The fact that there’s no real community of “we” here is why this kind of thing just perpetuates the problem while claiming to resolve it. We don’t need one white man’s creed. We need communion. I sure wish all these exvangelical theobros would learn the difference.
Thanks, Kristen. You raise an important point. “New creeds” can easily become a substitute for real community — or even another barrier to it.
For clarity, I did try to qualify the “we” as a kind of “royal we” — shorthand for where I’m standing, not a claim to speak for anyone else (and I realize that nuance doesn’t always make it through in a comment thread).
I’m not drafting a communal creed. Just naming my own re-voicing of faith as it keeps evolving.
And I agree: communion matters more than creed. What I’m after — however imperfectly — is equitable, inclusive community where “we” means shared life: many voices, real belonging, unity that doesn’t flatten difference but protects and honours it.
If there’s a particular part that felt disconnected from that, I’m open to hearing it.
To clarify, I don’t have an issue with individuals drafting their own poetic responses to the creed as a way of working through their own personal grapplings with spirituality and religion. I am more reacting to how this reads like an advertisement for Oord and it being shared on social media (by Oord and others, to be fair, not by you) as a exemplary replacement for what was communally discerned over a period of hundreds of years and then grappled with communally for centuries. Our culture has lost all sense of that *actual* history, due to being inundated with decades of oversimplified Protestant narratives of church history that became popular because reactionary oversimplifications that allow for the transference of rage onto an ancient past always sells better than the truth. This is just the religion of capitalism - individualistic, split off from any sense of ancestral or inherited history, rooted in a privileged denial of death and suffering, and celebrating interpersonal enmeshment as a substitute for relational clarity. I’m not really critiquing what you wrote per se. It’s fine. I would say that the overuse of the poorly-defined (especially in English) word “love” makes it untenable as a communal statement. A lot of it feels like it’s using trending language and concepts as a sort of spiritual bypassing. The original creed you are basing this off of was a deep grappling with the nature of reality within a very different cosmology. I guess I’m mostly just tired of the hyperindividualistic cultural conditions that elevate this sort of thing over any real sense of shared meaning… where everyone has their “own” thing, where no one has any real regard for their responsibility towards the other or the planet, and where individual Protestant men are still hawking their theological ideas as the next new thing in order to advance their academic and publishing careers.
Thank you for elaborating. I can hear the larger cultural frustration you’re naming, and I do get it. Hyperindividualism and theology-as-product are real distortions.
Where I would gently differ is in how that critique is being applied here.
The early creeds were indeed communal — and also contested, political, and shaped by power dynamics alongside devotion and discernment. The tradition has never been static; Christians have always been interpreting, arguing, contextualizing, and re-articulating faith within changing understandings of reality. That ongoing wrestling isn’t a betrayal of history — it’s part of it.
What I’m doing here isn’t an attempt to replace communal discernment or market novelty. The questions I’m engaging are part of a broader conversation happening in communities, classrooms, pastoral settings, and online spaces where people are seriously engaging ancient voices and asking what faith looks like today in light of what we now know about the world, about people, and about lived experience. The medium may be digital, but the work itself is communal.
On “love”: I understand the concern about vagueness. But in my work, love isn’t a trending abstraction — it’s a specific theological claim about divine essence, stewardship of power, and relational responsibility, one I’ve explored academically and pastorally for years. If that doesn’t fully come through in a short essay, that’s a limitation of space, not seriousness.
I’ll also say gently that being grouped into a category like “theobro” or “hawking Protestant men” short-circuits meaningful conversation. You may disagree with my framing — that’s fair and welcome — but I’d rather we critique the substance of the ideas than assign motives or caricatures.
If anything, I see this exchange itself as evidence that communal wrestling isn’t lost. It’s happening — imperfectly, publicly, sometimes clumsily and tensely — but still in conversation. And that, to me, is part of the tradition.
Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective. I think we’re talking past each other a bit, so I’m going to leave it there.
I’m sorry again that all of this came across as me being critical of you personally. I understand why and that’s very much on me. I am also sorry you felt implicated in my comments about theobros. I was actually not thinking of you at all, but again, of some of the people who I know are curating and shaping the conversations you reference - in communities, classrooms, pastoral settings, and online spaces. I have been moving in these spaces for decades, and my concerns stem precisely from my own experiences with and in them. But that is my bone to pick with exvangelical culture in general. It has nothing to do with you. My academic background prior to theology was communication theory, so my concerns about the limits of digital conversation and the illusion of “community” it creates in the context of tech capitalism is a whole other topic. This conversation right here probably proves both of our points simultaneously.
On “love” - I don’t doubt that you have explored the concept in depth in your own writings. Again, I was mostly commenting on its usefulness in the context of communal confession. But then again, I am coming from a liturgical paradigm in which the whole purpose of a creed is communal confession in the context of prayer, not to make a personal statement of individual “belief.” It’s just a different paradigm. Sorry for the conflation of categories.
I'm actually planning a sermon series on the creeds after Easter and this is exactly the kind of framing I've been wanting to develop for it. May I include it as a bulletin insert, with credit of course?
Wow!!!! Resonated deeply and brought me to tears, I would like to use this in my church if that’s ok? With credit to you of course. It fits beautifully alongside all I have been teaching my folk. 💜
This is a beautifully crafted statement. Thank you for sharing it with us. In redefining these terms you have moved the inadequate ideas of the past to a new level. Hope you don’t mind being quoted!
The fact that there’s no real community of “we” here is why this kind of thing just perpetuates the problem while claiming to resolve it. We don’t need one white man’s creed. We need communion. I sure wish all these exvangelical theobros would learn the difference.
Thanks, Kristen. You raise an important point. “New creeds” can easily become a substitute for real community — or even another barrier to it.
For clarity, I did try to qualify the “we” as a kind of “royal we” — shorthand for where I’m standing, not a claim to speak for anyone else (and I realize that nuance doesn’t always make it through in a comment thread).
I’m not drafting a communal creed. Just naming my own re-voicing of faith as it keeps evolving.
And I agree: communion matters more than creed. What I’m after — however imperfectly — is equitable, inclusive community where “we” means shared life: many voices, real belonging, unity that doesn’t flatten difference but protects and honours it.
If there’s a particular part that felt disconnected from that, I’m open to hearing it.
To clarify, I don’t have an issue with individuals drafting their own poetic responses to the creed as a way of working through their own personal grapplings with spirituality and religion. I am more reacting to how this reads like an advertisement for Oord and it being shared on social media (by Oord and others, to be fair, not by you) as a exemplary replacement for what was communally discerned over a period of hundreds of years and then grappled with communally for centuries. Our culture has lost all sense of that *actual* history, due to being inundated with decades of oversimplified Protestant narratives of church history that became popular because reactionary oversimplifications that allow for the transference of rage onto an ancient past always sells better than the truth. This is just the religion of capitalism - individualistic, split off from any sense of ancestral or inherited history, rooted in a privileged denial of death and suffering, and celebrating interpersonal enmeshment as a substitute for relational clarity. I’m not really critiquing what you wrote per se. It’s fine. I would say that the overuse of the poorly-defined (especially in English) word “love” makes it untenable as a communal statement. A lot of it feels like it’s using trending language and concepts as a sort of spiritual bypassing. The original creed you are basing this off of was a deep grappling with the nature of reality within a very different cosmology. I guess I’m mostly just tired of the hyperindividualistic cultural conditions that elevate this sort of thing over any real sense of shared meaning… where everyone has their “own” thing, where no one has any real regard for their responsibility towards the other or the planet, and where individual Protestant men are still hawking their theological ideas as the next new thing in order to advance their academic and publishing careers.
Thank you for elaborating. I can hear the larger cultural frustration you’re naming, and I do get it. Hyperindividualism and theology-as-product are real distortions.
Where I would gently differ is in how that critique is being applied here.
The early creeds were indeed communal — and also contested, political, and shaped by power dynamics alongside devotion and discernment. The tradition has never been static; Christians have always been interpreting, arguing, contextualizing, and re-articulating faith within changing understandings of reality. That ongoing wrestling isn’t a betrayal of history — it’s part of it.
What I’m doing here isn’t an attempt to replace communal discernment or market novelty. The questions I’m engaging are part of a broader conversation happening in communities, classrooms, pastoral settings, and online spaces where people are seriously engaging ancient voices and asking what faith looks like today in light of what we now know about the world, about people, and about lived experience. The medium may be digital, but the work itself is communal.
On “love”: I understand the concern about vagueness. But in my work, love isn’t a trending abstraction — it’s a specific theological claim about divine essence, stewardship of power, and relational responsibility, one I’ve explored academically and pastorally for years. If that doesn’t fully come through in a short essay, that’s a limitation of space, not seriousness.
I’ll also say gently that being grouped into a category like “theobro” or “hawking Protestant men” short-circuits meaningful conversation. You may disagree with my framing — that’s fair and welcome — but I’d rather we critique the substance of the ideas than assign motives or caricatures.
If anything, I see this exchange itself as evidence that communal wrestling isn’t lost. It’s happening — imperfectly, publicly, sometimes clumsily and tensely — but still in conversation. And that, to me, is part of the tradition.
Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective. I think we’re talking past each other a bit, so I’m going to leave it there.
I’m sorry again that all of this came across as me being critical of you personally. I understand why and that’s very much on me. I am also sorry you felt implicated in my comments about theobros. I was actually not thinking of you at all, but again, of some of the people who I know are curating and shaping the conversations you reference - in communities, classrooms, pastoral settings, and online spaces. I have been moving in these spaces for decades, and my concerns stem precisely from my own experiences with and in them. But that is my bone to pick with exvangelical culture in general. It has nothing to do with you. My academic background prior to theology was communication theory, so my concerns about the limits of digital conversation and the illusion of “community” it creates in the context of tech capitalism is a whole other topic. This conversation right here probably proves both of our points simultaneously.
On “love” - I don’t doubt that you have explored the concept in depth in your own writings. Again, I was mostly commenting on its usefulness in the context of communal confession. But then again, I am coming from a liturgical paradigm in which the whole purpose of a creed is communal confession in the context of prayer, not to make a personal statement of individual “belief.” It’s just a different paradigm. Sorry for the conflation of categories.
Parts of this made my soul dance with yours. Keep dancing my friend.
🕺 yes-a divine dance! Thanks for the note.
I'm actually planning a sermon series on the creeds after Easter and this is exactly the kind of framing I've been wanting to develop for it. May I include it as a bulletin insert, with credit of course?
That’s great. Feel free to use it as you see best.
Wow!!!! Resonated deeply and brought me to tears, I would like to use this in my church if that’s ok? With credit to you of course. It fits beautifully alongside all I have been teaching my folk. 💜
Thanks for the note. If it’s helpful, be free to use it 🙂
This is a beautifully crafted statement. Thank you for sharing it with us. In redefining these terms you have moved the inadequate ideas of the past to a new level. Hope you don’t mind being quoted!
Thanks for the note, Larry.. I appreciate your thoughts.
Love it! I can say it without crossing my fingers more than a time or two.
Well, if it’s less than four finger crossings, it’s still constitutes telling the truth.
Appreciate you, Tim! (no fingers crossed)
I can and do recite the creeds as "signposts in a living tradition." And I can join you in this beautiful creed-in-progress of becoming and wholeness.