The Center for Progressive Christianity (TCPC) was founded in 1996 by, retired Episcopal priest, James Rowe Adams in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is possibly the most progressive established Christian group within American Christianity. It is not a religious denomination, but a network of affiliated congregations, informal groups, and individuals.
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The stated mission of The Center for Progressive Christianity is:
One of TCPC's goals is to create a very broad tent. All people are welcome as affiliates. Their fourth point invites: "...all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to): believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, women and men, those of all sexual orientations and gender identities, those of all races and cultures, those of all classes and abilities, those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope." Most affiliates generally view religious belief as a process or journey—a searching for truth rather than establishing truth. Liberal Christians or post-Christians who stress justice and tolerance above creeds are also attracted to the movement.
Progressive Christians include people who:
The TCPC website gives an analogy that symbolizes the methodology of the Progressive Christianity movement. It involves a Sunday school teacher and a class of 9 or 10-year-olds. Even at that age, some were skeptical of the inerrancy of the Bible. The teacher suggested that they read Charlotte's Web instead. The class enjoyed the book. The teacher interjected the thought that pigs and spiders cannot talk. The kids protested: "Well, it's a story." The teacher asked whether the story was true. They decided that it was sort of true. "In a way, it was true." So the teacher suggested: "let's look at the Bible in the same way."
For the movement's founder, James Rowe Adams, "such open-ended and searching conversations are at the heart of what it means to be religious. They are the very thing he hopes to foster through the work of his small, but visionary organization. Education is at the core of the Center’s work, but it is a vision of education that calls for open-ended conversation, the use of scholarship and intellectual gifts, as well as personal experience and emotion."
The Eight Points are a series of ideas that describe the TCPC's approach to Christianity rather than a statement of faith or creed. It is more a description of how Progressive Christians approach life. They are paraphrased for brevity and to avoid copyright conflicts:
The Center for Progressive Christianity symbol is an eight-pointed star, representing the eight ideas that they hold in common.
The Progressive Christianity Website provides access to all of the Progressive Christianity web sites. It links to web sites in Britain, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Australia and the United States.