Where do most radical thinkers stand on belief in human progress? In fact, they have not rejected it; they want to speed it up.
The commitment to creating the Kingdom of Humanity, in a radicalized form, still undergirds the condemnation of capitalism. Almost all social readings are permeated with the unstated premise that our age is an improvement over all others. ...So what? What is wrong with the conviction that we are actively working with history to build the best of all possible worlds? If nothing else, I think it leads to a distorted reading of the past and a misleading analysis of the present. ...The danger comes in where there is a confusion of God’s ways with our ways—a confusion that is always suicidal for theology.
When one questions progress, the defense usually is, “But would you rather have lived in the Middle Ages?” Then I remember that I am of the wrong sex and from the wrong social origin even to have asked the question. The issues are difficult and need further clarification.
To me, at any rate, it is not fruitful simply to bemoan the present and glorify the past. The inverse of belief in progress need not be belief in retrogression.
The best alternative would be belief in the providence of a loving God. I suggest that we Christians turn again to careful political and theological study of the biblical revelation concerning the city of God and the city of humankind.
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