Progressive Christianity

Progressive Christianity. Some people I’ve met would consider that an oxymoron. If you listen to the news and many political candidates, it would seem that there is only one right way to be a Christian in America and it requires conservative ideals and biblical inerrancy.

If you start from the point of view that the Bible, through very selective translations, is your only authority and has no errors or contradictions, then I see where some conservatives get their views. But that is what I would call worshiping the Bible before Jesus, or a theology nerd might call Bibliolatry. I prefer to get as close to Jesus as possible and that turned me into a progressive.

Please understand this is not a statement of political ideology. But my ideological leanings flow from following Christ. There aren’t a lot of things Jesus said or did that could be construed as conservative. He upheld his tradition, yet was so radical in reforming it he was killed. He said some things about divorce that might be considered socially conservative, though they really might be more about protecting women in the context of his culture. He said nothing about taxes except give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, nothing about same-sex relationships or abortion. Much of what he said otherwise seems progressive to me, contradicting some scripture, turning the other cheek, warning against wealth and greed, welcoming strangers, tending to the poor, blessing the peacemakers and so on. Despite what the Bible-thumpers might have you believe, it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to stand on conservative ideals in the Kingdom of God.

But progressive Christianity is not about progressive political ideology. It is about having a progressive approach to faith, you know, like that famous radical Martin Luther. Times change, ideas evolve and many of us think our spiritual practices should keep up with modern life. To be committed to evolving reformation is healthy and deeply incarnational. What I mean by incarnational is that the Bible and the human Jesus were rooted in their time and culture. We deserve a faith that meets us in our own time and culture. Some ideas are eternal in the Bible — God is real, loves you and wants you to love others. Other ideas not so much — don’t eat pork, keep the sabbath on Saturday and don’t wear mixed fabrics. Some are downright offensive when it comes to slavery, genocide, child murder, human equality and sexual assault. But most problematically, the Bible is silent on modern problems of technology, biology, psychology and more. That is why faith and theology have to continue to live in our cities, breathe our air and courageously evolve. We need modern voices to help us extend faith into our own culture.

What is progressive Christianity? I have tried for 25 years to define it. I even moderated a special interest group (SIG) for American Mensa titled, “Progressive Theology.” One of the issues in defining progressive theology is that progressives are open to mystery, wonder and place a kind of primacy on personal experience and expression. That’s a fancy way of saying progressives don’t often agree on their theology. The SIG was more argumentative than it was Kumbaya. That is probably true of most Mensa SIGs, and also true of many progressive study groups. It’s also the reason I ran out of the energy needed to moderate the SIG. I love a progressive’s welcome and ambiguity of ideas, but I appreciate the comfort that many conservatives must find in dogma and certainty.

I will attempt a general sketch here of what I’ve come to think progressive Christianity supports. I will return to this later, but as you read these, I want you to remember that for most progressive Christians these ideas flow out of a Jesus-centered hermeneutic. In other words, if you are a conservative, you may look at the following list and think, “there you go, this is just a pile of dangerous left-wing ideology posing as theology.” That is not the case at all. Progressive Christians believe that these ideals come directly from Christ. Is following Christ dangerous? Absolutely. Take a look around at our culture at both the secularists and the right-wing Christians and how can you not conclude that following Christ is the most punk rock thing you can do?

Here is my sketch:

• Inclusivity. It may surprise you that I’m not starting with social justice. I’ll get to that next, but perhaps the greatest issue facing Christian churches today is inclusivity. Progressives believe that one of Jesus’ most demonstrated characteristics was advocacy for the inclusion of marginalized people — from Samaritans to women living in patriarchy, from poor dirty fisherman to tax collectors and eunuchs. Today you would have to assume Jesus would support the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people and any variety of race or ability in our churches. Amazingly, what should seem obvious through a Jesus-centric lens is actually breaking large American denominations apart.
• Social justice. The Bible is largely composed of stories that emphasize the importance of social justice. Jesus and the Old Testament prophets advocated for the poor, stewardship over creation, and wide ranging human rights. I think these ideals are central to the Christian faith, for both conservatives and progressives. Without Christianity, ideas such as human rights and freedom might never have taken root in the world.
• Critical engagement with our scriptures. Most progressive Christians approach the Bible through a critical lens. That doesn’t mean a negative lens. For me that means starting with Jesus and then understanding the Bible as a reaction to God and Christ. If you don’t consider historical context, literary forms, and cultural influences, and instead approach the Bible as if it was penned by God without error or contradiction, you will be very disappointed when you learn otherwise, and possibly lose your faith entirely. The deeper you go into scripture, the more contradictions and errors you find. Progressives believe this is a feature, not a bug.
• Religious inclusivism. I’ve written about inclusive fulfillment before at length. Here I will just say that most progressives view various world religions as different expressions of the same God. This flows from the abundant inclusivity of Christ mentioned above, but deserves to be called out. Progressives typically don’t hold an exclusive view of membership among God’s family. All Christians should believe that all creation belongs to Christ and have our being from, in and through Christ. We may favor Christianity — why else would we follow Christ? — but we don’t discount the revelation available in other faiths. In fact, we value the diverse views other religious perspectives can give us. Why would we shut out any knowledge of God?
• A certain primacy of experience and reason. Richard Rohr talks about a tricycle of faith and the front wheel is your experience. No matter what we think about the other two wheels – scripture and the church and add the fourth wheel of reason if you’re Wesleyan – we cannot help but steer our own tricycle with the front wheel of our own personal experiences and biases. And I firmly believe that personal revelation and experience alongside reason, philosophy and logic are ways God reveals Herself regardless of scriptural traditions.
• Continuous revelation. A Lutheran friend of mine once told me that the Reformation never ended. The United Church of Christ boldly claims that God is still speaking. Or as Gracie Allen said, “don’t put a period where God has put a comma.” Progressives believe that theology must evolve as our understanding of the world, science, human relationships, psychology, and technology evolve. Society changes and it is silly to think we can simply graft 2,000-year-old cultural norms onto our own time. That cannot be how God’s plan works. If you think that’s how it works, I encourage you to wear sandals, ride donkeys to work, own slaves and marry multiple wives. Those things are all biblical. Instead, we are to understand the direction Jesus points, learn from our ancestors and faith, and apply that wisdom to new issues and problems in life.

Most of my conservative Christian friends seem to agree on the primacy and inerrancy of scripture. They would say that the sole authority in their faith is the Bible. This probably comes from a Protestant mistrust of Catholic abuses and overreach. It may come from a mistrust of contemplative practices as well. What kind of faith do you have if you just let everyone run around with their own personal and private experience of Jesus? There has to be a greater anchor than that, right? I’m here to tell you there is no greater anchor to your faith than your personal experience of Jesus. Also, God gifted you with reason and logic, you can use those first in your faith and I promise you your faith will turn out stronger than if you base it only on the beautiful but flawed writings of our faith ancestors.

Beyond biblical inerrancy, my conservative Christian friends are generally in two camps about progressive ideas. The first agrees with most everything I’ve listed above and yet still struggles to maintain a theology driven by fealty to biblical inerrancy. They yearn to be more inclusive and open to evolving mystery yet are afraid if they abandon inerrancy they will lose their faith entirely. The second camp unfortunately holds some disappointing ideologies closer to their hearts than the love of Jesus, and this results in bigotry and refusal to address a changing world. They may even demonize the progressive ideas that the savior espoused.

I think most conservatives believe that progressive Christianity is seeking to create a more compassionate version of our faith by ignoring theology. They think we are starting with an ideology of justice, inclusion, and progress, and trying to form our faith to fit that ideology. I assure you, progressive Christians are not simply trying to resonate with contemporary values and challenges. We are following Jesus.

I think a lot of conservatives believe that all progressives have a low view of Jesus, a low Christology. I personally have a pretty high Christology in the manner of Karl Barth or Richard Rohr. Christ is everything what is higher than that? Admittedly, you will easily find some progressives who doubt the resurrection is a literal event; but many, if not most of us have a resurrection faith and worship Jesus. Instead, since we are starting with Jesus, I would argue we’re doing the most to put Him above all things. If you read Paul and the New Testament accounts, it’s perhaps surprising that the early church wasn’t perfectly clear about what happened in the resurrection. But maybe the most shocking thing about Jesus is the fact that His core teachings remain relevant through all times and have changed history more dramatically than anything else. That can be a kind of resurrection faith for people who insist on pure materialism. Progressive faith is a big tent, that’s the point. I think most people know that the ideas I listed above make sense, but they are so mired in a fear-based faith they can’t see this is where Jesus leads us. Maybe the highest Christology is not what we say about Jesus, but how we do the things He asked us to do.

What about universal salvation? I’ve met enough progressive Christians who still believe in traditional atonement theories that I don’t list universal salvation as a common identifier. I personally believe in universal salvation and I think that flows from logic and reason, from more critical readings of the scriptures commonly used to support eternal conscious torment, and through the evolving logic and writings of theologians throughout history. But I think you can follow Jesus in love and compassion and still believe that a personal choice is involved in your salvation. As C.S. Lewis wrote, perhaps the doors out of Hell are locked from the inside. There are many other commonalities among progressive Christians that I didn’t list because they aren’t necessarily definitive, things like contemplative practices, trust in science, a missional and action-forward approach to faith, a drive toward economic equality and more. I would just say that core progressive approaches to faith flow from Jesus and those core approaches naturally flow into many other progressive ideas as well.

So if you are a secularist who thinks that Christianity is necessarily conservative, non-inclusive, bigoted, and out of touch, I assure you, that’s wrong. And if you are a conservative who wishes they could support these ideas, jump in the water is fine. It may take a while to deconstruct and reconstruct your faith outside of biblical inerrancy, but I think that is the most authentic way to follow Jesus.