At a church in Tucson this past weekend, I was asked a question that seemed particularly important. I shared that I introduce Bible passages in church worship as “the sacred myth of scripture”. The Bible is sacred because its stories and poetry have surfaced from the depths of the collective unconscious of humankind over thousands of years, so much of its content is mythological. Jesus, as presented in the gospels, is compelling precisely because he is a blend of history and myth.
[Article by James Burklo, Progressive Christianity, May 4, 2026]
The questioner objected to my embrace of the mythical aspect of Jesus. She cited the exhaustive research of scholars focused on revealing the real person who lived and breathed and spoke and served. For her, that was the Jesus who mattered. The Jesus Seminar scholars, whose work she had read, were on a mission to separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of myth. I responded that I, too, had read a lot of their work and concluded that their quest was hopeless. There is no satisfying way to disentangle the threads of fact and confabulation around Jesus, shrouded as they are in the midst of the deep past. The Jesus Seminar failed in its mission to define the Jesus of history, but along the way, it succeeded in revealing how early Christians developed the Jesus of myth. What we see in the figure of Jesus in the gospels is hardly a factual representation of the man, but is very much a reflection of the spirituality of the first Christians. That is the figure who mattered to them – and who still matters to us.
I’ve pondered further the important issue that the woman raised at the book talk. This focus on separating fact from myth in Christianity has a long history, and the Jesus Seminar is just one contemporary manifestation. Progressive Christianity as a distinctive form of the faith dates to the seventeenth century, when the emerging scientific method began to be employed in the interpretation of the Bible. Scholars in Germany and Britain revealed that the Bible was a human document, shaped by historical contexts. They began to separate the historically verifiable material from what was mythological. Those who embraced this scholarship at the time were the forebears of what is now progressive Christianity. Christians who vigorously objected to this scholarship were the forebears of what is now called evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity.
An irony in this cleavage is that both branches of the faith claim to be the keepers of the “facts” of Christianity. Liberal or progressive Protestants have striven to “de-mythologize” the faith – hence the Jesus Seminar project. Fundamentalists have doubled down on their claim that the entire Bible is literally factual. But few Christians before the seventeenth century cared much about interpreting the Bible through the lens of factuality. Lacking a scientific perspective, they had no reason to question the accuracy of the Bible stories – but they had little interest in reading the Bible literally. They saw it as an inexhaustible source of symbolic and allegorical imagery to use creatively in expressing their spiritual experience. They had no qualms about taking passages out of context and mashing them up freely to get their points across. Indeed, this is how the historical Jesus interpreted the Hebrew scriptures!
I am fascinated by this question: what real difference does it make for any kind of Christian whether or not a particular Bible story or passage is factual or mythological? Nearly every Christian gets it that the parables of Jesus are fictional stories with spiritual meanings. Their fictional nature is no impediment for any Christian to appreciate their profound significance. Meanwhile, nearly all Christians focus on the spiritual meanings of stories in the Bible that fundamentalists see as factual and progressives see as mythological. When it comes down to applying these stories to our lived experience, in most cases, it hardly matters whether or not they really happened. Whether myth or fact, the story of Jesus feeding five thousand with five loaves and two fish inspires us all to work faithfully with what we have and take action for the common good with trust that good deeds will multiply.
The current project of progressive Christianity is to embrace and celebrate the sacred myth of scripture. We will be spiritually enriched by learning the history of this myth. How and why did these stories emerge? What do they tell us about the spiritual experience of early Christians? These myths are windows into the souls of the people of the first churches. And through those windows we see reflections of ourselves, because the gospels welled up from the spiritual depths of humankind across time…
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Rev. Jim Burklo retired as the Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at the University of Southern California in 2022 and now serves as pastor of the United Church of Christ of Simi Valley, CA. An ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of eight published books on progressive Christianity. His latest is WATER IN THE DESERT: Progressive Christianity for the Spiritually Thirsty. His weekly blog, “Musings,” has a global readership. He is an honorary advisor and frequent content contributor for The Center for Progressive Christianity, and is the co-founder of ZOE: Progressive Christian Life on Campus. Jim and his wife, Roberta, live in Ojai, CA.