Category Archives: Progressive Culture

Progressive Christian Ethics—An Exercise in Duplicity?

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

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. 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.”

Progressive Christianity (Part Three): The Far-Left (conclusion)

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Today’s essay brings to a conclusion my review of David A. Kaden, Christianity in Blue: How the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Theology Shape Progressive Identity (Fortress Press, 2021, pp. 168).

Chapter Four, “Saint Paul the Progressive”

The writings of Paul like other parts of the Bible contain good and bad ideas. Progressive Christians will interpret the letters of Paul in the same way they interpret the gospels. “Any interpretation that degrades human personality (i.e., human well-being) should be rejected in favor of interpretations that uplift human personality” (p. 103; emphasis original). Hence no one should interpret Paul’s letters as “affirming the institution of slavery, the oppression of women, the condemnation of LGBTQ+ people, or hatred of immigrants” (p. 105).

Central to Paul’s preaching was the assertion “Jesus is Lord.” In his day this claim challenged the Roman emperor’s claim to be “Lord.” It was a political claim in both cases. What does the confession “Jesus is Lord” mean for today? “Today’s Caesars,” urges Kaden, “appear in the form of ideologies and actions that degrade the human personality” (p. 120; emphasis original). Hence Paul’s message should “be interpreted in a compassionate way, a way that uplifts human personality” (p. 121).

Sensitive to the charge that Christianity is anti-Semitic, Kaden applies the criteria mentioned above—not degrading but uplifting to human personality—to Paul’s relationship to Judaism. Kaden argues that Romans 9-11 should be interpreted to mean that “Jews do not need to convert to Christianity in order to be saved because Christ is not their way into Abraham’s family” (p. 128; emphasis original). Paul would agree also, speculates Kaden, that Muslims do not need to convert to Christianity, for they too are members of Abraham’s family. With respect to Paul’s “restrictive” texts wherein the apostle seems to exclude certain types of people from inheriting the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10), Kaden muses that perhaps Paul did not know about Jesus’s eating with sinners or perhaps he still harbored prejudices from his previous “fundamentalist Pharisee” life (p. 132). In any case, a progressive interpretation of Paul will read his assertion about “every knee” bowing to declare “Jesus is Lord” (Phil 2:5-11) as proclaiming the universal love of God that will result in universal salvation.

Paul has been transformed into a modern progressive. Why, then, bother with interpreting Paul?

Chapter 5, “Designing a Loving and Progressive Church Where No One is Out”

Progressive Christianity wishes to redesign church in a way that does not set boundaries…

that demarcate insiders and outsiders, true believers and heretics, orthodoxies and heterodoxies. This version of Christianity instead reinterprets Scripture and tradition in order to demolish such false binaries and invites us to privilege those features of our past that can help us live more compassionately in the present and future (p. 142).

Progressive Christianity erases the boundary between the sacred and the profane. The whole world and everyone in it is sacred. Everyone is invited into the church. “No one is out” (p. 158). Everyone can undertake the journey into the mystery of being and life: poor, rich, black, white, brown, gay, trans, queer, and straight, doubters, theists and atheists. Community is not about sharing common beliefs but sharing a common life. Love is the only virtue and exclusion the only vice.

Evaluation

It would take more space that I want to allot to analyze and evaluate this book thoroughly. Besides, I don’t think the message of this book will be very persuasive to my target audience. It’s too radical. But I think a few observations are in order.

1. Nowhere in the book does Kaden attempt to ground the progressive vision of human well-being in objective reality. He takes it as axiomatic. More accurately, he draws on the cultural consensus of the progressive left and appeals to those to whom those ideals resonate with their experience and feelings. As I have shown above, Kaden does not ground the progressive vision in the action of God in Jesus Christ. Though he does not say so, I believe that he, like his mentor Harvard feminist New Testament professor Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza on whom he draws heavily in this book, derives the progressive way from the experiences of liberation and oppression of those marginalized by traditional religion and culture.

2. Kaden does not spend any time denying Bible miracles or the incarnation, atoning death, or resurrection of Jesus, even though it is clear that he no longer believes these doctrines in any but a metaphorical/mythical sense. Nor does he engage in examining the events and words of Jesus to distinguish between those that are historically reliable and those that are not. Careful exegesis and theological discernment of the New Testament are of little concern. Why? The answer is clear. Dr. Kaden has moved way past this phase of faith deconstruction. For Kaden, the “truth” of progressive Christianity does not depend on the outcome of these debates. Progressive Christianity is true not because Christianity itself is true but because the progressive vision of human flourishing is true. Christianity plays a supporting role. And that brings me to a third observation.

3. Throughout this review I kept bringing up different forms of a question: “Why Christianity?” Why Jesus? Why Paul? Why Church? I discussed above one reason why he insists on discovering or constructing a progressive core to Christianity. For people who live in the Western world, ethical values and a distinctive sense of the mystery of life and being have been transmitted in the language of the Bible and the Christian tradition. It is so deeply embedded in Western language and culture that there are no substitutes. Hence even though Progressive Christianity revises and critiques traditional Christianity and treats it as metaphor and parable, it cannot simply abandon it altogether. For then it would have no language in which to express its vision of life.

There is a second reason why Progressive Christianity does not abandon Christian language, and it’s a bit more cynical. In Chapter One, Kaden discusses the changing attitudes toward religion in the United States. More and more people have become disenchanted with evangelicalism and conservative churches. Many Christians do not want to drop out of church completely, but they want a more accepting, open-minded, compassionate community. Using the language of market analysis and religious entrepreneurship, Kaden observes, “The time is ripe for such a perspective. Americans now more than ever are open to progressive religion. While we still cling to religious traditions, we are becoming more socially liberal” (p. 13). Progressive Christianity gives those religious exiles what they want: traditional Christian language and ceremony—God, Christ, the Spirit, incarnation, community, resurrection, baptism, Eucharist, the preached word, Scripture readings, Lent, Easter, and all the rest—but no orthodoxy, no excommunication, no moral rules about sex and abortion, and no cognitive content. There is always a market for such a bloodless and adaptable religion. Unfortunately, unlike the automobile or real estate industries, there is no penalty for false advertising.

The Essential Progressive Attitude

Having examined a far left form of Progressive Christianity I want to pose a question that I intend to pursue in future essays. Are less radical forms of Progressive Christianity animated by the same progressive principle that drives the more radical form? Where is the dividing line that marks the boundary between genuine Christianity and fake forms such as the one described in Christianity in Blue?

Progressive Christianity (Part Two): The Far Left

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This essay is the first in a projected series of reviews of books that claim to present a progressive view of Christianity. Some of them may be familiar to my readers but others will not. Today I will examine a book on the far-left end of the theological spectrum: David A. Kaden, Christianity in Blue: How the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Theology Shape Progressive Identity (Fortress Press, 2021, pp. 168). Kaden is the “senior minister of the First Congregational Church of Ithaca, New York.” (from the back cover). His congregation is affiliated with the United Church of Christ. Kaden is highly educated (M.Div. and Ph.D.) and has taught religion in colleges and universities. He is well positioned to represent the left most extreme of progressive Christianity.

Kaden first describes progressive Christianity in general and then in succeeding chapters deals with the progressive view of Scripture, God, Jesus, Paul, and the church. I will summarize each of these chapters as concisely and faithfully as I can. Afterward I will make some observations.

Chapter One, “What is Progressive in Progressive Christianity?”

This chapter weaves autobiography into his explanation of progressive Christianity. Like many progressives, Kaden began his journey in evangelicalism. He holds degrees from Messiah College and Gordon-Conwell Seminary. As he continued his theological education at Harvard and Toronto, he abandoned evangelicalism and adopted progressive views. The first mark of progressive Christianity, then, is rejection of evangelical/traditional Christianity. Unlike evangelicalism, Progressive Christianity focuses on “this life and on changing this world for the benefit of people now” (p. 10). Progressives do not accept the Bible and the Christian tradition as authorities by which to determine Christian truth but “as compelling conversation starters” (p. 13). Everyone is welcome to join the conversation and continue the journey of life together. Emphasis falls on acceptance, diversity, and compassion rather than repentance, conversion and discipline. This first chapter raised a question that kept coming up as I read the book: Why bother with the Bible and the Christian tradition at all?

Chapter Two: “Of God and Bubbles”

Kaden begins chapter two by disabusing us of the idea that the Bible, the Christian tradition, theologians, or anyone else can speak about God directly. Kaden quotes approvingly a statement by Peter Rollins: “Speaking about God is never speaking of God but only ever speaking about our understanding of God” (p. 25). Language about God is language about language about God. In Kaden’s own words, “The Bible and Christian tradition recount what ancient people said about God, morals, and religious practice, not what any of these things actually are” (p. 47, emphasis original). The Bible is full of contradictory statements about God and God’s actions. God is the God of war who orders the genocide of his enemies and the God of love seen in the self-giving of Jesus. Our task, argues Kaden, is to “struggle” with Scripture:

Progressive Bible interpreters and preachers who speak to and for communities of faith have an ethical responsibility to privilege those elements of biblical God-talk that highlight the best in God and God’s relationship to people, especially society’s most vulnerable: the poor, the immigrant, the oppressed, the gender nonconforming, and the hated (p. 46).

The word “God” means different things to different people, and there is no normative statement of truth about God one must confess to embrace Progressive Christianity. The word “God” is evoked by our sense of connection to the mystery at the heart of being and life (p. 61).

In reading this chapter I kept thinking, “Why bother with the Bible and the Christian tradition at all?” Drawing on his theory of language as symbolic expression of our sense of mystery, Kaden explains how he can embrace traditional Christian language even though he does not believe it imparts propositional truth:

But it is also why we can fully embrace our rich heritage as Christians, including its most orthodox manifestations. God incarnated in human flesh in the person of Christ is quintessentially relational—a God who dwells among us and is discovered in the faces of the people we meet…is fully present with us, breathing life into and through our communities and our personal interactions. And God as triune implies that God is an eternal, interacting relationship (p. 55).

That is to say, Progressive Christianity claims to be authentically “Christian” because it uses the language of the Bible and the Christian tradition as its central symbols to expresses its sense of the mystery of life and being. Bear in mind that Progressive Christianity does not claim that these symbols (God, Christ, Trinity, Incarnation, etc.) are true in the way a proposition can be true or false; nor are they superior to other religions’ symbols in expressing the mystery of life and being for those religious communities. To use a common postmodern expression, Christianity is “true for me” or “true for us” Christians but not true for everyone.

Chapter Three: “Pictures of Jesus”

As the title of the chapter foreshadows, Kaden views the four Gospels as different portraits of Jesus comprised of impressions, memories, and traditions about Jesus interpreted in light of the experience of the early Christian communities. “The gospels,” Kaden, opines, “are presentations of Jesus written decades after he died and thus reflect the values and interests of the writers and others who compiled them” (p. 75; emphasis original). They differ in narrative detail and in emphasis and often conflict with each other. But this historical problem does not matter to Kaden:

To state the matter plainly, the Jesus who matters is not the Jesus we think we can reconstruct from the sources of the ancient past but rather the Jesus we proclaim today using the pages of Scripture as our starting point (p. 78).

We are not bound by the gospel writers’ pictures of Jesus. Progressive Christians “creatively borrow, edit, update, and rework those same gospels that are grounded in tradition to make Jesus speak to us today” (p. 82). And what is the criterion by which we reconstruct a Jesus that can speak to us today? In addressing this question, Kaden borrows a phrase from the 2016 film Their Finest. It tells the story the screen writers of a WW II propaganda film promoting the war effort. They discovered to their dismay that the central event of the film was apocryphal. One of the writers Tom Buckley justified producing the film anyway because “we pick our truths” (p. 64). What matters is not the historical truth but the emotional impact of the story. Kaden applies this theory to the stories of Jesus:

When we pick our truths as we interpret the New Testament gospels, our responsibility as progressive Christians is to privilege those portions of the gospels that depict (or paint) Jesus in ways that are consistent with the boundary-crossing message we find in Mark’s story of the touching of the leper and Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan” (p. 88).

It does not matter to Kaden whether it is historically true that Jesus touched a leper or told the story of the Good Samaritan. What matters is the way these stories dramatize a view of human relationships—compassionate, tolerant, and affirming—that progressivism takes as normative. That is to say, we have a progressive message and we “pick our truths” from the traditions about Jesus that can best serve that message.

That recurring question surfaces again: if you do not come to know or ground your “truth” in the historical words and deeds of Jesus, Why talk about Jesus at all? Why Christianity?

To be continued…

Varieties of Progressive Christianity: Introduction to the Series

Are Progressives the New Evangelicals?

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Since I finished my recent review of Roger Olson’s book Against Liberal Theology: Putting the Brakes on Progressive Christianity (July 15 and 19, 2022), I’ve wanted to write something on “progressive Christianity.” As you might recall, I criticized Olson’s book for not describing “Progressive Christianity” in detail. In the intervening month I looked for books, podcasts, and essays to see if I could detect a central theme or principle in self-described “Progressive Christian” materials. I discovered that progressive writers are quite diverse theologically. And this can be very confusing because liberals are always progressive but progressives are not always liberal. That is to say, some progressives deny outright or radically reinterpret traditional Christian dogmas while others confess them. What, then, do all progressive Christians (liberals and non-liberals) have in common that makes them “progressive”?

What Makes Progressives Progressive?

My answer to this question must be somewhat tentative at this point. But I will advance an opinion that may need refinement with further study: The “progressive” label as it is applicable to both groups refers to moral rather than theological matters. All progressives believe in the possibility and the fact of moral progress. Christian progressives believe that certain moral insights of modern progressive culture are morally superior to the church’s traditional moral teaching even if that teaching appears to be based on the Bible. Among these progressive changes are looser attitudes toward divorce, gender identity, casual sex, abortion, and homosexuality.

I dare say that most Christian progressives could not explain why modern progressive morality is superior to traditional moral teaching. Tradition just “feels” wrong to them whereas progressive morality “feels” right. Traditional morality “feels” oppressive, intrusive, judgmental, unfair, unrealistic, inhumane, and antiquated. And it produces unhappiness. Progressive morality breathes freedom and allows each person to seek happiness in their own way. And it frees Christians from having to play the role of the “morality police.”

It won’t come as a surprise to readers of this blog when I charge that Christian progressives find progressive morality compelling because they have–whether they realize it or not–internalized the fundamental anthropological principle that has animated the progressive movement for over 300 years:

In its inner essence the human being is free from all alien limits. Its self-appointed task in life is to liberate itself from all external limits and actualize its unique, inner self in the world. Its happiness depends on completing this task.

According to this principle, moral progress in a society is measured by how much self-determination it grants to individuals to pursue their happiness through self-actualization of their inner selves. Needless to say a progressive society will not inhibit the individual’s quest for happiness and, indeed, it will fight against all who would hinder this quest.

Are Progressives the New Evangelicals?

Modern evangelicalism was invented (perhaps reinvented) after WW II by evangelist Billy Graham and theologian Carl F. H. Henry. Between 1925 and 1947, “fundamentalism” had become a term of abuse hurled at conservative Christians. After the Scopes Trial, it became abundantly clear that the fundamentalists had lost the cultural battle and had been exiled from the mainstream to the cultural “backwater” of small town and rural America. Many fundamentalists dusted off their feet and retreated to their cultural islands. Fundamentalists were pictured by the national media as Bible-thumping, science-denying, overalls-wearing hillbillies. After the War, Carl F. H. Henry called on conservative Christians to return to the cultural center of American life under the name of evangelical. Evangelicals founded journals, learned societies, and colleges. They became professors, doctors, and lawyers. By 1976 they had become a significant force in American politics.

After 1990, however, the cultural influence of evangelicalism leveled off and began to decline. After 2010, that decline accelerated so much that the term “evangelical” has become in 2022 analogous to the term “fundamentalist” in 1922. For those enamored by progressive culture, evangelicals are homophobic, transphobic, climate-deniers, and white supremacists. Are such contemporary progressives as Jim Wallis, Jen Hatmaker, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and Rob Bell attempting to do to evangelicalism what Carl F. H, Henry and Billy Graham did to fundamentalism? Do progressive Christians aim to become the new evangelicals?

I conclude with a quote from a recent critic of progressivism:

For many departing evangelicals, progressivism feels new, fresh, and relevant. But it is actually not new at all—progressivism is only a replay of old-line Protestant Liberalism. This matters because their Protestant Liberalism is among the fastest dying religions in the world. Evangelicals are coming to Liberalism at exactly the moment that Liberalism is proving to provide no real life (David Young, A Grand Illusion: How Progressive Christianity Undermines Biblical Faith, Renew, 2019, p. 14).

I belief Young is correct in his contention that progressive Christianity is unstable and will lead inevitably to liberalism. Let me make a prediction: Progressive Christianity will not become the new evangelicalism. When a departing evangelical runs out of evangelicalism they achieve too much inertial force to stop in the half way house of progressive Christianity. They will move rapidly into liberalism and from there on into secularism. The progressive principle is not consistent with any philosophy resembling Christianity, for it is the deification of humanity.

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