A message from our Director, Rev. Deshna Charron Shine

We’re Building a Bigger Table

The table is too small. These are crucial times for the planet we call home. The toxic and institutionalized systems of racism, tribalism, colonialism, culture appropriation, sexism, and the general oppression of marginalized people have been thrust to the surface of our society. While this is scary and disturbing, it is also a positive step toward the eradication of white privilege, white fragility, and an empiric worldview. I say this is positive because it is forcing those of us who are privileged to wake up to a systemic culture of greed and fear that has been part of daily life for people of color and marginalized people since the beginning of modern history. These are systems and beliefs Jesus faced and why he was crucified. So why is this necessary for us?

Because we need a bigger table.

We need a bigger table because people of privilege are looking for a way forward to experience repentance, reparation, healing and transformation.

As Progressive Christians, we are called to the work of transformation that we have witnessed in the incredible life of Jesus. We have been teaching these values from our pulpits, from stages, behind cameras and to our readership. We have been gathering around a table and breaking bread and pouring wine, but that table is too small. We have met a moment in history that demands more of us.

I am inviting you to join in this movement. To help us build a bigger table that makes room for the marginalized voices to be heard. Your year-end gift will help us accomplish this!

In 2020, ProgressiveChristianity.org will be hosting in-person conversations and virtual gatherings with leaders in race reparation and climate justice. I’m asking my team and our international community to come together to create three new Christian Reparations Resolutions that we hope will be adopted by progressive Christians and progressive churches all over the world.

We’re building a bigger table. And we need your help.

These Resolutions will focus on 3 main roots of disharmony and injustice plaguing our world and Christianity:

1. Repentance for harmful actions, attitudes, and lifestyles as well as reparations for Indigenous peoples.

2. Repentance for harmful actions, attitudes, and lifestyles as well as reparations for People of Color.

3. Repentance for harmful actions, attitudes, and lifestyles as well as reparations for harm to Creation.

Your year end gift will help us build a bigger table to have these discussions as we pursue the creation and adoption of these resolutions.

When you give it will also enable us to create and distribute digital trainings for faith communities who are ready to affect real change in their local communities.

Healing and positive transformation are our goals here. Closer to radical inclusion and unity. However, to move toward healing we must first acknowledge where our ancestors and where we have missed the mark or have caused harm. We begin by acknowledging, then we ask forgiveness, then we resolve to do better. We can then fully begin to envision a world that is better than the one we have been handed down. We can see into the future, where a rainbow tribe covers the earth, respectful and authentic, as Jesus would have envisioned.

Progressive Christianity as a movement has an opportunity in this moment in history — and we need your help.

Thank you for your generous gift! Thank you for helping us build a bigger table. This is what churches and the followers of Jesus were meant to do.

Sincerely,

Rev. Deshna Charron Shine,
Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org
and Editor in Chief of Progressing Spirit Magazine