I am sorry that Helen Mildenhall still feels the need to tell me the right way to be a Christian [Changing faith: Why I don’t go to church anymore, Viewpoints, July 5]. It’s too bad that wasn’t a value she let go of when she left her church, as she details in her One View.

There are plenty of progressive Christians who do not read the Bible literally but still use it as a guide for their lives, who believe God is still speaking through our own experiences, who believe that being Christian means working for justice and peace, and who don’t claim their way to God is superior. (For examples of progressive Christians, see the historic peace churches, the Metropolitan Community Church, the Progressive Christian Witness at the Pacific School of Religion, or the writings of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Anne Lamott, Rita Nakashima Brock, Sallie McFague, Ivone Gebara, Jim Wallis, Martin Luther King Jr, Dorothy Day and others.) Hello, we are out here, and we are Christians, too!

It saddens me that we progressive Christians are repeatedly ignored or called "not real" Christians in public discourse by both conservatives (as in Ann Coulter’s insulting book Godless) and "atheists" (too many of whom seem to think that rigid opposition to fundamentalist dogma passes for original belief—how revolutionary is that?).

Small-mindedness and triumphalism seem to be traits that transcend religious bounds.

Audrey deCoursey
Oak Park