be speaking about how everything came to be.

Or it may be that when I speak of God, I am talking about the way we human beings have of recognizing how the world is, as opposed to the way we know the world ought to be. We know the world is a terrible mess -- filled with crime, catastrophe and disaster -- and we know it ought to be filled with love, justice and peace. When I talk about God, I may be referring to whoever or whatever planted in our minds an awareness of what is as opposed to what ought to be.

By James R Adams  

Skeptics, agnostics, and atheists of all sorts are finding that progressive Christian churches accept them just as they are without insisting that they conform their thought processes to some real or imagined standard. One person may be delighted to discover that participation in the life of a Christian church does not require belief in propositions that run contrary to scientific education and training. Another, who values honesty above all other virtues, experiences a genuine welcome in a church that puts more emphasis on intellectual integrity than on religious doctrine. A person who struggled unsuccessfully to accept what was taught in Sunday school feels at home in a church that does not demand the pretence of believing what seems to make no sense.  

The growth of a progressive Christian congregation may not lie in its ability to make believers out of skeptics or to talk conventional Christians into switching their loyalties. Rather, the increase in membership is most likely to be the result of evangelism, that is, letting secular discover what others have found of value in the life of the church.