James McGrath is the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University. He is a self proclaimed Progressive Christian, and truly believes that his view of Christianity represents the truth. So just what is Progressive Christianity? Well, in order to get of sense of it, we need to back up a step and first look at Progressivism itself.
Over the past century or so, Marxism has become a prominent belief system, with Socialism becoming probably its most visible expression. Socialists want to abolish capitalism because they believe it exploits the working class, and many of them want to make it happen as quickly as possible – even if it means using force.
Progressives, on the other hand, also want to attain social change, but they believe it is more reasonable to move toward it gradually. In fact, they believe they can actually use a capitalist system as a means of moving in their desired direction by infiltrating and taking over the government and large corporations, then create government regulations that move the economy in the direction they desire.
So essentially, Progressivism desires to improve human society over time through political action. As a political movement, it is an attempt to advance the human condition through social reform using science, technology, economic development, and social organization. Both Marxism and Progressivism are based on a naturalistic worldview foundation and are atheistic. Regarding morality, they are relativists. Since they don’t believe in God, they don’t believe there is any such thing as an objective basis for moral beliefs. They simply make up morality as they go along based on their personal view of what is right and wrong.
Progressive Christianity is an attempt to take Progressive ideology and apply it to people’s spiritual sensibilities. Progressive Christians recognize that people have a spiritual sense, and they attempt to exploit that to accomplish their preferred political goals.
It runs into problems, however, because the core essence of Progressivism is atheistic. So from the very beginning, Progressive Christianity must define its end goals in terms of this worldly ideals rather than the eternal ideals taught in the Bible.
Progressive Christianity is one of the more recent expressions of liberal Christianity. In particular, it is a view that seeks to reform the Christian faith using Postmodernism as its foundation. As such, it doesn’t look to the Bible as an objectively true revelation of an objectively real God, but seeks to find truth embedded within the biblical narrative – even though they acknowledge that the stories they use to find that “truth” may not have actually happened.
Progressive Christianity strongly questions traditional Christian beliefs, and, rather, places an emphasis on human diversity, social justice, care for the poor and oppressed, and environmental stewardship of the earth. Progressive Christians believe the core teaching of the Bible is love, compassion, justice, mercy, and tolerance, and that their goals are often best accomplished through political activism.
In order to get a sense of how Progressive Christianity compares to biblical Christianity, it is useful to compare them side by side.
Biblical Christianity
Authority Source – The Bible is considered to be objectively true based on an actual revelation of God and His ways to mankind.
God – God is understood to be a spiritual person who is Holy, Righteous, and Just.
Man – Man is understood to be made in God’s image, but fallen.
Salvation – Salvation is individually received by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
Progressive Christianity
Authority Source – The primary authority source for Progressive Christianity is human reason. The Bible is often used as a proof-texting source by cherry picking Scripture verses out of context to support the moral and political preferences of those doing the interpreting.
God – The sense of God is very vague. He is not considered to be a person who has revealed Himself in Scripture, but is, rather, thought of as a being who exhibits love, light, truth, and spirit. As Progressive Christians find these concepts in Scripture, they interpret it according to their own personal moral preferences. They have no objective reason for believing it. As for Jesus, they generally consider that He was merely a man who powerfully demonstrated the God ideals in a profound way and should be considered a “way shower” – someone to be emulated.
Man – For Progressive Christians, man is considered to be a divine offspring of God – someone created in His image and destined to be raised up from imperfection to maturity. This is not accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ, however, but through personal self advancement.
Salvation – Salvation, for Progressive Christians, is not considered to be reconciliation with God through the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Their view of salvation is more accurately characterized as “achieving the highest advantage humans can attain in this life” – and they consider that it is done by the good works people do (based on their own definition of good works). Primarily they see salvation as the act of helping the poor and oppressed by political activism.
Is Progressive Christianity Christian?
So, is Progressive Christianity Christian? The simple answer is “NO!” The bottom line requirement for any belief to be considered “biblical Christianity” is that it answers the three questions concerning God, man, and salvation the way it has been defined in the Bible (see above under “Biblical Christianity”). Progressive Christianity has entirely different answers.
In its essence Progressive Christianity is Marxism using biblical terminology, and redefining the words to have a different meaning from the plain teaching of Scripture. It’s understanding of God is different from what the Bible teaches, its view of man is closer to naturalistic belief than theistic, and its understanding of salvation is completely “this worldly,” and ignores the eternal element of God’s revelation.
If you interact with a Progressive Christian and make the point that it deviates from the teachings of the Bible, you will, no doubt, receive a lot of backlash. Generally, they are totally convinced that their understanding of the Christian faith is true. But the only way they can justify that belief is by taking Scripture out of context and redefining the meaning of God, man, and salvation based on naturalistic worldview concepts, as opposed to the Theism that is expressed in the Bible.
The simple fact that the word “Christian” is used to designate a spiritual interpretation of Christianity does not mean it is actually Christian. This is another place where Progressive Christians take a word from the Christian lexicon and redefine it to mean something entirely different. Progressive Christianity is not Christian. It does not represent beliefs found in the Bible.
© 2022 Freddy Davis