Progressive Evangelical?

I've been meeting with a group of folks this fall who are trying to sort out the future of the church -- not The Church, just our little church. We are a decidedly progressive lot and, much to our dismay, our conversations continue to return to a decidedly conservative word: evangelism. We feel a deep sense of calling to reach out into our community and tell people about the faith we share, to invite people to explore it with us, to expand the circle of our small community. And this scares the hell out of us.
The very word "evangelical" gets defined as "fundamentalist" and thus is automatically the field of conservatives. But like so much else in the language of Christianity, it has not always been so. The word now firmly associated in the American mind with conservatives, comes from a simple New Testament Greek word that means "one who brings good news."
Despite what Karl Rove might have us believe, progressives should be bearers of good news. According to Rove's worldview, anyone who criticizes the way things are is by definition a pessimist. The laundry list of situations that progressives must critique and condemn is too long for any blog. The challenge to progressives is not only to continue sharp and clear critiques of the status quo (of war without end, of stagnant economies, of deeper division between the affluent and the destitute), but also to say with conviction and imagination that another world is possible.
This ought to be precisely where progressive people of faith -- or, people of progressive faith -- should be reclaiming the mantle of evangelism. After all, we are the ones who have envisioned a world that makes decisions nonviolently, and we are the ones who have shown precisely how that works in the American South, in apartheid South Africa, in colonial India. We are the ones who have shown how people can come together across racial, ethnic, religious and economic divisions to build more just and equitable communities. We are the ones who point toward one who came preaching good news to the poor, release to the captives, new sight to the blind, liberation to the oppressed and jubilee to those bound by an unfair economy. (And if you doubt that, go read Luke's gospel.)
Advent is a season of preparation and expectation. The word itself means "coming." So let this Advent be a time of hopeful expectation and faithful preparation for the coming of the good news. Now is the time for progressive evangelicals to be loud, insistent, joyous, imaginative, hopeful bearers of good news. Another world is possible.
CW