A big part of Christianity is anticipating the Kingdom of God.  Evangelicals believe that the term refers to the afterlife, and Israel has something to do with bringing it about on earth (perhaps that is where it will start, or it will start when Jews convert to Christianity, or something, there’s lots of stories), which is why they are so pro-Israel. They think that will bring on the Rapture and the Kingdom of God on earth.  

And the Lord’s Prayer does talk about bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth. But Progressive Christians have a different idea, even though they don’t really talk about this idea, they are acting on it. The emphasis on action based in God’s love is an attempt to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.

This split happened in the early part of the 20^th century. A major figure in this split by the name of Walter Rauschenbusch wrote a very popular book (“Christianity and the Social Crisis”) claimed that the Kingdom of God was the responsibility of Christians to bring about through their actions. Rauschenbusch was a Baptist minister of German extraction whose congregation was among the very poor so he was steeped in the ideas he wrote about.

Interestingly, Quakers had come to this idea centuries before this.  This sect had arisen after the English Civil War, which was a religious war. Despite the fact that the Puritans won the war, that didn’t bring on Second Coming of Christ or the Kingdom of God.  Quakers, who had been through this disappointment, later developed a concept called the Lamb’s War, believing that they were in spiritual warfare for people’s souls.  They believed that the Second Coming of Christ was internal as was the Kingdom of God. To get to the Kingdom of God you needed to obey Light of Christ, or the Inward Light.

Today’s Liberal Quakers no longer actively believe in the Second Coming of Christ or that they will bring on the Kingdom of God by obeying the Inward Light. But they still sit in silence and wait upon the Inward Light for messages and still obey them.