Living the Questions
Living the Questions is a “DVD and web-based curriculum" designed to help people evaluate the relevance of Christianity in the 21st century, especially from a progressive Christian perspective.
Overview
LtQ was co-created in the US by the Arizonan United Methodist ministers Jeff Procter-Murphy and David Felten as part of the larger movement of Progressive Christianity. It is distributed online and through several denominational publishing divisions.the LtQ curriculum is in use in nearly 8000 churches across North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
Curriculum
The curriculum was original developed for use at Asbury United Methodist and Via de Cristo United Methodist in Arizona. It started out as one DVD series and is now a growing catalogue of curriculum. Units include;- Living the Questions 2.0: An Introduction to Progressive Christianity
- Saving Jesus Redux
- Eclipsing Empire: Paul, Rome and the Kingdom of God with John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, on location in Turkey
- First Light: Jesus and the Kingdom of God with John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, on location in the Galilee and Jerusalem
- Countering Pharaoh's Production/Consumption Society Today with Walter Brueggemann
- Questioning Capital Punishment with Sr. Helen Prejean
- Tex Mix: Stories of Earthy Mysticism with Tex Sample
- Jesus for the Non-Religious with John Shelby Spong
- Uppity Women of the Bible with Lisa Wolf
- Singing the Unsung with John L. Bell
- DreamThinkBeDo
Reception
Reviewers have called LtQ both “enlightening and inspiring” and “fascinating”, stating that the series raises questions many have “thought about but have been afraid to ask, and topics they know are important but don't hear mentioned in church”.In her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, Diana Butler Bass notes that both the LtQ program and its methodology were part of the success of one of her subject churches, Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, California.
In Big Christianity: What's Right with the Religious Left, author Jan G. Linn wrote: “Living the Questions is a welcomed … alternative to literalism that has promise in helping Christians find the biblical grounding for Bigger Christianity".
The US liberal church magazine The Christian Century criticized the original 12-session version of LtQ for taking a fundamentalist-like position, “close to a mirror image” of “fundamentalists”.
Book
Based on the LtQ curriculum and written by the series creators, the book Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity was released by HarperOne in August 2012.Contributors
All of the following contributors appear in "Living the Questions 2.0"; some appear in other curricula in the LtQ catalog;- Nancy Ammerman
- John L. Bell
- Marcus Borg
- Rita Nakashima Brock
- Walter Brueggemann
- Ron Buford
- Minerva G. Carcaño
- John B. Cobb
- John Dominic Crossan
- David Felten
- Yvette Flunder
- James A. Forbes
- Matthew Fox
- Lloyd Geering
- Hans Küng
- Cynthia Langston Kirk
- Amy-Jill Levine
- Megan McKenna
- Pat McMahon
- Culver "Bill" Nelson
- Siyoung Park
- Rebecca Ann Parker
- Stephen Patterson
- Helen Prejean
- Jeff Procter-Murphy
- Barbara Rossing
- Tex Sample
- Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
- Bernard Brandon Scott
- John Shelby Spong
- Emilie Townes
- Rick Ufford-Chase
- Winnie Varghese
- Mel White