Re-visioning Our Faith Story: Where Are We on the Evolutionary Journey?

Spring 2012: CCCR, like the Church, like all organizations, like the whole creation project, is evolving. 

We have accomplished some modest goals since our conception in December 2008.  We have come together as a community in Synods 2010 and 2011, worked  in small groups to move the local church from passive acceptance to active engagement on the archdiocesan level, and together we have launched a vehicle for making our voices heard—the Council of the Baptized.  Check www.councilofthebaptized.org to learn what the Council is doing since its beginning in January 2012.

So where does CCCR find itself now and how can we evolve intentionally from here?

We don’t think we can move forward without a comprehensive, motivating,  big picture vision that weaves all the fragments of our experience together.  It is the role of institutional religion to provide that big picture vision for people.   But our institutionalized religions are struggling; they are evolving too.  The number of people who are turning away from institutional religion (I’m spiritual but not religious) is an indication of the problem institutional religion is having in meeting people’s need for big picture compelling vision.

So what exactly are we talking about?  Stepping way back to get a long view of our experience, what do we see?  Does the human race have a sense of where it is going and how to get there?  We see chaos, polarity, disunity, conflict all around us and especially in the realm of religion where people seek meaning.  What does it all mean?  The children of Abraham—Jews, Christians, Muslims—are killing each other.  Each religion has division in internal conflict.  Christians are slaying each other with words.  Catholic Christians are angry and at odds or are carefully segregating themselves in like-minded parishes and small communities so they will not be angry and at odds.  Religious leaders no longer speak with authority.  Many people, raised Christian are saying, “None of it makes sense. We can live a good life without religion.”

Aware of all this conflict, we are asking, “Is there a vision-- a lens for seeing, a framework for thinking—that will enable all of us to live together in peace?  Is there a common story in which we all can feel at home, so we can pitch in together for social justice, to solve the problems that need solving for the planet’s well-being?   What would the common story be?  Can we extrapolate meaning from the evolutionary account that astrophysics and evolutionary science has given us in the last 150 years? 

As Christians, our pole star is Jesus of Nazareth and the message he was: God loves the universe that burst forth from the inner life of divinity.  The incarnation guarantees us hope, “freedom from radical anxiety,” in the words of David Tracy, Catholic theologian   That is our faith: God loves the universe and is present in it, directing it toward ultimate wholeness.  That is the Easter mystery.

How over the millennia of time did humans become conscious of our place in this big picture, and how do the world religions fit into cultural evolution?  Is there a coherent story we can use to help us work together as a human race? 

We may not have answers, but we can ask the questions anyway.  The CCCR Board is going on retreat together, May 4 and 5, to start this conversation.

Others in our community have been working with these questions for years now.  We hope to join forces with them and to carry the conversation into all the quadrants of the Archdiocese during the Fall of 2012 to the Fall of 2013.  On September 28, Synod of the Baptized 2013, we have invited Ilia Delio, osf, a theologian who uses the evolutionary cosmic story provided by science to reinterpret the meaning of Jesus the Christ.

You are invited to join this conversation in any way your imagination leads you.  Call (612) 379-1043 to volunteer to help.

Go to Evolutionary Christianity bibliography on the website’s main menu for readings on this subject.