Category Archives: progressive Christianity

A Time for Orthodoxy (Part Four)

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Today I will conclude the series urging anti-creedal churches to rethink their opposition to explicit creeds, confessions of faith, and statements of belief.

A Little More History

The Early and Patristic Church

Creeds, confessions of faith and statements of belief served different purposes in different eras of church history. Beginning with the council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), early and patristic church leaders met on occasion to deal with controversies. They sometimes issued decrees clarifying controverted issues and condemning erroneous views. For example, the decrees (creeds) from the first two ecumenical Councils, Nicaea and Constantinople (I) built on the list of truths articulated in the early rule of faith. The Councils found it necessary to clarify certain disputed points and condemn certain assertions made by the Arian party, which asserted that the Son of God was not truly God but the first and greatest creature. Wisely, these Councils made no attempt to articulate everything Christians believe and practice. Not only would this have been impossible, it would have engendered fruitless controversies. They left all these things implicit in the tradition of worship and the practical life of the church.

I see much wisdom in the patristic church’s practice. The Christian faith cannot be articulated in all its fulness and richness. As philosopher of science Michael Polanyi observed, “we know more than we can say.” If the church tries to say everything it knows, it will complicate what is simple and oversimplify what is complicated. But there are times when the church must articulate some piece of its tacit knowledge and condemn the worse distortions of its faith.

The Protestant Reformation

When Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and other branches of the Protestant Reformation organized themselves into separate bodies, they promulgated confessions of faith to clarify for the world what they believed and taught and how they differed from the Roman Catholic Church and each other. Among the earliest of these are the Lutheran Augsburg Confession of Faith (1530), the Reformed First (1536) and Second (1566) Helvetic Confessions of Faith, and the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1563). These documents were much longer than the Nicene Creed and covered a more extensive catalogue of doctrines. Nevertheless, the Protestant confessions did not attempt to articulate the full depth and riches of the Christian faith. Every later Protestant body explicitly or implicitly followed the same rule.

The proliferation of Protestant confessions of faith was driven by necessity. Given the separation from the Roman Catholic Church and the disputes among themselves Protestants had to make clear how they differed from the RCC and each other. This task remains necessary even for contemporary anti-creedal churches. How else may anti-creedal churches let the world know that they differ from other churches by rejecting creeds?

Contemporary Independent, Community, and Bible Churches

In this list I include every church whose primary leadership and identity rests in the local congregation. Instead of a Protestant confession of faith, they often list their beliefs on their website or in printed material under the rubric “What we Believe.” This list usually includes basic teachings common to all orthodox churches (Trinity, Christ’s Deity, Atonement, Resurrection, etc.), some that are central to Protestantism in general (justification by faith), some that are characteristic of the parent denomination, and some that are important to the identity of that particular congregation. Most of these statements are not too long, at most 20 points. Like the Patristic church and the churches of the Reformation, community and Bible churches do not attempt to put into words everything they teach and practice. You learn these things, if at all, by long years of participation in the life of the church.

The Present Challenge: Progressive “Christianity”

As I explained in the first essay in this series, my faith was nurtured in a conservative wing of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. That is where I serve today and expect to serve for the rest of my life. We like to think we preserve some unique insights within a generally Protestant tradition. To the outside observer, however, we look like most other low church Protestant groups. We cherish the canonical scriptures and adhere (informally) to the orthodox ecumenical faith set out in the ecumenical creeds. But we wished to be guided by Scripture alone apart from detailed Protestant confessions of faith. Our original aim was to protest against the use of minor theological differences to exclude and condemn other believers. We wished to reclaim in practice the biblical doctrine of the unity of the church.

A Different World

Today, however, our anti-creedal stance has made us less able to assert biblical/orthodox teaching even in the most fundamental areas, which in the past we took for granted. Our hesitancy to assert doctrinal truth has opened the door to heresies that never came knocking in the past. We face a decisive moment. Will we assert and enforce the biblical/orthodox faith by making use of the authorities of scripture, tradition, and office or succumb to the spirit of the postmodern age in which everyone is their own judge?

Admittedly, I am speaking here of urban and suburban churches. Rural and small-town churches face other issues. What, then, is the challenge urban and suburban SCM and other independent, community, and Bible churches face? Readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I think the greatest challenge to the orthodoxy of those churches is the temptation to assimilate to the progressive sector of modern culture.* That is to say, to adopt an easy-going inclusivism that accepts everyone the way they are. No demand for conversion, repentance, or confession! Sexual promiscuity? No problem! Wish us to affirm your LGBTQ+ way of life? Who are we to judge! Your inner self is the measure of your truth! Want to divorce your spouse because you found someone else? We understand…God wants you to be happy! Abortion…well, at least you struggled with the decision. You think everybody will be saved? Makes sense…God loves everyone! Want a social justice Jesus? So do we!

A Time to Stand

I am speaking to those church leaders and planters who want to preserve the biblical/orthodox faith. I urge you to follow the example of the early and patristic church. State clearly what your church believes and practices. Make it concise, but include the ecumenical faith, other basic teachings, and do not neglect the beliefs challenged by the progressive heresy: affirm the positive teaching of Scripture on these subjects, but also make clear your rejection of the progressive principle of religious and moral relativism and the specific progressive heresies mentioned above.

*Use the search function on my blog to look for essays that deal with “progressive Christianity.”

Seminarian Meets Progressive Bishop: Part Two

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Setting: Our confused seminarian returns for a follow-up meeting with the progressive bishop to explore further his professional prospects. The seminarian knocks gently on his mentor’s office door.

Bishop: Come in. Have a seat.

Seminarian: Thanks.

Bishop: How have you been this past week?

Seminarian: I’ve thought a lot about what you said previously. I focused especially on the implications of giving reason and experience authority equal to scripture in determining church teaching. If I understood you correctly, progressives hold that in some cases the conclusions of reason and experience should be preferred above those of scripture, right?

Bishop: Yes. That is correct. But keep in mind that by “the conclusions of reason and experience” progressives are not speaking of private preferences, snap judgments, and speculations. By “reason” we mean the considered conclusions of the scientific community, and by “experience” we mean the insights modern society has attained by listening to the voices of oppressed and marginalized communities.

Seminarian: Okay. Just wanted to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood.

Bishop: Good. What’s on your mind today?

Seminarian: I don’t remember when or how this happened. But recently I realized that I have become suspicious and even skeptical about the supernaturalism that permeates traditional Christianity and, if I’m honest, the Bible itself. Evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodoxy place divine interventions into the ordinary course of nature at the center of their message and practice: incarnation, resurrection, atonement, divine wrath, the devil, conversion as an individual spiritual rebirth, sacraments, a second coming of Jesus, and heaven and hell. But to many people of my generation, these ideas seem unreal, unknowable, and unnecessary—the stuff of myth and legend. In addition, they distract from the essential message of Christianity. As I understand him, Jesus focused on the love of God and love of neighbor, the kingdom of God, peace, and social justice. Why burden this beautiful moral message with demands to believe reports of supernatural acts and miraculous transformations?

Bishop: I hear you. And most progressives share your concerns. But you need to be careful. First, don’t exaggerate the problems caused by the supernatural elements in the Bible. Even if these “supernatural” ideas and stories of divine interventions are not literally true, they are part of the Christian story and cannot be removed without loss and offense. As metaphors and symbols, they communicate important beliefs about God and support Jesus’s teaching about love and justice. Apart from these symbols and such religious rituals as baptism, the Eucharist, the divine liturgy, and communal prayer, Christianity would be reduced to an ethical message without grounding or persuasive power. You don’t have to attack or ignore the biblical miracles. There are alternative ways to address your concerns.

Seminarian: Sorry to interrupt…. But something has been bothering me about what you said last week. And you just said it again. At the risk of offending you, it sounds like you are advocating deception. You seem to be advising that I should allow people in my church to keep believing stories that I know are not literally/historically true because I can draw useful lessons from them. Wouldn’t this be treating them as children?

Bishop: You did interrupt! I had anticipated your apprehension—it is a common one—and was just about to address it.

Seminarian: Sorry. It’s just that I keep hearing the voices of my conservative parents and my fundamentalist home church pastor in my head raising the charge of deceitfulness and elitist condescension.

Bishop: You must keep in mind the difference between the church and the academy. Seminaries, divinity schools, and university religious studies departments question tradition and explore alternative theories of theology and religion. That’s the reason they exist. In our academic studies we learn to doubt and think critically about traditional forms of Christianity and to subject them to testing by reason and experience. Studying Christian theology, the Bible and history academically (that is, critically) inevitably raises doubts about the supernaturalism of the Bible and traditional theology. The two attitudes (critical versus believing) are incompatible, for to believe biblical miracles we have to sacrifice reason, and to obey “revealed” moral laws we have to deny the authority of experience.

In contrast to the academy, church life is all about piety, worship, community, and practice. As a minister, you are not obligated to share your academic doubts and critical conclusions with the people. Church attendees can neither understand nor appreciate the rigorous academic study of Christianity. It’s not our task to disabuse them of all their naïve beliefs and literal interpretations of the Bible. We don’t have to tell them bluntly that the stories of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost are not literally true. We can draw good lessons from these and other miracle stories without either denying or affirming their historicity. Most people that attend progressive churches are happy not to hear traditionalist demands for obedience to “revealed” moral rules. They will be perfectly content to hear general platitudes about kindness, love, racial and environmental justice, acceptance of difference, and celebration of diversity. What matters is that we minister to our church by assuring them of God’s acceptance and presence in all circumstances and that we instruct them in the ways of love and justice.

Seminarian: I want to be sure I understand you. Since we know that the supernatural beliefs, taken in a literal sense, are not of the essence of Christianity, we need not feel a sense of urgency to correct our members who innocently hold them? Hence our silence on the literal/historical truth of the incarnation, resurrection, new birth, etc., does not count as deception and elitist condescension but a teaching strategy appropriate to a popular audience?

Bishop: You could put it that way. But I can’t follow up on this right now. I have a staff meeting in ten minutes, and I have to make sure the agenda is in order.

Seminarian: Next time…I do hope you will meet with me again. Next time, I’d like to discuss some of the “supernatural” themes of the Bible and traditional Christianity. I’d like to know how you understand them and deal with them in preaching and teaching.

Bishop: I’d be delighted!

Seminarian: Thank you! See you next week!

Bishop: See you then.

Confused Seminarian Meets Progressive Bishop: A Hot Mic Moment*

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Setting: A young, bright seminarian meets with the regional bishop of a progressive denomination to discuss his future.

Seminarian: Thank you so much for meeting with me on such short notice.

Bishop: You’re welcome. Have a seat. Would you like a drink?

Seminarian: Thanks. Water will be fine.

Bishop: What’s on your mind?

Seminarian: It’s a bit sensitive.

Bishop: Don’t worry. I make no judgments, and nothing you say will leave this office.

Seminarian: Okay. Here goes. From birth to adulthood, I attended an evangelical church. (Some would call it “fundamentalist”). In my late teen years, I felt a call to the ministry. I attended a small Christian college, and three months ago I graduated from an evangelical seminary. But things have not turned out the way I imagined, and I now find myself at a turning point in my life.

Bishop: Hummm. How so?

Seminarian: I’ve lost faith in the traditional theology taught in evangelical churches. Its moral teachings are out of date, it’s oblivious to social justice, and its politics leans to the far right. I don’t fit anymore. I feel like I’ve invested years of my life and accrued significant debt for nothing. I would still like to become a clergyman. I enjoy helping people, I am a good public speaker, and I have a passion for social justice. But given my doubts and unorthodox views, I am concerned that I might not fit into any church.

Bishop: Don’t despair just yet. How exactly have your views changed?

Seminarian: Well, I suppose it all started with the Bible. Before I entered seminary I believed that everything the Bible says is true because it is the inspired word of God. That is what my church taught me. But when I began to study the Bible closely in seminary, my faith in the perfection of the Bible began to waver. As the list of contradictions, historical errors, mythic elements, immoral commands and strange customs grew longer and longer, my faith in the perfection of the Bible grew weaker and finally collapsed. I still believe, however, that the Bible contains inspiring ideals and much good advice, despite its imperfections. Jesus’s teaching about God’s concern for the poor and oppressed, the kingdom of God, and our duty to love others still moves me greatly. But is there a place for me in the ministry?

Bishop: There is no need to feel alone on this journey. Many seminarians have traveled the same road, including me, and eventually find a home in a progressive church. Admittedly, even in progressive churches many people do not wish to hear the Bible criticized. But you don’t need to do that. As you say, the Bible contains many good lessons and principles. Just focus on these and ignore the rest. People won’t even guess that you have doubts about the Bible.

Seminarian: What a relief! It’s encouraging to know that there are denominations in which ministers don’t have to defend everything the Bible says. But there is more.

Bishop: Go on.

Seminarian: When I finally realized that the Bible isn’t infallible or even reliable in everything it teaches, I began approaching everything it says with a critical eye. I couldn’t help myself. It no longer made sense to accept what the Bible says simply because it says so, and that opened a Pandora’s Box of questions. My whole world was turned upside down. I still don’t know what to believe. I don’t want to toss out everything the Bible says. I suppose I am looking for a way to distinguish between beliefs that are worth keeping and those that must be left behind. Do you see what I mean?

Bishop: I think I do.

Seminarian: I’m listening.

Bishop: Have you ever heard of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral?

Seminarian: I remember the term. It originated in the Anglican/Methodist tradition and has something to do with the sources of theology, right?

Bishop: Correct. But apparently, its significance escaped you. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral observes that throughout church history four factors always worked together to produce the church’s doctrine: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience (Hence quadrilateral!). All Christian doctrines need to be grounded in the Bible, consistent with tradition, supported by reason, and confirmed in experience. Fundamentalists and evangelicals focus exclusively on the scripture. If a doctrine appears to be taught in the Bible, they say we must accept it even if it is not supported by tradition, reason, or experience.

Seminarian: Yes. That is what I was taught.

Bishop: Indeed! Evangelicals, then, departed from the mainstream flow of the church’s way of thinking through theological challenges. But progressive denominations take all four sources of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral seriously in their doctrinal deliberations.

Seminarian: How does that work?

Bishop: Of course, progressives take the Bible seriously. It is the original source for the Christian story: Jesus’s life, teachings and fate, as well as the earliest church’s attempt to understand his significance. Without the Bible, we would have nothing distinctly Christian to say. However, as you have come to realize, the Bible is a human book and suffers from the limitations that afflict all human creations. It is influenced by the beliefs, moral norms, and superstitions of the culture within which it was written.

Seminarian: Let me guess…progressives use tradition, reason, and experience to compensate for the deficiencies and limitations of scripture.

Bishop: Exactly…but don’t get too far ahead of yourself. It’s not a simple process.

Seminarian: Sorry about that. Lead on. But if you don’t mind, give me the short version. I’m having dinner with a friend in an hour.

Bishop: Progressives value tradition, but only as an on-going process of discussion. We listen to past voices, but we do not treat traditional doctrine as definitive for all time. We consult tradition to benefit from the wisdom of the past, but as the living church of today we must read it critically and remain open to new insights inspired by the Spirit. And that is why reason and experience are so important. When we perceive that the Bible asserts something erroneous or unreasonable—usually in the areas of history or empirical science—we feel free to ignore its teaching or correct its mistakes. It would be wrong to ask people to believe the impossible, accept the erroneous, or embrace the improbable as conditions for becoming Christians.

Seminarian: Okay. But that doesn’t sound particularly progressive. Even the most orthodox theologians—Protestant and Roman Catholic—employed the criterion of “right reason” as a measure of true theology!

Bishop: That is correct. But our modern understanding of what reason demands differs greatly from that of medieval Catholics and Reformation era Protestants. Given the discoveries of modern science, today’s fundamentalists and evangelicals are much less enthusiastic about reason than their predecessors were. But that is a story for another time. Let’s move on to experience.

Seminarian: I will hold you to that.

Bishop: No doubt, progressive churches’ use of experience as a doctrinal criterion (or source) marks their most significant departure from traditional orthodoxy. Experience becomes very important in grappling with contemporary moral issues, specifically those dealing with class, sex, race, and gender. Progressive Christians have learned to read the Bible and tradition critically in view of the experiences of marginalized and oppressed people. The Bible and tradition picture gay, lesbian, and transgender people as degenerate and rebellious. They picture women as weak-willed temptresses. However, when one listens to the voices of LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people and enters their lived experience, our views change. We return, then, to the offensive biblical texts with a new, critical perspective. We become open to alternative interpretations or, if reinterpretation won’t solve the problem, we reject those texts as out of character with the main story of scripture, which is God’s gracious acceptance of everyone.

Seminarian: Wow! This has been enlightening! I am beginning to see a glimmer of hope. May I come back next week to explore other areas of concern?

Bishop: Of course. I will put you on my calendar.

Seminarian: Thank you so much! See you next week!

Bishop: Great! Don’t forget your jacket.

* Within the past two years I’ve written several essays on so-called “progressive Christianity.” I reviewed books by Roger Olson (July 15 & 19, 2022), Robert Gushee (November 7, 12, 21 &28, 2022), David Kaden (October 22 & 23, 2022) and, in a series of essays on progressive thought, attempted to articulate the foundational value that animates the progressive movement in secular culture and in the church (August 12, 2022). I am writing this series of conversations between a confused seminarian and a progressive bishop because I am amazed that relatively orthodox (or evangelical) Christians attend progressive churches and have no clue what their pastors really believe or what they are up to. So, I am giving you the inside story—a hot mic perspective—on progressive Christianity.

The New Apostles

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The Long, Narrow Way

As a junior in college, I felt an irresistible call to devote my life to teaching and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have given my entire adult life (50 years!) to studying the scriptures, the history of the church, and the greatest minds and truest hearts the church has produced. I’ve not always been certain of my views, likely not always correct, and perhaps sometimes not always pure of heart, but as a whole I believe I have sought God’s will. My assumption in all of this is that I am not a latter-day apostle, that I don’t have a right to craft a Christianity that suits me and keeps me in step with the spirit of the times. Hence, I have tried my best to submit my mind to the words of Jesus, the witness of Paul, Peter, James and the rest of Jesus’s chosen apostles.

Furthermore, I am aware that I am not sufficient of myself—my perspective is too narrow, my knowledge is too limited, and my biases too unconscious—to understand the fulness of the faith. I need help from wise men and women from the church past and present. In my search for reliable partners, I have listened to the teaching of Irenaeus of Lyon, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, John Calvin, and hundreds of others. All of them, too, attempted to submit their minds and hearts to the words of Jesus and the teaching of the apostles. And I have profound respect for the tradition shared by these teachers, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. In fact, I consider myself a biblical, catholic, and orthodox Christian.

I have taught Christian doctrine at the university level for 34 years. Chief among my goals has been to ground the next generation of church leaders in this great tradition. In so doing I hoped to free them from slavery to the winds of change and the spirit of the times. I have tried to teach them to be humble, cautious, systematic, and analytical in their efforts to understand the faith and how it applies to the present age.

Consternation

I say all of this to place in context my profound consternation at how lightly many of my highly educated acquaintances dismiss that apostolic/catholic/orthodox consensus and embrace a “progressive” form of Christianity. They throw over the original apostles and the saints, martyrs, reformers, and doctors of the church to embrace the cultural fads of the last 25 years as a new revelation, a lately-discovered gospel. According to my progressive friends, the man confronted by the risen Jesus on the Damascus Road and chosen by the Lord to be his apostle, the man who personally knew Peter, James, and many other first-generation disciples of Jesus, and author of much of the New Testament, Paul, was wrong about how to live a Christian life, about marriage, family, and sex. He missed the boat on women’s rights and slavery. These modern apostles know more about what Jesus would do than the ones Jesus chose to be his witnesses. All they need to do is keep step with progressive culture as it gradually erases boundary after boundary set by the Creator.

Envy

I’m envious of these new apostles. The knowledge and certainty I’ve sought through cautious, painstaking thought, they attained simply by listening to contemporary culture, which knows nothing of the scriptures and possesses no sympathy for the church. Like the ancient Gnostics, these new apostles attain to gnosis (knowledge) instantaneously without reference to the scriptures or tradition. They know everything they need to know about God and true morality from a source within themselves. Only, the ancient Gnostics at least made a pretense of using reason to deduce their quasi-mythical system. The modern Christian Gnostics don’t need reason, for they know the truth directly from their feelings and desires. Personal experience is their teacher. And if they even bother with scripture and tradition, they use their feeling-derived gnosis to judge and correct them. I am envious indeed! Such knowledge is too wonderful for me! Not being an apostle, I have to rely on the apostolic tradition and the wisdom of the church to learn how to live as a Christian.

Gnostic America

While I am at it, let me recommend a book. Recently I read Peter M. Burfeind, Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion According to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy (Pax Domini Press, 2014). Perhaps I will write a full review later, but let me give you a taste of what Burfeind has to offer. Toward the end of the book, in his discussion of the Emerging Church Movement—an early progressive movement within evangelical churches—he charges:

It’s a Christ abstracted from his humanity and his Church once again…a Christ rarefied from his history and ecclesiastical grounding and reunited with the Self. Ultimately it’s a rebellion against created forms, a rejection of them as idolatrous, the very position taken by the Gnostics (Gnostic America, p. 334).

These comments were written nine years ago. They were true then, and nine years later we can see how prophetic they were of developments that followed.

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.”

“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

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.

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. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that 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.”