Living the Questions

rdf:langString Living the Questions

rdf:langString Living the Questions is a “DVD and web-based curriculum" designed to help people wrestle with the relevance of Christianity in the 21st century.” Growing out of two United Methodist congregations in Arizona, the curriculum is part of the larger movement of Progressive Christianity and is distributed through the Internet and through several denominational publishing divisions, like Cokesbury and Logos Productions. Created to resource moderate to more liberally-minded Christians, Living the Questions (LtQ) offers an alternative to the Alpha Course. As of 2016 the LtQ curriculum is in use in nearly 5000 churches across North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Living the Questions does not offer a “systematic theology”, but is more of a thematic overview born of day-to-day conversation and questions raised in local parishes. Utilizing both written material (downloadable from the web) and DVD-based input from "some of the most outspoken and respected voices in today's theological circles”, LtQ curricula seek to expose lay people to the complex theological questions and perspectives that are taught in seminaries, but that often don't “trickle down” into the local churches. The programs do not aim to spell out new doctrine or to develop new dogma, but to resource people who are in the midst of a lifelong conversation about the mysteries of faith and life. In her book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, Diana Butler Bass notes that both the Living the Questions program and its methodology were part of the success and vitality 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.” He affirms that “faith questions are consistent with a desire to grow into spiritual maturity” with a quote from the mission of the Living the Questions series: People know that at its core, Christianity has something good to offer the human race. At the same time, many have a sense that they are alone in being a "thinking" Christian and that "salvaging" Christianity is a hopeless task. What is needed is a safe environment where they have permission to ask the questions they've always wanted to ask but have been afraid to voice for fear of being thought a heretic. Reviewers have called Living the Questions both “enlightening and inspiring” and “fascinating” in 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”. The US liberal flagship mainline church magazine The Christian Century criticizes the original 12-session version of Living the Questions for taking a fundamentalist-like position, “close to a mirror image” of “fundamentalists”. The principal course has since been expanded to nearly twice the original length, doubling the number of contributing participants and broadening the mix of contributors to include more women, more racial minorities, and more representation from the LGBT community.