Radical, progressive, liberal, catholic
Radical
‘Radical’ comes from the Latin word radix, which means root or origin. In seeking to be a radical Christian community, we place a primacy on the root of our faith, the practice of Jesus of Nazareth, over and above later doctrinal and credal formulas. His ministry, death and resurrection point us to following a spiritual path of radical love, forgiveness and compassion, a path rooted in the practice of Jesus and his call to love ourselves, love our neighbours and love our enemies.
Progressive
In being a progressive church, we acknowledge that God reveals Godself in the past, the present and the future. We are open to learning about God through engagement with others outside the church. The disciplines of science, depth psychology and sociology, and the truths of other faith traditions, can help us to explore the meaning of Christian faith in our contemporary world.
We are in sympathy with the aims of The Center for Progressive Christianity, and prominently display its eight-point declaration in the church foyer. On 3 November 2001 TCPC held its first Europe-wide conference (in fact its first gathering outside the USA) at All Hallows, entitled ‘The Vision of Open Christianity’. You can read about the day by following this link, which includes an interesting and detailed account of the worship at All Hallows on the Sunday — the day after the conference — by one of the TCPC visitors, who was overwhelmed by what he found here.
Liberal Catholic
We honour our roots in the liberal Catholic tradition of the Church of England, while not being constrained by them.
We particularly see our eucharistic practice as being a contemporary version of the early Parish Communion movement of the late 1930s and 40s. This movement later changed Anglican worship, encouraging an acceptance of the centrality of the Eucharist for Christian worship, and reclaiming the Communion as a community feast rather than an individualistic ‘making my communion’. They also encouraged debate and discussion of parish, political and social issues in a gathering of the congregation called the parish meeting. However, as the movement became more widely accepted, its more radical elements became watered down, with the parish meeting all but disappearing. We see our main Sunday service, ‘Sharing the Feast of Life’, and our regular ‘Eat and Meet’s as attempting to return to that radical vision for our times.