Author Archives: ifaqtheology

About ifaqtheology

Professor of Religion, Pepperdine University Specialties: Systematic Theology, Christianity and Culture Author of: God, Freedom & Human Dignity: Embracing God-Centered Identity in a Me-Centered World (IVP, 2013)

Freedom of Speech for Me but Not for Thee

Progressive Christian Ethics—An Exercise in Duplicity?

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In my recent studies of progressive Christian thinkers, many of which I have published on this blog, I keep running into a paradox in their ethical reasoning, specifically in their arguments for full acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities and lifestyles and their justifications of abortion and sexual activity outside of marriage. On the one hand, they argue like strict legalists, focusing on the precise meanings of words and sentences, and on the other hand they dismiss or reinterpret the Bible’s moral commands by means of general principles.

Progressive Legalism

As examples of the legalist mentality, we saw the Dean of Yale Divinity School argue in effect that because the Bible does not say in many words, “You shall not kill your unborn baby,” we can assume that we are permitted to do so. See my July 7, 2022 essay “A Wizard Ought to Know Better.”

https://ifaqtheology.com/2022/07/07/a-wizard-ought-to-know-better/

Also, Karen Keen*, Robert K. Gnuse*, David Caden*, and David P. Gushee* argue that the Bible permits loving, non-coercive, same-sex sexual relationships among equals.** A significant component of their argument contends that since the Bible never specifically condemns such relationships, the texts that mention same-sex sexual activity (Romans 1:26-27, 1 Cor. 6:9-11, and others) should not be used in moral arguments to condemn loving gay relationships. Freed from scriptural condemnations, we can look for other ways to justify same-sex sexual relationships as good and right—gathered from science, psychology, sociology, or evolutionary biology.

Progressive theologians fuss over words like clever lawyers looking for loopholes they can exploit. In my reading of their works, I do not get the impression that their fussiness about the letter of the law arises from a desire to obey God’s commands to the letter. Some other desire seems to be at work.

Progressive Liberalism

On the other hand, when explicit biblical instructions and the consensus of the 2000-year Christian tradition stands irrefutably against them, they abandon the “letter” for the “spirit” of the law. They appeal to general principles to overturn the specific moral teaching of the Bible and tradition. We should, they say, always do the loving thing, the just, merciful, compassionate thing. We should not cause harm. And if following the Bible’s and the tradition’s moral teaching does not seem loving and compassionate, we must reinterpret or reject it. In this way, progressive Christians set aside explicit biblical teaching and the consensus of the ecumenical church when it does not seem to them loving, just, merciful, compassionate…or progressive.

General Principles Are Not Enough

But a moment’s thought reveals that general principles alone cannot guide us in specific situations. How do the principles of justice, peace, mercy, and love, apart from specific commands and a tradition of examples, doctrine, and narratives, give us concrete guidance in particular situations? They cannot do so. What is justice? What does it mean to cause harm to someone? Is making them feel uncomfortable causing harm? How do I love my neighbor? What are compassion and mercy?

Every observer of modern culture knows that many of our contemporaries, having cut themselves loose from the biblical and ecclesiastical tradition, use these words as empty vessels into which to pour their own wishes, desires, and preferences. Do you love someone when you validate their desires and feelings, when you care only for their subjective sense of well-being? Or, does loving someone mean to will and seek the best for them? From where, then, do we learn what is good, better, and best for human beings? Progressive Christians clearly look to progressive culture for guidance.

But progressive Christianity is not the real thing. It is a fake. Taking up the real Christian life involves learning the true nature of love, justice, mercy, compassion, and all other virtues from the Bible’s commands, narratives, doctrines, and examples. It involves listening to the wisdom of the tradition and joining with the whole church in seeking to obey God’s will. We cannot do this if we claim the right to sit in judgment over every specific command in view of empty general principles.

*To read these reviews, copy and paste these names into the search box on the top right of this page.

**Karen Keen, Scripture, Ethics, and the Possibility of Same-Sex Relationships

Robert K. Gnuse,“Seven Gay Texts: Biblical Passages Used to Condemn Homosexuality” (Biblical Theology Bulletin 45. 2: 68-87).

David A. Kaden, Christianity in Blue

David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity

If I Didn’t Know it Was True, I Would Think It’s a Wild Conspiracy Theory

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I just finished reading James Lindsay’s new book The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freire’s Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education (2022). I recommend it to anyone concerned about education in the United States and, indeed, the world. If you are a teacher or a professor, if you have children or grandchildren, if you care about future generations, read this book. Or listen to Lindsay’s podcasts. If you know someone that falls into these categories, share this post with them. If I did not know from forty years of experience in higher education that Lindsay is telling the truth, I would think he was spinning a wild conspiracy theory.

In his book, Lindsay documents the work and influence of the Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire on American schools of education and, through the teachers trained there, on all levels of education. Until a week ago I had never heard of him, but he is one of the most influential theorists in contemporary education. His methods are used in virtually every school in the United States, public and private. Much of the time teachers, administrators, and facilitators have no idea of the theoretical background of these methods or of their aims. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, for I hate to think they know what they are doing.

Background

South American liberation theology—a mixture of Marxism and Roman Catholicism condemned by Pope John Paul II (1978-2005)—was a formative influence on Freire. And the religious aspect of his work comes through quite often. He speaks of his educational method as inducing “conversion,” and an “Easter” experience. He speaks of hope for the coming “kingdom of God,” that is, socialist utopia. Che Guevara is at the top of his list of saints. Freire’s first book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was published in 1970, but the book that made him famous in the United States was his 1985 book, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation. When I say that Freire is a “Marxist,” I am not speculating or trying to discredit him by association. He makes his adherence to Marxist analysis unashamedly clear in his own works.

Educational Aims

In traditional education the goal is to transfer to students the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in the culture in which they live. Freire calls this the “banking” or “nutritionist” view of education. It reproduces the teacher in the student and hence perpetuates the status quo of society. But through his Marxist lens, Freire sees society divided into those who have power and those who don’t, the oppressors and the oppressed. Society should be changed radically in a socialist direction. He offers his method of education as a means to this radical end. Freire redefines what it means to educate, to be educated, and to know. “To educate” means to awaken the oppressed to their status and empower them to take charge of their lives by working for societal change. “To be educated” means to be awake to the power dynamics in society. “To know” is to be attuned to the nuances of your own experience as oppressed. The oppressors, too, need to be awakened to their guilt and complicity in oppression. The “oppressed” become perpetually angry and offended, and the Woke “oppressor” enters a life of self-loathing and perpetual apology. And everyone becomes an activist.

The upshot of all this, according to Lindsay, is that students get robbed of a real education in reading, writing, mathematics, and every other content area. And they become “emotional wrecks” in the process.

The Method

Freire’s method unfolds in three phases: generative, codification, and decodification. “Teachers and students” are replaced by “educators and learners” who learn together through a “dialogic” (conversation) method. In the first phase of the dialogue, the educator generates from the learners information about their “lived experience” in search of hidden relationships of power, privilege, and oppression. In codification, the educator creates an image that pictures these structures of power, privilege, and oppression in an objective way so that the learner can see them from a distance. The learner, then, comes to see themselves in this generalized image, but now they understand themselves as a part of a class of victims in an unjust power structure. Thirdly, the process of decodification applies the Marxist analysis to the codified image. Decodification awakens the learner to the systemic causes of their oppression and to the possibility and necessity of wholesale societal change. It sensitizes them to the subtle ways in which traditional language, rules, traditions, expectations, and norms serve to justify and reinforce the power structures of stratified society.

Applications

The Marxification of Education explores dozens of ways Freire’s educational theory and its offshoots are applied in colleges, universities, and K through 12 schools. I can highlight only two. Read the book!

Race

The Freirean educational model is a perfect way to educate learners in Critical Race Theory. CRT contends that the United States is systemically racist and has been so from its founding. Only a radical reordering of society along antiracist lines (diversity, equity, and inclusion) can address systemic racism. In Freire’s “generative” phase, learners are canvased or surveyed looking for indicators of unequal power between people of color and white people. The next phase encodes those indicators in objective images, for example, a video clip of a white person double checking to see that their car doors are locked after parking in a black neighborhood. In the third phase, the coded images are decoded and interpreted through the lens of Marxist theory, that is, Critical Race Theory.

Sexual Minorities

Perhaps you have wondered why many public schools require young children to read or listen to books such as Gender Queer (written in comic book style) and others that contain pornographic illustrations of sex of all kinds and at all ages? And why would school districts and public libraries sponsor “Drag Queen Story Hour”? I did not understand these trends until I read Lindsay’s explanation of the aim and method of Paulo Freire’s theory of education. Reading Gender Queer and watching a grown man dressed in “women’s” clothes dance provocatively are part of the generative and codification phases of learning. These experiences elicit information from children about their understandings of gender, family, and sex, which can then be used in the decodification phase. The drag queen is a living illustration that rules are made to be broken, that the present social/moral order possesses no real authority but is imposed by those who benefit from it. Drag Queen Story Hour is a defiant and irreverent attack on the “oppressive” societal structures associated with sex, family, and gender identity. Children are thrown into a world without boundaries, they are robbed of their childhood, and their education is stolen from them. And Freirean educational theorists call it “learning.”

Optional Homework

Lindsay discusses many other terms and concepts associated with Freire’s educational theory. You may have heard of some of them without realizing their theoretical meaning. Do a quick search on some of them. Wikipedia usually has the basics even if it tends to sanitize the ideas a bit:

Cultural Competence, Comprehensive Sex Education, Culturally Relevant Teaching, (Transformative) Social-Emotional Learning, Problematization, Knowledges, Critical Pedagogy, Liberatory, Project-based learning, Decolonization, Conscientization, Queer Marxist Theory, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Antiracism, and Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED).

To be continued…

Progressivism: Parasitic, Arbitrary, and Destructive

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Today we conclude the three-part series on progressivism. We have not yet found an answer to the two-sided question we have been pursuing: by what principles do progressives decide that their favored activities are good, right, and rational whereas others (hate speech and racism) are not? Must we conclude that their decisions are arbitrary and unprincipled? In this essay, I will argue that progressives, though unprincipled in the usual sense of submitting to universal moral principles wherever they lead, are not completely arbitrary in their choices. Once you see the pattern, their decisions make sense.

Parasitic

I do not think we can understand it unless we realize that progressivism is a small current within the larger Western culture incapable of existing independently. It operates within a vast moral universe created by 2,000 years of Christian teaching about what is real, good, beautiful, and right. Christianity, of course, grounds its moral teaching in divine law, divine creation, the teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in the hope of eternal life. Though progressivism possesses no moral resources within itself to ground the humanistic side of its vision, its location within the Christian moral universe enables it to take this fundamental moral order for granted while it works to advance individual liberty little by little. Progressivism needs an external order against which it can rebel but also to check its nihilistic inclinations.

At last, we have found the answer to the question about progressivism’s ability to exclude violence and hatred from the scope of liberty. Without acknowledging it, progressivism relies on the hard-won cultural consensus and moral capital created by Christianity. At the same time, however, it denies the foundational Christian beliefs that grounded this moral vision and made it plausible to the West. Progressivism assumes gratuitously that the humanistic values of the West will continue to be persuasive even after their theological foundations have been obliterated. Progressivism is a parasite that thinks it will thrive after it kills its host. But if progressivism actually destroyed Christianity, its sentimental language about compassion, love, rights, and freedom would be exposed as the groundless drivel Nietzsche said it was. The wolf of nihilism would no longer need to wear the itchy and ill-fitting sheep costume.

Arbitrary

Why has contemporary progressivism chosen the particular causes it has? Nineteenth-century proto-progressives embraced the abolitionist movement quite plausibly as a moral imperative demanded by Christianity, and the twentieth-century social gospel and civil rights movements could draw in good conscience on the biblical themes of creation, liberation, salvation, and the kingdom of God. But late twentieth- and twenty-first-century progressives adopted sexual liberation, abortion, homosexuality, and now gender fluidity as their chief causes. And these causes cannot be supported by biblical teaching, though “progressive Christianity” vainly attempts to do so. Instead of viewing progress as the outworking of Christian principles, contemporary progressives view Christianity as the main obstacle blocking progress.

Nineteenth-century proto-progressives found Christianity useful because of its critique of sinful humanity’s greed, prejudice, selfishness, pride, and injustice. Christianity champions justice, love, unity, equality, generosity, and other humanistic values. However, Christianity advocates human freedom and dignity only within a divinely created order. This order determines the channels, boundaries, and guidelines within which human beings can flourish in true freedom and dignity. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, progressives had begun to view the moral order that Christianity championed as too restrictive, even oppressive and anti-human. Driven by the logic of unprincipled freedom, progressives launched into new frontiers of liberation: easy divorce, sexual freedom, abortion, decriminalization and acceptance of gay and lesbian activity, expansion of marriage to same-sex arrangements, and lately complete disengagement of gender identity from biological sex. According to progressives, the oppressive orders of family, marriage, and biological nature should be desacralized or abolished.

Profanation, Blasphemy, and Destruction

Why follow this trajectory, sexual liberation? Perhaps Freud was right in his Civilization and its Discontents that the human drive for sexual gratification is so powerful and chaotic that for civilization to exist at all this chaotic force must be brought under rules that channel it in safe courses. However, repression of sexual desire creates all sorts of psychosomatic disorders at the individual level. Sexual frustration and unhappiness is the price of civilization. Civilization is ever in danger of exploding in an orgy of sexual chaos.

I think there is some truth to Freud’s thesis. Christianity has been the chief champion of Western civilization for hundreds of years, but its hold on Western culture has long been weakening, and in the 1960s the dam gave way. But I think there is more to it than this. The way progressive culture celebrates and flaunts its new sexual freedoms, in the streets, universities, courts, Congress, and the White House, seems to involve more than merely enjoying the “innocent” pleasures this freedom makes available.

It celebrates triumph over the killjoy forces of wickedness. Its periodic festivity releases the tension built up in its ever-expanding sense of being trapped, enslaved, and encased in shells of arbitrary rules enforced by the wicked powers as the truth of God and nature. In its rage, it profanes what Christianity considers holy, defaces what it loves as beautiful, and blasphemes what it holds sacred. In other words, progressivism’s choices of what counts for progress are neither principled nor arbitrary. They make sense only as the negation of Christianity, which they see as the archenemy of human freedom, dignity, and happiness. What better way to profane, blaspheme, and destroy “uptight” Christianity than to put into practice what Paul McCartney called for in his 1968 song, “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road,” that is, return to animal innocence and abandon society-imposed shame! And if Freud is correct, progressivism’s choice to unleash the libido to explore its chaotic possibilities is not only a demonic attack on Christianity but the negation of civilization.

A New God Demands a New Law

But why is sexual liberation a good and right thing in itself, worthy of celebration? As I said in the first essay in this series (12/19/22), progressives aim to advance individual freedom, but that cannot be all there is to their philosophy. For one can permit something without approving of it. On what basis, then, do progressives judge abortion, homosexual practice, same-sex marriage, and gender fluidity to be good and right, not merely wrongs that society must tolerate? The one-word answer is “authenticity.” In traditional thinking, an action is good and right only if it conforms to the objective rules that govern that type of action. In contrast, an authentic act expresses externally what one feels inside. Authenticity is the harmonious fit between the self and its external acts. In progressive morality, a new law, “Obey your Self,” replaces the old law of conformity to an external standard, the Self replaces God as the legislator, and authenticity replaces righteousness as the measure of a good person. Progressive celebration of the Self is its act of worship and pluriform sex and abortion are its sacraments. It seems that progressivism is a kind of religion. It has an evil and good power, a gospel, a redemptive path, morality, and worship.*

Progressivism views the external order championed by Christianity—God, moral law, apostolic teaching, church, marriage, the created order of male and female—as oppressive and alienating to the inner Self. The Self cannot be itself, escape suffering, assuage its anger, and find happiness within this order. But when acts of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and various gender identities express the inner Self authentically, they are by that very fact good and right and worthy of celebration.

An Answer

Finally, we have the answer to the question that I posed in the first essay: why do progressives celebrate the things they do as progress? Answer: Because they think they have been freed from the clutches of a religiously sanctioned order, imposed by evil powers, to act according to their true (divine) selves and in this way to become happy.

*More precisely, it is a Christian heresy of a gnostic type. It rejects the Creator and the moral law and views salvation as liberation of an inner Self from the orders of creation and its evil creator. It is elitist and views outsiders as unenlightened and for the most part unredeemable.

Progressivism: Architect or Arsonist?

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In Search of Progressive Morality

As I demonstrated above in part one of this series, progressives’ appeal to the Freedom Principle cannot sustain their agenda apart from auxiliary principles that exclude anarchic, amoral, and destructive impulses from the scope of freedom. I will argue in this essay that progressives cannot admit such auxiliary principles without giving up the central tenet of progressivism and that every other principle that progressives invoke is a disguised form of the Freedom Principle. It is all they have.

First, we need to get clear on the types of moral principles to which contemporary progressives will never appeal openly. Contemporary progressives are self-consciously secular.* They will not acknowledge the moral force of divine law, creation, or any other principle that depends on the reality of a moral order transcendent of humanity. They will not appeal to traditional wisdom as normative or grant genuine authority to any teacher of morality. Indeed, progressives declare that relegating all these antiquated moral sources to the trashcan of history is a defining mark of progress. On what principles, then, do progressives exclude those behaviors of which they disapprove and include those they like?

Human Dignity?

If you ask progressives why they do not celebrate freedom to traffic human beings, engage in racist behavior, make a living as a child pornographer or an assassin, or any other behavior they consider evil, their first impulse will be ridicule and insult. They do not want to admit that their philosophy of freedom raises such prospects, and they accuse you of making an unwarranted and vicious association motivated by animus toward progressive causes.

But if you can get a progressive to take your question seriously, they may invoke the notion of human dignity. Such evils as human trafficking and racism treat human beings as things to be used rather than as persons of worth for their own sake. Sounds like a good answer…until we remember that progressives reject all transcendent principles. Progressives cannot ground human dignity in the notion that human beings are created “in the image of God,” that they are God’s beloved children, that they are responsible to God for their actions, or that they possess an eternal soul with an eternal destiny. In what then does human dignity consist? The only answer that makes sense within a progressive framework is this: human beings possess the power to determine their own destiny in what we call freewill. They know best how to attain their own happiness. Therefore we should not interfere with their free actions.

The first thing to notice about the progressive view of human dignity is that dignity is a quality attributed only to beings with freewill. Hence respecting a person’s dignity is identical to respecting their freedom. Using the word “dignity” adds nothing of substance to the concept of freedom. The progressive concept of dignity, therefore, shows itself beset by the same problems as those that plague the Freedom Principle, that is, self-contradiction and reduction to absurdity. If the dignity of a person is grounded in the power to act freely, I may have to refrain from acting in keeping with my dignity to make room for others to act according to their dignity. And, if dignity is grounded in human freedom, then to treat a person in keeping with their dignity may mean allowing them to exercise their freedom in ways I consider evil.

At best, progressive appeals to dignity draw deceptively (and illegitimately) on the traditional association of the idea of human dignity with God and creation. But such resonances do not fit within the progressive worldview. Hence, the progressive conclusion drawn above (Therefore we should not interfere with their free actions.) does not follow from the argument that preceded it. Simply because a person has the power to act freely does not obligate others not to interfere. Everything depends on what they do with this power! Are their actions good or bad, right or wrong, rational or irrational? We are no closer to answering this question!

Human Rights?

Progressives often appeal to human rights. Human rights are contrasted with constitutional or legislated rights. Such rights are supposedly given along with human existence and therefore trump all legislated rights. One can appeal to them without having to cite a law. It is similar to appeals to justice in criticism of an unjust statutory law. In both cases, one appeals to a law higher than legislated law. According to contemporary progressives, however, there is no law or principle that transcends the human reality. So why appeal to human rights? As in the case of the progressive appeal to human dignity, appeals to human rights draw deceptively (and illegitimately) on the resonance of the term human rights with the traditional concept of natural rights. In the natural law tradition, there is a certain normative order given by God in the fabric of nature and reason. The very notion of a right calls up the idea of a right-granting authority. Of course, because progressives deny that there is a moral law rooted in the divine will or the order of creation, they can do no more than assert gratuitously and arbitrarily that there are human rights. If there is no right-granting authority higher than humanity, from where do human rights come and how can they preempt legislated rights? Am I able to grant myself a right? What an absurd conclusion!

If progressives attempt to justify their appeal to human rights at all, they invariably return to the concept of freedom. A right is a designated area for the exercise of freedom. So, we return to the Freedom Principle with all its problems: Do we have a human right to do anything we please? Must I curtail my human rights so that you can exercise yours? May I interfere with your rights if I believe you are acting destructively and violently? As is the case with freedom, the concept of human rights by itself contains no limiting principle that specifies what we are and what we are not permitted to do.

The Secret

The secret of contemporary progressivism is that it can do nothing but destroy. It possesses no principle of order. It views order as oppressive and alienating. Its appeal is its promise of greater and greater liberty from oppression, and to deliver on its promise it must constantly seek new areas of order to destroy. It is not architect but arsonist. It cannot stop until nothing is left, nothing but nothingness, death.

*You cannot be consistently progressive and Christian (or even religious) at the same time. But this is a topic for another occasion.

To be continued…

Progressivism: A Wolf Disguised as a Sheep

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Contemporary progressivism is a wolf disguised as a sheep. That is the way I see it. And I cannot let go of it until I have done all I can do to expose it as such. For months, I have been reviewing books that advocate or criticize “progressive Christianity.” Today I will begin a short series dealing with the secular side of the progressive movement, which after all is the true inspiration for progressive Christianity. In this series, I will argue that contemporary progressivism is empty of positive principles, sterile, parasitic, incoherent, destructive, arbitrary, and above all, deceptive.

What Progressives Celebrate

Cultural progressives routinely celebrate events that they think signify progress and lament those they view as retrograde. Progressive changes are welcomed as “historic,” “marking the advance of history,” or as “firsts.” To resist these historic advances is to stand “on the wrong side of history” and attempt “to turn back the clock.” For the progressive left, expansion of LGBTQ+ rights and privileges and so-called reproductive rights and promotion of people with intersectional identities (combinations of race, gender, ableness, etc.) to positions of visibility and power represent the cutting edge of progress.

This moment in history presents a confluence of forces nearly impossible to disentangle. Different political and moral visions, religious attitudes, cultural sensibilities, private and group interests, and rhetorical strategies flow out of past conflicts only to collide again in the public space of contemporary society. The progressive wolf is very good at disguising itself as one of the redeeming forces in this struggle. Only patient and careful scrutiny can unmask the lupine nature beneath the sheep costume.

What is Progress?

I have addressed this question in past essays (See especially the February 21, 2014 essay), but I want to reflect again on this theme in the present context. At least in the contexts celebrated by the Left today as progress (LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, and intersectional identity), progress is measured by the advance of individual freedom. Individuals in these groups are freer to pursue happiness today than they were in the past, and the cultural left celebrates this change as progress. Progressives treat the individual’s right to pursue their happiness as a basic moral principle, a human right that must be honored in every case and at all costs. (Call it the “Freedom Principle.”) Anyone who attempts to restrict these newly declared freedoms offends against a self-evident moral principle. What kind of person would resist the outworking of a self-evident, universal human right? Only a morally obtuse, irrational, and hateful person!

The Self-Contradiction in the Freedom Principle

Progressives appeal to the Freedom Principle as a universal rule. However as soon as they attempt to apply it, its incoherence and absurdity become obvious. On the one hand, progressives tell us that we should be free to pursue our happiness in whatever way we want. On the other hand, they demand that we respect the freedom of others. That is to say, my freedom must be restricted so that others may exercise their freedom. To apply the principle to one person we must withhold its application to another. Progressives, then, both affirm and deny unlimited freedom—an obvious contradiction. Hence, the Freedom Principle cannot carry the weight demanded of a universal moral principle or a human right capable of guiding our social relationships.

Not only is the Freedom Principle incoherent, it reduces to absurdity in application. Applying the Freedom Principle universally would destroy the distinction between right and wrong, rational and irrational, and good and bad actions. Progressives use the principle to justify a general moral claim, that is, that it is wrong to restrict a person’s freedom to act for their happiness. But applying it consistently would lead to some very unwelcome consequences. For there is nothing within it to discourage people from pursuing happiness by committing violent acts toward others. Indeed, applying the principle consistently would obligate me and everyone else to stand by as an individual violates the most sacred human rights of even the most vulnerable. Not only so, it would obligate me to refrain from defending my own life and liberty. Clearly, the Freedom Principle alone cannot sustain the contemporary progressive vision.

The Insufficiency of the Freedom Principle

In isolation, freedom is anarchic, amoral, and destructive (See my essay of January 24, 2022). Progressives, of course, do not wish to be seen as embracing anarchy. But how can they avoid this implication? To do so, they must adhere in some way to other principles (or arbitrary decisions) that limit and direct freedom toward constructive ends and harmonious relationships. Freedom needs help in discerning the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, rational and irrational. Expanding LGBTQ+ rights, advancing abortion access, and promoting people with intersectional identities are indisputably progressive moves only if progress is measured exclusively by growth in the sphere of liberty for these activities.

But progressives’ celebration of these advances does not make sense apart from the assumption that these causes are good, right, and rational. For practical reasons, all societies allow their members to engage in some activities they deem wrong, bad, and irrational…but they do not celebrate them. Likewise, progressives would not be celebrating growth in these freedoms if they believed them to be evil, wrong, and irrational. Progressives do not celebrate the freedom to steal, lie, murder, rape, and commit genocide. They would not approve of a freedom to engage in hate speech, misgendering, and racism. By what principles, then, do progressives justify the conclusion that their favored activities are good, right, and rational whereas others (hate speech and racism) are not?

To be continued…

Why Progressive Christianity Will Fail

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For the past few months, I’ve been reviewing books that propose a “New Christianity,” revised to conform to progressive culture. Progressive Christianity recommends a new sexual code, LGBTQ+ acceptance and affirmation, a new understanding of the authority of Scripture, a social-justice Jesus, a non-omnipotent God, and an inclusive church. Progressives seem to think that the time is right for their message: young people are leaving traditional and evangelical churches in droves, tired of their moralistic, judgmental, dogmatic, and politically conservative agenda. Progressives offer their new Christianity to these “exiles” as an alternative to evangelicalism on the one hand and secularism on the other.

Progressives correctly observe that young people are dropping out of churches. And some of these dropouts give the reasons cited above. However, as readers of this blog series know, I am convinced that the “New Christianity” being proposed by progressives is not Christianity at all; it is a counterfeit. And I am worried that many believers will be fooled by its likeness to the real thing. I’ve been told that recognizing a counterfeit one hundred dollar bill does not require knowledge of every possible mistake counterfeiters can make. It requires only detailed knowledge of authentic currency.

Sadly, few of these discouraged evangelicals possess detailed knowledge of authentic, original Christianity. They do not know the details or the central themes of the Bible, not to mention the story of church history…or history in general! Hence, they are vulnerable to clever (re)interpretations of Bible texts and themes that do not fit the progressive narrative. Many will be deceived.

In the short term, I am pessimistic that I or other writers can stem the tide of the progressive movement. I feel like a person watching a slow-motion train wreck from a distance. No matter how much I yell no one listens and nothing changes. In the long term, however, I am certain that progressive Christianity will fail. The main reason for my optimism is this: the continued existence of the Bible. Progressives cannot discard the Bible completely without renouncing their claims to be Christian. However, as long as the Bible can be found in bookstores, church pew racks, in libraries, and in private residences, progressive Christianity faces the danger that some people will actually read it. When ordinary people read the Bible they see that progressive Christianity is not the original, authentic Christianity but a fake.

And this thought gives me hope.

Are (White) Evangelicals Heretics? (A New Christianity, Part 4)

8. Politics: Starting Over After White Evangelicalism’s Embrace of Trumpism

The title of this chapter pretty much sums up its contents. In Gushee’s estimation, evangelicals’ overwhelming support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election demonstrates beyond dispute their estrangement from the gospel of the kingdom that Jesus preached. It surfaced evangelicalism’s long-present undercurrent of “racism, sexism, nationalism, xenophobia, and indifference to ecology and the poor” (p. 144). According to Gushee, after Trump we must rethink Christian political involvement from the ground up. Gushee proposes seven “marks of healthy Christian politics” to guide this project (p. 149). They are as follows:

[1] A distinctive Christian identity, [2] action based on hope not fear, [3] critical distance from earthly powers, [4] grounding in the broad Christian social teaching, [5] global perspectives, [6] orientation toward serving God’s kingdom and the common good, and [7] efforts to practice what we preach (p. 149).

As is true of many lists of general principles, there is not much to quarrel with at the abstract level. (However for reasons that most readers will find obvious, marks 4, 5, and 6 worry me a bit.) But in his exposition of these marks he accuses white evangelicals of violating all seven egregiously. Moreover he implies that a truly Christian politics would lean leftward on the American political spectrum. The devil is always in the details.

9. Unveiling and Ending White-Supremacist Christianity

At the very beginning of this chapter Gushee lets us know that he accepts the thesis that in its founding and at its core the United States of America is systemically racist. The first words in this chapter are taken from Yale University theologian Eboni Marshall Turman; “White Christianity in America was born in heresy” (p. 151). Though Gushee does not say this in so many words, he writes as if white people have no right to a perspective on race. They are blind to their white privilege and the harm they have inflicted on people of color. Hence we must “rethink everything by listening to people of color” (p. 162). White people should listen and not argue.

Post-evangelicals must adopt “a fully antiracist way of life” (p. 167). The footnote that follows this sentence refers to Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist, which I reviewed on this blog in December 2020. I think I am safe in assuming that Gushee accepts Kendi’s definitions of racism and antiracism (See my review of Kendi). I will end my summary of this chapter with some of Gushee’s concluding remarks and a brief reflection:

I am so very late in saying all this.

I am appalled at my lateness…

And when exactly did I see that white American Christianity was born in heresy, and that my polite center-left self has been complicit in it? About five minutes ago. More precisely, about the day after Donald Trump’s election and the great reveal of the evangelical 81 percent.

It must be that dealing with the white European American Christian racism is the most threatening challenge of all. It must be that the horror is too great, the shame too awful, for many of us white guys to want to look over in that direction if we can avoid it.

I am sorry. So very sorry. I believe I have begun to repent. Whether I have succeeded in doing so will be judged by others, and by Christ himself (pp. 167-68).

Two Comments

1. Gushee applies a principle to the subject of race that he applies also to the issue of LGBTQ affirmation, feminism, and other contemporary issues of importance to progressive Christians:

Those defined as poor, powerless, and oppressed know and speak the truth whereas those defined as rich, powerful, and oppressors are blind to the truth and can speak only lies.

This principle in one form or another drives the logic of contemporary progressive Christianity. It is seductive and insidious in its appeal to emotion and (white, straight, male) guilt. But it will not pass the test of examination by reason or Christian doctrine. As to the first, no one is competent to judge themselves, rich or poor, powerful or powerless, oppressed or oppressor. No one can see their own sins as others see them, and no one can see the sins of others as God sees them. No solution on race will be achieved by canonizing only one group’s judgments. As to the second test, we must never forget that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Rich or poor, powerful or powerless, oppressed or oppressor, each group is tempted in its own way, and each group sins in its own way. All need forgiveness.

2. I find Gushee’s self-loathing apology quoted above very off-putting. Not that I doubt its sincerity. To the contrary, it is its sincerity that bothers me most. He apologizes tearfully to no one in particular and for no particular racist act. He implies, rather, that he is not guilty of that kind of act. He seems, instead, to be apologizing for being white and for his past thoughtless enjoyment of the privileges his whiteness gave him.* His words express an inner shame that can never be forgiven or removed, only atoned for by a periodic sacrifice of confession. For he cannot but continue to enjoy his privilege—it comes with being white!—only now he does so in a mood of guilt and shame. Such is the nature of what is called “white guilt.” I do not believe it is a good foundation for racial reconciliation in society or in the church. There is much more to be said on this topic. Perhaps on another occasion.

*By apologizing for his whiteness instead of his personal sins, he drags all white people into his apology, thus arrogating to himself a representative status. His audacity in apologizing for the sins of others taints his apology with a mood of arrogance and makes him vulnerable to the charge of self-righteousness, or to use a common pejorative term, virtue signalling. I see now why at first reading I found his apology so off-putting. My view has not changed.

Sex and the Single Christian (A New Christianity? Part 3)

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In this essay I continue my review of David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity, this time focusing on a single chapter: “Sex: From Sexual Purity to Covenant Realism.” It would take a small book to deal thoroughly with the substance and rhetoric of this chapter. Almost every sentence calls for comment. In some cases the choice of one word instead of another places Gushee and me worlds apart. I will try to distill Gushee’s essential argument as efficiently and fairly as possible before I offer my critique.

Introduction

Gushee opens with a rather contemptuous summation of evangelicals’ view of sex: “no sex for no body outside straight marriage” (p. 119; emphasis original). The double negative in the expression “no sex for no body” seems intended to give the impression that evangelicals are a bunch of backwoods hicks hailing from somewhere in hills of flyover country. And the reference to “straight” marriage, which a few years ago would have been considered redundant, needles those who adhere stubbornly to marriage as it has been understood for a thousand generations. The evangelical view of sex, according to Gushee, has caused great suffering for LGBTQ people and shame for young people, gay and straight, who cannot live up to it. In this chapter, Gushee argues for a sexual ethic “that sets enthusiastic mutual consent as a floor and covenant marriage as its main norm” (p. 119).

The Bible on Sexual Purity

Gushee admits that Paul teaches that for Christians there should be “no sex for no body outside straight marriage.” Jesus’s strict teaching against lust and divorce in the Sermon on the Mount tends in the same direction. In the hands of evangelicals, however, the New Testament texts are made to imply not only that sex “outside straight marriage” is forbidden but that it is dangerous, dirty, and shameful. But the Old Testament book of Song of Solomon celebrates the body and sex in graphic language. “We have tended,” complains Gushee, “toward too much Paul and not enough Song of Solomon, too much “spirit” and not enough “body” (p. 122).

Purity, Gender, and Sex

Drawing on Linda Kay Klein’s book, Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, Gushee argues that the evangelical “purity culture and abstinence-only sex education” movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was a spectacular failure. It made no difference in the sexual activity of evangelical young people as compared to non-evangelical young people. But it did “increase the experience of sexual guilt and anxiety and decrease sexual efficacy and satisfaction, especially among women” (p. 123). Additionally, the patriarchy associated with the purity culture facilitated “male sexual misconduct” and “clergy sexual abuse” (p. 123).

One observation before I leave this section: Gushee leads us to the edge of an inference that he does not explicitly draw: the odd characteristics, failures, and negative effects of the evangelical sexual purity movement in advocating the biblical morality of sex, casts doubt on the workability of the biblical view itself. As we shall see in the next two sections, Gushee actually makes this leap.

At the Intersection of Nature and Culture

Nature urges post-puberty young people to engage in sex as often as possible. But cultures recognize the need for rules to govern sexual activity for the sake of social peace and the welfare of children. Most cultures encourage some form of marriage as the best social arrangement to channel natural sexual desire toward socially productive ends. Marriage works best, however, if the gap between the onset of puberty and marriage is not too long. In contemporary America puberty happens between 10 and 12 years old on average but marriage is not contracted until around 30 years old. This means that there is an 18- to 20-year gap between puberty and marriage. According to Gushee,

Religious and cultural constraints cannot be expected to prevail over nature for twenty years, not even for devout Christians…We need a sexual ethic that makes sense amid today’s cultural circumstances but that still pays attention to the real problems that the Christian sex-in-marriage alone ethic was trying to solve (pp. 126-27).

Evangelicals and LGBTQ People: What Went Wrong

In their resistance to the gay rights movement of the 1960s, 70s, and 80’s, evangelicals used “hateful” and “disgust-producing rhetoric” to paint gay people in the worst possible light. Evangelical leaders seemed oblivious to the trauma and terror their rhetoric caused to the closeted LGBTQ evangelicals in their churches, families, and schools. What went wrong? Gushee answers that evangelicals displayed “an inability to deal with reality because the Bible did not appear to permit it” (p. 128; emphasis original). Evangelicals could not accept the “unassimilable reality” that a certain percentage of the population is attracted sexually to persons of the same sex. Scientists now understand that homosexuality is a “routine variation reported in all times and cultures” (p. 129). The problems that plague LGBTQ people do not derive from their sexual orientation as such but from the “stigma (and persecution) inflicted on this population” (p. 129). What needs to change is “not gay and lesbian people, but the cultural worldviews that stigmatize and harm them” (p. 129). Evangelicals need to change.

For this to happen, however, post-evangelicals must find “new ways of interpreting the Bible, ways that reinterpret the handful of condemnatory passages and elevate the many passages that potentially lead to better treatment and full inclusion” (p. 129). Tradition must be abandoned and replaced by “experience and other sources” as contexts within which to interpret the Bible’s statements concern same-sex activity. We must “adjust faith to the legitimate discoveries of science” (p. 129). The choice of dogma over people is driving believers out of the evangelical fold.

The exiles know that a religion that systematically harms vulnerable groups of people is not a good thing in the world. It is the opposite of Christian humanism; it is inhumanity in the name of Christ (p. 130).

Toward a Post-Evangelical Sexual Ethics

Gushee proposes a two-tiered sexual ethic. Covenant marriage should be the aspirational norm by which every other use of sex is measured. In covenant marriage, people pledge to take care of each other through thick and thin. For all the reasons cultures down through the ages have encouraged it, marriage is still the best place to direct sexual energy toward personal and social wellbeing. Although Gushee does not mention gay marriage in this immediate context, it is clear that he includes these marriages within his category of covenant marriage. He says,

I personally affirm that full acceptance of LGBTQ people is a nonnegotiable dimension of post-evangelical Christianity, and most others in this terrain seem to feel the same way (p. 130).

Covenant marriage may be the ideal, but any workable sexual ethic must articulate a minimum as well as an ideal norm. Young unmarried people will have sex, so we must provide guidance for those not ready for marriage. Gushee offers as a minimum standard this rule: sexual encounters should be conducted with “mutual enthusiastic consent,” because “irresponsible, exploitative, and sadistic sexuality is extremely dangerous. It can deeply harm others and self” (p. 130). Marriage is Gushee’s ideal, but he is willing to make “a concession to reality”: if “legal marriage is unreachable or unwise,” it would nevertheless be “best” for partners “to structure long-term romantic-sexual relationships in a covenantal fashion” (p. 133).

Interestingly, Gushee finds himself defending a more conservative position than fellow post-evangelicals Nadia Bolz-Weber, who recommends “sexual flourishing” as a new norm for sexual behavior, and Brandan Robertson, who considers polyamory (many sexual partners) as an acceptable Christian option. Gushee’s defense of his position, by the way, amounts to a plea not to go to extremes in reacting to the perfectionism of the purity culture. A plea, not an argument.

Three Critical Observations

1. Humanist, Utilitarian, Pragmatic, and Libertarian but Not Christian Ethics

Gushee is a professor of Christian ethics. He has written elsewhere on sex and marriage and other ethical topics. I’ve not read those works, but I am very clear that this chapter is not an exercise in Christian ethics. I am not speaking here merely of the fact that I disagree with his conclusions. Every argument, every observation, and every conclusion is based on avoiding harm and pursuing psychological/sociological wellbeing in this life. None of his conclusions helps us understand what we “ought” to do, none speaks of divine commands, and none roots our obligations in a Christian vision of creation, salvation, or redemption. Instead he uses “science,” psychological and sociological expertise, utilitarian thinking, and personal testimony to determine what are constructive and destructive—not right and wrong!—ways to use sex. The Christian language Gushee uses is ornamental and, without loss to the argument, could be jettisoned. The basic principle of his ethics (in this chapter) is consent. Even his ideal of marriage is derived from human experience of what works for this-worldly ends. Marriage is not “holy.” It’s not a sacrament. It’s not a mystery (Eph. 5:32). It is, rather, a beneficial social construct.

2. Misplaced Appeal to Science

Gushee appeals to facts, reality, and science in a way I find questionable. He takes the statistic about the number of LGBTQ people in the population as possessing moral significance. But it cannot carry such weight, because statistical studies describe what is whereas morality prescribes what ought to be. You cannot move from what is to what ought to be without introducting moral principles derived from sufficient moral grounds. His appeal to science is especially troubling. He implies that the discovery of the universal presence of LGBTQ people in human society parallels the discovery that the Sun, not earth, is the center of observed planetary movement. After Galileo, we had to reinterpret the biblical texts that seem to imply erroneously that the earth does not move and is the center of planetary motion. In the same way we must now reinterpret biblical texts that condemn same-sex activity…because we now know these texts are wrong.

But Gushee’s analogy between biblical references to empirical facts and its moral teaching is misplaced. For the parallel to hold, one would need to discover from some other source the moral knowledge that same-sex activity is good and right. And this source cannot be empirical science, for empirical science produces only empirical knowledge. Gushee does not explicitly admit that he relies on a source of moral knowledge of greater authority than the Bible, but he does so nonetheless. And that moral source is progressive culture as it comes to expression in the self-testimony of LGBTQ people.

3. Psychologically Implausible

Does anyone really believe that telling hormone-intoxicated teenagers that “enthusiastic mutual consent” is the minimum ethical floor for having sex and that “covenant marriage is its main norm” (p. 119), will do anything but clear the way for having sex early and often? What teenager would choose the hard way when their teachers tell them that it is morally acceptable to take the easy path? Can you imagine a responsible Christian parent telling their sixteen year old son or daughter, “Don’t have sex unless you are “enthusiastic and your partner consents”? Our sex-drenched culture has been telling them this for decades!

Shouldn’t Christian ethicists have something better to say?

Next Time: We will examine Gushee’s chapters on politics and race.

A New Christianity? (Part 2) A New God, A New Jesus, and A New Church?

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Today I will continue my review of David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity. In the previous essay I examined Gushee’s understanding of the sources of authority for Christian faith and morality. We discovered that he has abandoned the idea that Scripture is the sole source and norm for faith and has added reason and experience as sources of continuing revelation. In this essay I will address the second part of the book, “Theology: Believing and Belonging,” which contains chapters on God, Jesus, and the church.

Part Two: Theology: Believing and Belonging

4. God: In Dialogue with the Story of Israel

In the introduction to this chapter Gushee admits that systematic theology is not his strong suit. (His area of specialization is ethics.) He lists six theological “strands” that played a part in forming his theology, which those familiar with modern theology will recognize: Kingdom of God theology, social gospel theology, Holocaust theology, liberation theologies, Catholic social teaching, and progressive evangelical social ethics.

Gushee’s doctrine of God as reflected in this chapter has been decisively influenced by post-Holocaust Jewish thinkers. One such thinker is Irving Greenberg who recounts a story told by a Holocaust survivor who watched NAZI guards throw Jewish children alive into a fire. Greenberg articulated what has come to be called “the burning-children test:” “No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children” (p. 70; emphasis original). Gushee accepts Greenberg’s “burning-children test” and allows it to constrain “all claims about God, Jesus, and the church” in his book (p. 70). The “burning-children test” brings to the foreground in a dramatic way the problem of evil. Gushee broadens the principle to include other instances of evil:

It is not a stretch to speak of other tests: murdered and raped women; tortured and murdered indigenous peoples; enslaved, tortured, murdered, and lynched black people; tortured and murdered LGBTQ people.

What kinds of statements about God will pass the “burning-children test” and the other tortured-and murdered-people tests? According to Gushee, in view of the horrendous evils people perpetrate we can no longer believe that God is in control of the world, that God allows evil for good reasons, that all suffering can be redeemed, or that “all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28). We can no longer ask people to trust God in all things. The only response we can make to the burning of children and other horrible evils is to “cry out against evil…[and] redress as many human evils as possible” (p. 79; emphasis original). Gushee can accept only a suffering God, a God who “weeps at the evil humans do” (p. 80), a “God who risks trusting us with freedom, and suffers from the choices we make” (p. 80).

Is That It?

As I approached the end of this chapter I kept looking for some sign of hope. The only note of hope I heard sounded not from God but from humanity: that some of us might “cry out against evil…redress as many human evils as possible.” The God of Gushee’s new Christianity has given over the fate of the world into the hands of human beings. He can watch, suffer, and weep but cannot deliver and redeem.

5. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet. Lynched God-Man, Risen Lord

In this chapter, Gushee draws on the work of James D. G. Dunn in his book Jesus According to the New Testament. Dunn discerns in the New Testament eight different perspectives on Jesus: the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, John, Paul, Hebrews, and others. But Dunn also attempts to reconstruct from these perspectives a “Jesus-according-to-Jesus” or what is often called the “historical Jesus” (p. 86). According to Dunn (accepted by Gushee), the historical Jesus emphasized the love of neighbor command as the heart of our moral duties, prioritized the poor, demonstrated openness to non-Jews, included women within his inner circle, welcomed children, instituted the Lord’s Supper, and cherished a sense of his divine calling. Using this list as the standard, Gushee contrasts “Jesus-according-to-Jesus” with Jesus according to “American white evangelicalism.” In Gushee’s view, for white evangelicals Jesus is all about the assurance of personal salvation now and after death and success and happiness in this life. That is to say, Jesus supports the interests of white, middle class suburbanites in their comfortable lifestyle.

As an alternative to the white evangelical Jesus, Gushee presents a “Jesus according to Gushee via Matthew.” Jesus came announcing the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God and demanding that the people of God prepare themselves with repentance. Jesus entered Jerusalem and challenged the powers in charge. They responded not with repentance and belief but with murderous violence. Gushee, then, makes this rather anticlimactic statement about the resurrection:

I believe in the bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus, although I do not pretend to understand it. I live in hope that if God raised Jesus from the dead, then, in the end, life triumphs over death, not just for me and mine, but for the world. The rest is mystery (p. 97).

What does Jesus have to say to us today? Drawing on Dunn again, Gushee distinguishes between the “religion of Jesus” and the “religion about Jesus.” The “religion of Jesus” is a social justice program centering on the kingdom of God. The “religion about Jesus” dominates the New Testament, John, Paul, Acts, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and Revelation. It focuses on the atonement, resurrection, and the Spirit’s transforming power. Gushee prefers the religion of Jesus to the religion about Jesus:

I find the New Testament’s religion about Jesus to be a creative theological adaptation, useful for a time horizon of indefinite duration, deeply meaningful for the individual journey through life and toward death. But it is rather substantially cut adrift from the ministry of the historical Jesus, distanced from both his own Jewishness and the earliest Palestinian Jewish church…It is a beautiful and compelling message…But I cannot accept the common evangelical claim that this message is “the gospel.” It is one version (p. 100).

Where Do I Start? Where Would I End?

It would take more space than I have to reply fully to this chapter. Allow me, then, to let Paul make my reply:

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ²By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. ³For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

Gushee demotes what Paul designates as “of first importance” to the status of being “a creative theological adaptation” and places a twenty-first century scholarly reconstruction of the “religion of Jesus” at the center of his “new Christianity.” I suppose it makes sense that a “new Christianity” requires a new Jesus.

6. Church: Finding Christ’s People

This chapter centers on the problem of wounded and disheartened people leaving evangelical churches in droves and culminates in a section advising post-evangelicals about how to find a church. Gushee articulates a biblical theology of the church that sounds rather traditional. He defines the church as “the community of people who stand in covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ and seek to fulfill his kingdom mission” (p. 104). Though incomplete, this definition is not inaccurate in what it asserts. He also speaks of the church in traditional and biblical language: the church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, it is the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, a new creation, people devoted to the kingdom of God, and a covenant people.

However, as is characteristic of progressive Christianity in general, Gushee sometimes uses biblical language in unbiblical ways. That the church possesses a “covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ” does not mean that other people (Jews, Muslims, and others) do not possess a covenant with God through other means (p. 105). The church is “apostolic” but as the previous section on Jesus demonstrated, for Gushee this does not mean that the apostles’ teaching possesses as much authority as the teaching of Jesus. That the church is catholic demands that the church reject “racism, homophobia, and xenophobia.”

Gushee proposes a variety of covenant communities as alternatives to white evangelicalism. He recommends that post-evangelicals “give the mainline a look” (p. 114). The Episcopal Church might be an “especially attractive option” (p. 115) for those looking for “high liturgy together with LGBTQ inclusion” (p. 114). Some post-evangelicals may seek out home groups or plant new churches with an evangelical style worship but with post-evangelical theology. As will become even more obvious when we examine chapter 7 (“Sex: From Sexual Purity to Covenant Realism”), Gushee thinks that LGBTQ inclusion is the decisive issue of our time. For Gushee, full and equal LGBTQ inclusion seems to be an essential mark of the post-evangelical church and of his “new Christianity.” A new morality for a new Christianity.

Next Time: Chapter 7, “Sex: From Sexual Purity to Covenant Realism.”

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