By now, my colleague Caleb has already given you the heart of this series about the core values of progressive Christianity. He’s reminded us that nobody owns God, and that a faith worth having never stops widening the welcome. If progressive Christianity were a potluck, then these would be the casseroles that everybody actually eats.
They set the tone. They tell you the vibe of the house. They make you think, “Yeah, I could sit at this table awhile.”
So let’s pull up a chair and talk about the next Progressive Christian core value: “Strive for peace and justice among all people, knowing that behaving with compassion and selfless love toward one another is the fullest expression of what we believe.”
On paper, it sounds simple: Peace. Justice. Compassion. Love. Four words that could fit on a bumper sticker or a church marquee.
But anybody who has ever tried to practice them knows they stretch us further than we’d like to go. They ask something real of us.
Something vulnerable. Something that puts us in the path of other people’s pain. That is why so many folks settle for the slogan rather than the work.
But this core value will not let us do that. It keeps nudging us toward more honest questions:
Are our actions making the world more peaceful for someone other than ourselves?
Are they making the world more just for someone who has been pushed aside or forgotten?
Are they making the people around us feel more safe, more valued, more seen?
If the answer is yes, then we are on the right track. If the answer is no, then we have some growing to do.
No shame. No guilt. Just a gentle reminder that we all have room to stretch.
Faith is not proven by what we say. It is revealed by who flourishes because we showed up.
In scripture, peace is never just about quiet. It is about wholeness.
Justice is never an abstract ideal. It is something real people experience in their real lives.
Compassion is not a feeling. It is a posture that moves us toward people who need tenderness.
Selfless love is not martyrdom. It is a free choice to let someone else’s well-being matter to us. And that brings me to the word I always return to: Love.
Not the soft-focus version from greeting cards. The grown-up version.
The kind that says, “Your humanity is tied up with mine, so your suffering is my concern.” The kind that doesn’t look away when someone else is hurting, because looking away would cost us a piece of our soul.
This is the Love Jesus lived with. It healed, repaired, confronted, challenged, restored and lifted people who had been trampled by the systems around them.
It is the kind of Love that creates friction with empire. And it is the kind of Love that will always cost something, because it always tells the truth.
When we talk about striving for peace and justice, we are not talking about chasing perfection. We are talking about choosing Love in public, through policy, in the moments when someone else’s dignity is on the line, and when silence would be safer—but safety would betray our values.
And we do not do this on our own. Progressive Christianity has always been a community project. We learn from our interfaith neighbors, activists, organizers, elders, and from people whose lives have been systematically devalued.
If we are humble enough to listen, they become our best teachers of compassion. They also become our partners in the work of justice.
Here is the truth: Some days, striving for peace will feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. Some days working for justice will feel like you are shouting into the wind.
Compassion will ask more of you than you planned to give, and selfless love will test your patience, your ego, and your comfort. But those same practices will deepen you.
They will change you. They will connect you.
They will draw you into a wider, richer, more resilient way of being human. And they will make your faith feel less like a set of beliefs and more like a way of life.
In the end, the core value of peace and justice is really an invitation. An invitation to stop waiting for the world to be peaceful and begin building peace right where we are.
An invitation to stop hoping justice will magically appear and instead start shaping our communities with fairness, dignity, and courage.
An invitation to choose compassion even when cynicism is easier.
An invitation to let selfless love be the legacy we leave behind.
Because if our faith is going to mean anything at all, then it has to help people feel more whole. It has to help the vulnerable feel protected. It has to help the historically excluded feel included.
It has to create pockets of hope in places where hope has been thin.
This is the Love that refuses to look away.
This is the Love that makes peace possible.
This is the Love that gives justice teeth.
This is the Love that progressive Christianity is trying to practice.
And goodness knows, we could use more of it.
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Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin is a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister who currently serves at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is the President and Co-Executive Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org.