John Cobb delivers the challenge at the UCC's Southern California – Nevada Conference on June 5, 2009

The Rev. John B. Cobb Jr., foremost known as the lead proponent of "process theology", has called on the United Church of Christ to lead all Christians in a mission of ecological and social transformation. Cobb made his remarks before the annual meeting of the UCC's Southern California – Nevada Conference on June 5, 2009.

In Cobb's own words, his challenge consists of "proposing that the United Church of Christ take as its mission working with God for the salvation of the world."

He says the UCC is uniquely positioned among Protestant denominations because of its embrace of progressive theology that sees Christian mission as inclusive of spiritual, personal, social and ecological care.

The progressive Christian project, Cobb says, theologically addressed and repented for a religion that had "acquiesced in outrageous racism [and found] that our inherited form of the Christian faith was anti-Jewish, patriarchal, religiously exclusivist, anthropocentric, and demeaning of our bodies and their sexuality."

Because the UCC, through the actions of the General Synod, "has worked through the conflict about homosexuality" and made other strides in the work of progressive Christianity, Cobb asserts the denomination is unrivaled in its ability to "give wholehearted attention to the still more fundamental problems facing the world."