This article expresses many of my concerns about progressive Christianity. Sometimes it seems that the Mainline Church is more concerned about aligning itself to certain political ideals, than leading people towards the sacred. And yet people are hungry for the spiritual and the transcendent. If they don't find it in the churches, they will leave and find it elsewhere.
I’d argue that the political and the sacred are not differentiable. The hunger for the merely ‘spiritual’ is a modern phenomenon that betrays the church’s historic teaching rather than fulfills them.
No thinking human would, could ever wish for "christianity" to be progressive. We all need and want the days of old, human and beast sacrifices, drinking blood of both, ... .
I go to a mainline church. I would consider myself progressive in many ways. Doesn’t mean I can’t have concerns about some of the ways it seems to be removing the sacred from Christianity.
I cannot fathom how anyone connected to any church that has had connections to the western "nations" Holocausts of Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations, ... Peoples all over the world can make any claims to being progressive.
Is it "sacred" to holocaust others? That certainly is the history of christianity.
Do you just go around ignoring the substance of what people wrote and parrot abuse and revel in cruelty?
All you are communicating is that you want to debase the meaning of the Holocaust and unique industrial scale extermination of people carried about by the Nazis. That you minimize the specific slaughter of Jewish persons. That you deliberately conflate events and actors.
Take your Blood and Soil ideology back to the 1930s.
Interesting. As someone raised evangelical who is now finding my way back to the Christian faith, I am not drawn to protestant churches, either mainline or otherwise. I had been attending mass for a couple of years when I visited an Anglican church where my grandmother attends and I was horrified actually. I generally attend catholic mass (when I go to church, which isn't often), and would convert to orthodox if there were any congregations anywhere near me (closest church is a 6 hour drive away). I am hearing this same theme from many people in my online circles. That doesn't necessarily mean much though. To me, what calls me back to the church are the rituals, the sanctity of the church, the liturgy, the pattern. The coming together in worship. I help and love people every day, my 'progressive tendancies' are lived out. And they are lived out because of my faith, and how i was raised in the faith from birth. It's not the other way around. I don't go to church seeking to 'do good'. I go to church to worship the divine in the company of others. My life the rest of the hours of the week is for doing good works.
This is it right here. I’m a pastor and would call myself a progressive Christian if the movement weren’t so self-congratulatory and fatalistic.
The liturgy is a gateway to sacred space. It’s not the only one, but it accomplishes the essential task of opening us to the sacred experience found within most clearly when we’re gathered in worship. It’s this understanding that drew me to Orthodoxy in my early 20s. It’s my clearly Lutheran understanding that brought me back to my roots in the ELCA.
I still carry the depth of Orthodox theosis in my own faith, and it reminds me precisely what you said. I can live out high minded ideals many places. I cannot live out the experience of worship and being loving community in that particular way anywhere else.
Roads that lead to self aggrandizement or only to a death without resurrection are dead ends. This is the difference between the sclerotic decay of mainline Protestantism, the selfishness of evangelical megamovements, and the Church. The Church leads us to ourselves by looking toward God, and to resurrection on the other side of death.
The progressive denominations don’t have to die, but they will as long as they try to preserve their own life.
And that’s the irony. Congregations who choose to die and share their resources really are doing the best thing once they’re willing to admit they cannot fulfill the calling of the Gospel any longer.
I appreciate your balanced perspective. My two cents: I fought for quite some time finding justice under every rock Jesus ever touched. I’m not gifted in activism or protest or advocacy, so I didn’t want that to be what Jesus was about either, and was even known to roll my eyes behind my “aging hippie” seminary professors’ backs. But after decades of study I can’t avoid it any longer; Jesus was very much about the formation of a countercultural community of mutual care and egalitarian sharing of resources. He just was; no way out of it.
Compared to physical/material/bodily justice, there’s so very little in Jesus’s message about mere transcendental or metaphysical realities. Ancient Jews did not bifurcate spirit/matter or body/soul the way we do.
There's an odd "horseshoe effect" issue at work between a secular orientation & the modern contemporary model evangelical mindset. I'll try to keep this short: if you don't believe in any supernatural or supranatural reality, so baptism & communion, or weddings & funerals, aren't of some spiritual significance, then of course you see church buildings & congregational life as unnecessary overhead. That makes sense, and is part of what you're saying here -- if you don't believe in any sacramental activity as being real or meaningful when someone is baptized, or with the act of sharing the elements from the table, then you aren't going to put the same emphasis on a particular space or building or ministerial role. And I know enough church leaders who don't think there's anything going on after death, and who are functional if not overtly atheist to see where some of that is coming from. I'd say it's a problem.
What's odd to me, living where I do and moving back and forth between progressive Protestant church settings and conservative Evangelical congregations -- and clergy of both -- is how most contemporary worship oriented conservatives don't really think there's anything "special" about communion, whose theology of baptism is more "dunk and done" than anything about a reference point for a changed relationship to sin, and who are pragmatically but quite sincerely against any hint of revering or reverencing a place. Moving out of a building to occupy a larger worship center space? If you ask "will there be a service of decommissioning?" you are looked at as if you asked if an imam is coming to speak at the dedication. It's move on, we're done here, it's just a big room.
I have no deep insight to tie this together with, just the uneasy awareness that many of my progressive colleagues are secular in their outlook to a degree that leaves me baffled, while my Trump-loving evangelical associates are almost as un-sacramental, even near Gnostic in how they see the "things of this world" as all dross to see disposed of. The latter group will speak, with sincerity, quite often about Heaven and a future in Christ forever and ever, which is a big difference, but in terms of three of your four: 2. The Church as "Unnecessary Overhead"; 3. The Sacredness of Church Spaces; and 4. The Spiritual Significance of Worship and Prayer in Church, I find it odd that there's so much in common between them.
What you are saying you see is very important moving forward. You’re seeing that these two supposed opposites are actually pretty alike and I think this is an essential point that most people don’t recognize. That’s why there is no salvation in politics and why Jesus is not the political leader the Jewish people were expecting. Salvation is in religion not politics. I understand why the left and progressives have sort of lost it from the history of academic thought, but I don’t quite understand why the right is also sort of losing it. I suspect it has to do with demoting Christ to a side figure and replacing him with a political figure and a lack of the metaphysical and immaterial. This is the next thing I must study. Thank you for your incredibly insightful comment, I will think about it for the next year.
Hmmm. As a progressive Christian pastor and part-time soccer journalist, I serve a pretty dynamic mainline progressive church in SoCal. I am still learning the context and the various stories that define this community. And of course, this particular area which is much different than where I served before. But while I can echo some of the concerns and questions and have my own issues with what progressive Christianity even means, I think a faith that ignores the needs of neighbors by avoiding political positions is hollow. If anything, the problem with mainline churches is an economic and demographic one - and one of a culture too often overcome with white identity. (I saw elsewhere that the top growing churches in the US are only in areas where the population is growing. I got to study that more!) Frankly, this church has saved lives and continues to save lives. It’s really humbling. We do our best to create holy space each and every week, and I have to contend with the ways people have so much trauma from other religious experiences - even as I try to reintroduce or reframe our ancient core practices of table, baptism, welcome, prayer, forgiveness. But I do agree that the church will never be as good a social agency as some or a political action committee as some. And yet we can’t afford to be silent for immigrant neighbors, LGBTQ+ neighbors, poor neighbors, homeless neighbors. The question is - how do we do that in a way that is faithful? Still - interesting read that may warrant further discussion.
Of course, I would make a distinction between partisan and political. I think it’s pretty awful for a church to get partisan. So many here in SoCal that invite conservative politicians on stage for a blessing. It’s gross! We did have a local school board president come speak after worship. I had good push back on a request from a candidate from our leaders who didn’t want to appear as if they were endorsing her during her campaign. But political - political means caring for the well-being of our community. It’s hard though to do that work these days with caution, wisdom, and humility. Jesus was of course super political. The word GOSPEL itself was a political word!
I’ll try to follow along. Somehow your post showed up today. I may show it a group of church members to see what folks think. Of course, the building one is fascinating because so much of being an employed pastor these days in a smaller church (less than 200 people?) is dealing with building issues. Our buildings are crumbling.
Respectfully, anyone who says Christianity is mainly white has an insularist point of view. I would suggest widening their view by looking at Christianity globally and not just the United States. Or even just talking to immigrants from Latin America in the USA, most of them are catholic/christians, yet that is never mentioned in the political narrative.
I say this respectfully, though I worry that it might come off as combative.
I did my doctorate on this issue. Gil Rendle’s Quietly Courageous shows how the mainline got here and what to do going forward. Faithfulness to God. New ideas around building use and resources so they aren’t sitting empty. Intentional building of community. Susan Beaumont’s How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going is another must read for pastors.
Faithfulness and theology that builds up community and connection is the whole mission. To Love God and Neighbor… that’s enough right there. Thanks for your thoughts. I enjoyed this read.
Very interesting piece. Hopefully y’all won’t mind where I am coming from: grew up Protestant, studied theology, considered grad school but when I saw various trends, drifted for a bit, worked on Wall St and somewhere in there converted to the Russian Orthodox Church, due mostly to the influence of Dostoevsky and some Russians I befriended. Our parish is bursting at the seams with coverts, as are the other Orthodox parishes in my city (which thankfully I am leaving soon for a small town in Mississippi which has an Orthodox Church ).
Most of them are young men and two characteristics they share: real spiritual hunger and a feeling of betrayal by every institution. I gather your congregations tend mostly older?
Also - how would you define progressive Christianity? And when you say criticizing from the left - which left?
Sorry if these are dumb Qs; if you’ve written on these topics, I can keep scrolling. It’s just a subject that interests me (and I am not trying to start a fight or anything childish like that). Thank you. I like hearing a variety of perspectives.
All the Orthodox Churches have bulletproof beliefs about the role of women. If you believe it is right to keep women subjugated to men, excluded from the clergy, kept away from work if they have any children at home, etc, then by all means be Orthodox. I would rather be an atheist... but if you are going to say that means I'm a Marxist, I am not. There isn't a word in the Nicene Creed that requires believers to discriminate against women... just men in robes who believe that it (or the Bible) does.
Oops, someone might want to tell all the professional, working moms in my Orthodox parish that we've been doing it wrong this whole time! Guess I should quit today (or do I need to ask permission from some guy in a robe to do that first?).
"To be clear, this is NOT a desire to return to some form of fundamentalism that condemns LGBTQ+ persons or subjugates women. This is not about seeking to restore seven-day creationism or biblical inerrancy."
Logically, it should be, even must be, or it's meaningless and futile. This quoted paragraph sounds exactly like the replacement of Biblical Theology with Secular Ideology that the entire rest of the article argues against. Progressive-lite denominations are committing the exact same error as more blatantly progressive denominations, only a bit slower and milder. That's no defense. Their direction is still away from the Truth and their destination is very much the same: heresy, moral decay, and opposition to God.
It's an error to believe that you can cut and choose which parts of God's word you want to accept and which you don't. It's foolish to dive down the slippery slope of prioritizing ideology over God's own word and then expect that you'll be able to safely stop sliding short of the destruction that awaits. If your choice is "I choose the teachings of gender ideology and radical feminism over the teachings of the Bible" those are your idols and they've led you astray into disobedience and false teachings. Likewise, if you don't believe the testimony of Genesis about Creation is literally true, you have no defensible grounds for believing that its testimony regarding the Fall is true either, and without the Fall you have no basis for Jesus's message and actions in the Gospels, no condemnation requiring salvation, no literal death and resurrection as Savior. If you're willing to throw away the factual, historical, truth of the Creation Story, there's no point in even reading the rest of the Bible.
Sorry, this article is an excellent summary of mistakes made by the mainline 'churches', but that paragraph contradicts the logic of the rest of the text by indicating that you're making some of the same mistakes yourself, suggesting that you still have some wood you need to remove from your own eye too.
It's telling that you including seven-day creationism, because that was a 19th-century invention. Frankly, if you believe in heliocentrism and a spherical Earth, you are already partway down the slippery slope that you mention. I'm serious - go take a gander at a Flat Earth forum on Facebook and you will see some REAL biblical literalists.
The central problem with the progressive theology of nominal churches is it’s thoroughly and gratuitously anti-Christ. Christ said he came to bring “the sword” (division) in Matthew 10:34-36. The truth of God’s Word is, by nature, divisive…exclusive. The Progressive church departed from Biblical truth, and in so doing, committed themselves to heresy and irrelevancy. Their doctrines are in direct conflict with Christ. The leaders of this movement need to worry less about offering their pinch of incense to Caesar, and more about repentance of their iniquities.
What a massive over-generalization that could equally be leveled against conservative churches. Conservatives are NO LESS ideologically captive than mainliners.
But therein lies the question: by what or whom is anyone “ideologically captive”? That’s the point. Everyone is dogmatic and indoctrinated; it just depends on what the object of the indoctrination is. Is a church going to stand on the infallible word of God or not?
It's a sign of your ideological captivity that you're unaware (and uninterested) in admitting how even "stand on the infallible word of God or not" betrays a kind of ideological presupposition. You assume yourself and those like you to be ideologically "biblical." But you're not. You're as culturally captive as any liberal to western cultural ideologies. Yours are just (maybe) contrary to liberal ideologies.
As a lifelong Catholic, I share your concern, but see it from a different perspective. From personal experience, I see Catholic churches in decline from its ultra focus on anti-abortion political efforts. There is no more classic example of the politicization of faith than the refusal of some Catholic bishops to offer the Eucharist to a devout Catholic President over abortion. The Church contributed substantial financial amounts to oppose abortion rights initiatives in Kansas and Missouri. I agree with you that churches should focus on spirituality and the lessons of the New Testament, but they should leave how the faithful practice their faith politically to their own discretion.
The only way Joe Biden qualifies as a "devout Catholic" is because he's a vegetable. When he was making moral choices, he was an absolutely unrepentant felon. None of his Presidential bids succeeded until he was suddenly the only hope to keep the Orange Man out of office... why do you think that was? His own SIDE knew he was an influence-peddling felon and a pædophile. Many of his Democratic rivals for higher office used to say those things. The Christian Democratic Party in Italy was brim-full of "devout Catholics" who were crookeder than a dog's hind leg. It's gone and it's never coming back. The Democratic Party in the USA is headed in that direction.
You missed the important part where biden, and trump and all usa prezes are Class A war criminals, who all have done huge Holocausts, ones that far exceed that of the German one.
It is a part of Church tradition to deny the Eucharist to anyone - leader or otherwise - who is committing mortal sins or helping others commit them; Bishop shave even been martyred into Sainthood over it.
The Pope does not define mortal sin, which is the only reason for a Catholic to be denied communion. Supporting your country’s immigration laws may be abhorrent to the pope but it’s not a mortal sin.
True, if Vance orders border patrol agents to kill or starve or beat the immigrants, I guess he’d have a mortal sin on his soul. The Catholic Catechism seems to have the answer to all things Catholic, so one could look there.
I don't think progressive christianity on its own can account for much of the decline. The only people I heard mentioned progressive christianity as a reason for behavioral change are (i) Christian justifying their becoming more conservative-minded and (ii) conservative becoming Christians.
What I heard hundreds and hundreds of former Christian say is they're being fed up not only with the politics of Christian conservatism but with their simplistic understanding of a faith that goes increasingly into hysterics as it detaches itself ever more from work.
Both things are equally true. At the end of the day, the church doesn't care if you are a good loving Christian who follows the teachings of Jesus to the best of your ability (which would mean, at the very least, being kind to those who disagree with your political beliefs). The church only cares that you vote the way they tell you to vote.
Perhaps you are the odd case of one who lost her Christian faith through progressive dilution. My point is that I know nobody beside perhaps you, who left the church because of the dilution effect on their faith that progressivism had. Every single one I know left their church and sometime an outward expression of any faith because of the conservatism in the church. I do not want to belittle the theoretical point that you make (that both things can be equally true). I am just arguing that, as a matter of fact, the very thing that mr Richmond is arguing for has been tried by conservatives for over a century, now (since Pius IX at least, on the Catholic side and since literal fundamentalism in Protestant circles), with the exact reverse effects from those they argue their position is producing. But since they are radical conservatives (reactionary really), perhaps it's doing a real effect, which is to provide a rallying point and a cover for the reactionaries that they are.
Many partisan conservatives are only now claiming they are Christians now but are still non-practicing. It is because they are responding with cultural contrarians to the anti-theism on the left. These are not the Evangelicals that brough GWB to power.
I'd say one reason you don't hear it much is because most detractors call it 'liberal' Christianity and are not so nuanced as to use the word progressive unless a particular church or denomination makes a point to call themselves that and let everyone know that is what they are.
So you're some odd Catholic or Anglican? There is only Traditional Christianity an no other form and if you do not like it that does not concern the laity of traditional Christianity one bit, despite any or all sound and fury you may react with.
Mercham was writing about classical liberalism which has little in common with 21st century Christianity which also is not the same thing as being politically progressive (althougalthough there is overlap). One problem is that people intentionally obscure these terms and use whichever one fits their current argument best.
I would argue that Machen was arguing about theological liberalism, not classical liberalism. And the theological liberalism of his era has evolved into 21st century “progressive Christianity,” or whatever moniker you call it. He would posit that neither are historic, credal, Biblical Christianity. His book still has relevance today, perhaps more so than in 1923.
The biggest things Meachum took issues with, though, were antisupernaturalism and a form of relativism. Today many progressive Christians have embraced spirituality, maybe even to the point of bring a flaw while relativism seems to be a much bigger problem on the right now than on the left.
I'm an atheist Unitarian-Universalist, and I see the same dynamic at play in the Unitarian-Universalist Association, which last June removed "God" from its statement of UU identity as part of a post-liberal, top-down make-over.
The UU church might as well drop the word "Unity" from its identity, because it has become extremely "woke' and divisive. It didn't used to be that way.
The sooner "progressive" churches die and shutter their doors, the better. They are lukewarm and being spit out by God and spiritual people. They deny Jesus. Why do they bother and pretend to be followers of Jesus? It is a charade.
They have conquered the churches that once professed the Nicene Creed but no longer do (though many Marxists like Bishop Idiot Feminist who lectured our POTUS are glib liars). The only way to get free of those people is to defrock all the clergy who don't believe in God, or Jesus, or all the other things talked about in the Nicene Creed.
Hi Loren, thank you for this thoughtful essay. I guess that I see theology itself as necessarily progressive. Progressive ideologies derives from Jesus's teachings, not vice versa. To advance toward the Reign of Love, which we are so far from, necessitates agapic progress, loving change, constant work, bold leadership, courageous perseverance. It's a religious endeavor, in every sense of the word, hence transformative by nature. My students, for example, see religious social activism as lifegiving, and see "pure worship" as less meaningful, and sometimes even manipulative. Respectfully submitted.
This article expresses many of my concerns about progressive Christianity. Sometimes it seems that the Mainline Church is more concerned about aligning itself to certain political ideals, than leading people towards the sacred. And yet people are hungry for the spiritual and the transcendent. If they don't find it in the churches, they will leave and find it elsewhere.
Yep. Data suggests MANY have left for non denominational churches.
Are non-denominational churches any less ideologically driven?
I’d argue that the political and the sacred are not differentiable. The hunger for the merely ‘spiritual’ is a modern phenomenon that betrays the church’s historic teaching rather than fulfills them.
No thinking human would, could ever wish for "christianity" to be progressive. We all need and want the days of old, human and beast sacrifices, drinking blood of both, ... .
I go to a mainline church. I would consider myself progressive in many ways. Doesn’t mean I can’t have concerns about some of the ways it seems to be removing the sacred from Christianity.
I cannot fathom how anyone connected to any church that has had connections to the western "nations" Holocausts of Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations, ... Peoples all over the world can make any claims to being progressive.
Is it "sacred" to holocaust others? That certainly is the history of christianity.
Do you just go around ignoring the substance of what people wrote and parrot abuse and revel in cruelty?
All you are communicating is that you want to debase the meaning of the Holocaust and unique industrial scale extermination of people carried about by the Nazis. That you minimize the specific slaughter of Jewish persons. That you deliberately conflate events and actors.
Take your Blood and Soil ideology back to the 1930s.
It’s human history. And plenty of non-Christian and atheistic nations have “holocuasted” their own.
Using the "human history" meme is really really lame.
Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, the Qing Dynasty
Ok, world history. That’s what I meant.
It is ESPECIALLY white "christian" history. Consider all the top gangster "nations", especially the usa, uk, both big holocausters of colored folks.
Interesting. As someone raised evangelical who is now finding my way back to the Christian faith, I am not drawn to protestant churches, either mainline or otherwise. I had been attending mass for a couple of years when I visited an Anglican church where my grandmother attends and I was horrified actually. I generally attend catholic mass (when I go to church, which isn't often), and would convert to orthodox if there were any congregations anywhere near me (closest church is a 6 hour drive away). I am hearing this same theme from many people in my online circles. That doesn't necessarily mean much though. To me, what calls me back to the church are the rituals, the sanctity of the church, the liturgy, the pattern. The coming together in worship. I help and love people every day, my 'progressive tendancies' are lived out. And they are lived out because of my faith, and how i was raised in the faith from birth. It's not the other way around. I don't go to church seeking to 'do good'. I go to church to worship the divine in the company of others. My life the rest of the hours of the week is for doing good works.
Totally get it. I’d recommend you check out my recent podcast where we talk about similar:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/future-christian/id1520833937?i=100068622195
Also my past Substack here: https://open.substack.com/pub/lorenrichmondjr/p/engaging-youth-in-church-why-participation?r=n4ugn&utm_medium=ios
This is it right here. I’m a pastor and would call myself a progressive Christian if the movement weren’t so self-congratulatory and fatalistic.
The liturgy is a gateway to sacred space. It’s not the only one, but it accomplishes the essential task of opening us to the sacred experience found within most clearly when we’re gathered in worship. It’s this understanding that drew me to Orthodoxy in my early 20s. It’s my clearly Lutheran understanding that brought me back to my roots in the ELCA.
I still carry the depth of Orthodox theosis in my own faith, and it reminds me precisely what you said. I can live out high minded ideals many places. I cannot live out the experience of worship and being loving community in that particular way anywhere else.
Roads that lead to self aggrandizement or only to a death without resurrection are dead ends. This is the difference between the sclerotic decay of mainline Protestantism, the selfishness of evangelical megamovements, and the Church. The Church leads us to ourselves by looking toward God, and to resurrection on the other side of death.
The progressive denominations don’t have to die, but they will as long as they try to preserve their own life.
And that’s the irony. Congregations who choose to die and share their resources really are doing the best thing once they’re willing to admit they cannot fulfill the calling of the Gospel any longer.
I appreciate your balanced perspective. My two cents: I fought for quite some time finding justice under every rock Jesus ever touched. I’m not gifted in activism or protest or advocacy, so I didn’t want that to be what Jesus was about either, and was even known to roll my eyes behind my “aging hippie” seminary professors’ backs. But after decades of study I can’t avoid it any longer; Jesus was very much about the formation of a countercultural community of mutual care and egalitarian sharing of resources. He just was; no way out of it.
I completely agree with this, but I would also add the immaterial aspect, the trascendental and metaphysical aspects Jesus also brought.
Compared to physical/material/bodily justice, there’s so very little in Jesus’s message about mere transcendental or metaphysical realities. Ancient Jews did not bifurcate spirit/matter or body/soul the way we do.
There's an odd "horseshoe effect" issue at work between a secular orientation & the modern contemporary model evangelical mindset. I'll try to keep this short: if you don't believe in any supernatural or supranatural reality, so baptism & communion, or weddings & funerals, aren't of some spiritual significance, then of course you see church buildings & congregational life as unnecessary overhead. That makes sense, and is part of what you're saying here -- if you don't believe in any sacramental activity as being real or meaningful when someone is baptized, or with the act of sharing the elements from the table, then you aren't going to put the same emphasis on a particular space or building or ministerial role. And I know enough church leaders who don't think there's anything going on after death, and who are functional if not overtly atheist to see where some of that is coming from. I'd say it's a problem.
What's odd to me, living where I do and moving back and forth between progressive Protestant church settings and conservative Evangelical congregations -- and clergy of both -- is how most contemporary worship oriented conservatives don't really think there's anything "special" about communion, whose theology of baptism is more "dunk and done" than anything about a reference point for a changed relationship to sin, and who are pragmatically but quite sincerely against any hint of revering or reverencing a place. Moving out of a building to occupy a larger worship center space? If you ask "will there be a service of decommissioning?" you are looked at as if you asked if an imam is coming to speak at the dedication. It's move on, we're done here, it's just a big room.
I have no deep insight to tie this together with, just the uneasy awareness that many of my progressive colleagues are secular in their outlook to a degree that leaves me baffled, while my Trump-loving evangelical associates are almost as un-sacramental, even near Gnostic in how they see the "things of this world" as all dross to see disposed of. The latter group will speak, with sincerity, quite often about Heaven and a future in Christ forever and ever, which is a big difference, but in terms of three of your four: 2. The Church as "Unnecessary Overhead"; 3. The Sacredness of Church Spaces; and 4. The Spiritual Significance of Worship and Prayer in Church, I find it odd that there's so much in common between them.
Or maybe I live in a weird corner of Ohio!
Jeff, did you see my substack on the horseshoe theory?
What you are saying you see is very important moving forward. You’re seeing that these two supposed opposites are actually pretty alike and I think this is an essential point that most people don’t recognize. That’s why there is no salvation in politics and why Jesus is not the political leader the Jewish people were expecting. Salvation is in religion not politics. I understand why the left and progressives have sort of lost it from the history of academic thought, but I don’t quite understand why the right is also sort of losing it. I suspect it has to do with demoting Christ to a side figure and replacing him with a political figure and a lack of the metaphysical and immaterial. This is the next thing I must study. Thank you for your incredibly insightful comment, I will think about it for the next year.
Hmmm. As a progressive Christian pastor and part-time soccer journalist, I serve a pretty dynamic mainline progressive church in SoCal. I am still learning the context and the various stories that define this community. And of course, this particular area which is much different than where I served before. But while I can echo some of the concerns and questions and have my own issues with what progressive Christianity even means, I think a faith that ignores the needs of neighbors by avoiding political positions is hollow. If anything, the problem with mainline churches is an economic and demographic one - and one of a culture too often overcome with white identity. (I saw elsewhere that the top growing churches in the US are only in areas where the population is growing. I got to study that more!) Frankly, this church has saved lives and continues to save lives. It’s really humbling. We do our best to create holy space each and every week, and I have to contend with the ways people have so much trauma from other religious experiences - even as I try to reintroduce or reframe our ancient core practices of table, baptism, welcome, prayer, forgiveness. But I do agree that the church will never be as good a social agency as some or a political action committee as some. And yet we can’t afford to be silent for immigrant neighbors, LGBTQ+ neighbors, poor neighbors, homeless neighbors. The question is - how do we do that in a way that is faithful? Still - interesting read that may warrant further discussion.
Of course, I would make a distinction between partisan and political. I think it’s pretty awful for a church to get partisan. So many here in SoCal that invite conservative politicians on stage for a blessing. It’s gross! We did have a local school board president come speak after worship. I had good push back on a request from a candidate from our leaders who didn’t want to appear as if they were endorsing her during her campaign. But political - political means caring for the well-being of our community. It’s hard though to do that work these days with caution, wisdom, and humility. Jesus was of course super political. The word GOSPEL itself was a political word!
I hear what you’re saying and I don’t intend to say churches should ignore justice issues. I tried to address those concerns in previous posts.
I’ll try to follow along. Somehow your post showed up today. I may show it a group of church members to see what folks think. Of course, the building one is fascinating because so much of being an employed pastor these days in a smaller church (less than 200 people?) is dealing with building issues. Our buildings are crumbling.
I'm not gonna lie, the building maintenance thing is a tough one.
Respectfully, anyone who says Christianity is mainly white has an insularist point of view. I would suggest widening their view by looking at Christianity globally and not just the United States. Or even just talking to immigrants from Latin America in the USA, most of them are catholic/christians, yet that is never mentioned in the political narrative.
I say this respectfully, though I worry that it might come off as combative.
I did my doctorate on this issue. Gil Rendle’s Quietly Courageous shows how the mainline got here and what to do going forward. Faithfulness to God. New ideas around building use and resources so they aren’t sitting empty. Intentional building of community. Susan Beaumont’s How to Lead When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going is another must read for pastors.
Faithfulness and theology that builds up community and connection is the whole mission. To Love God and Neighbor… that’s enough right there. Thanks for your thoughts. I enjoyed this read.
Very interesting piece. Hopefully y’all won’t mind where I am coming from: grew up Protestant, studied theology, considered grad school but when I saw various trends, drifted for a bit, worked on Wall St and somewhere in there converted to the Russian Orthodox Church, due mostly to the influence of Dostoevsky and some Russians I befriended. Our parish is bursting at the seams with coverts, as are the other Orthodox parishes in my city (which thankfully I am leaving soon for a small town in Mississippi which has an Orthodox Church ).
Most of them are young men and two characteristics they share: real spiritual hunger and a feeling of betrayal by every institution. I gather your congregations tend mostly older?
Also - how would you define progressive Christianity? And when you say criticizing from the left - which left?
Sorry if these are dumb Qs; if you’ve written on these topics, I can keep scrolling. It’s just a subject that interests me (and I am not trying to start a fight or anything childish like that). Thank you. I like hearing a variety of perspectives.
All the Orthodox Churches have bulletproof beliefs about the role of women. If you believe it is right to keep women subjugated to men, excluded from the clergy, kept away from work if they have any children at home, etc, then by all means be Orthodox. I would rather be an atheist... but if you are going to say that means I'm a Marxist, I am not. There isn't a word in the Nicene Creed that requires believers to discriminate against women... just men in robes who believe that it (or the Bible) does.
Oops, someone might want to tell all the professional, working moms in my Orthodox parish that we've been doing it wrong this whole time! Guess I should quit today (or do I need to ask permission from some guy in a robe to do that first?).
Not so.
Okay then! thanks
"To be clear, this is NOT a desire to return to some form of fundamentalism that condemns LGBTQ+ persons or subjugates women. This is not about seeking to restore seven-day creationism or biblical inerrancy."
Logically, it should be, even must be, or it's meaningless and futile. This quoted paragraph sounds exactly like the replacement of Biblical Theology with Secular Ideology that the entire rest of the article argues against. Progressive-lite denominations are committing the exact same error as more blatantly progressive denominations, only a bit slower and milder. That's no defense. Their direction is still away from the Truth and their destination is very much the same: heresy, moral decay, and opposition to God.
It's an error to believe that you can cut and choose which parts of God's word you want to accept and which you don't. It's foolish to dive down the slippery slope of prioritizing ideology over God's own word and then expect that you'll be able to safely stop sliding short of the destruction that awaits. If your choice is "I choose the teachings of gender ideology and radical feminism over the teachings of the Bible" those are your idols and they've led you astray into disobedience and false teachings. Likewise, if you don't believe the testimony of Genesis about Creation is literally true, you have no defensible grounds for believing that its testimony regarding the Fall is true either, and without the Fall you have no basis for Jesus's message and actions in the Gospels, no condemnation requiring salvation, no literal death and resurrection as Savior. If you're willing to throw away the factual, historical, truth of the Creation Story, there's no point in even reading the rest of the Bible.
Sorry, this article is an excellent summary of mistakes made by the mainline 'churches', but that paragraph contradicts the logic of the rest of the text by indicating that you're making some of the same mistakes yourself, suggesting that you still have some wood you need to remove from your own eye too.
Nah. He’s perfectly biblical to deny homophobia and racism a key place in his theology.
It's telling that you including seven-day creationism, because that was a 19th-century invention. Frankly, if you believe in heliocentrism and a spherical Earth, you are already partway down the slippery slope that you mention. I'm serious - go take a gander at a Flat Earth forum on Facebook and you will see some REAL biblical literalists.
Is that you, Ken Ham?
The central problem with the progressive theology of nominal churches is it’s thoroughly and gratuitously anti-Christ. Christ said he came to bring “the sword” (division) in Matthew 10:34-36. The truth of God’s Word is, by nature, divisive…exclusive. The Progressive church departed from Biblical truth, and in so doing, committed themselves to heresy and irrelevancy. Their doctrines are in direct conflict with Christ. The leaders of this movement need to worry less about offering their pinch of incense to Caesar, and more about repentance of their iniquities.
What a massive over-generalization that could equally be leveled against conservative churches. Conservatives are NO LESS ideologically captive than mainliners.
But therein lies the question: by what or whom is anyone “ideologically captive”? That’s the point. Everyone is dogmatic and indoctrinated; it just depends on what the object of the indoctrination is. Is a church going to stand on the infallible word of God or not?
It's a sign of your ideological captivity that you're unaware (and uninterested) in admitting how even "stand on the infallible word of God or not" betrays a kind of ideological presupposition. You assume yourself and those like you to be ideologically "biblical." But you're not. You're as culturally captive as any liberal to western cultural ideologies. Yours are just (maybe) contrary to liberal ideologies.
Truth unites AND divides. The progressive mainline churches are reaping what they’ve sown.
As a lifelong Catholic, I share your concern, but see it from a different perspective. From personal experience, I see Catholic churches in decline from its ultra focus on anti-abortion political efforts. There is no more classic example of the politicization of faith than the refusal of some Catholic bishops to offer the Eucharist to a devout Catholic President over abortion. The Church contributed substantial financial amounts to oppose abortion rights initiatives in Kansas and Missouri. I agree with you that churches should focus on spirituality and the lessons of the New Testament, but they should leave how the faithful practice their faith politically to their own discretion.
The only way Joe Biden qualifies as a "devout Catholic" is because he's a vegetable. When he was making moral choices, he was an absolutely unrepentant felon. None of his Presidential bids succeeded until he was suddenly the only hope to keep the Orange Man out of office... why do you think that was? His own SIDE knew he was an influence-peddling felon and a pædophile. Many of his Democratic rivals for higher office used to say those things. The Christian Democratic Party in Italy was brim-full of "devout Catholics" who were crookeder than a dog's hind leg. It's gone and it's never coming back. The Democratic Party in the USA is headed in that direction.
You missed the important part where biden, and trump and all usa prezes are Class A war criminals, who all have done huge Holocausts, ones that far exceed that of the German one.
It is a part of Church tradition to deny the Eucharist to anyone - leader or otherwise - who is committing mortal sins or helping others commit them; Bishop shave even been martyred into Sainthood over it.
And after the Pope's very strong statement today opposing Trump's anti-immigrant policies, should JD Vance be denied communion?
The Pope does not define mortal sin, which is the only reason for a Catholic to be denied communion. Supporting your country’s immigration laws may be abhorrent to the pope but it’s not a mortal sin.
I agree. But “how” illegal immigrants might be treated when enforcing the law may still indeed be a mortal sin, depending on the details.
True, if Vance orders border patrol agents to kill or starve or beat the immigrants, I guess he’d have a mortal sin on his soul. The Catholic Catechism seems to have the answer to all things Catholic, so one could look there.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/579163-pope-blesses-bidens-ability-to-receive-communion/
Is the Pope Catholic?
I don't think progressive christianity on its own can account for much of the decline. The only people I heard mentioned progressive christianity as a reason for behavioral change are (i) Christian justifying their becoming more conservative-minded and (ii) conservative becoming Christians.
What I heard hundreds and hundreds of former Christian say is they're being fed up not only with the politics of Christian conservatism but with their simplistic understanding of a faith that goes increasingly into hysterics as it detaches itself ever more from work.
Both things are equally true. At the end of the day, the church doesn't care if you are a good loving Christian who follows the teachings of Jesus to the best of your ability (which would mean, at the very least, being kind to those who disagree with your political beliefs). The church only cares that you vote the way they tell you to vote.
More importantly dropping your cash into the plate for the beggar minister who grow fat while people starve in the streets.
Perhaps you are the odd case of one who lost her Christian faith through progressive dilution. My point is that I know nobody beside perhaps you, who left the church because of the dilution effect on their faith that progressivism had. Every single one I know left their church and sometime an outward expression of any faith because of the conservatism in the church. I do not want to belittle the theoretical point that you make (that both things can be equally true). I am just arguing that, as a matter of fact, the very thing that mr Richmond is arguing for has been tried by conservatives for over a century, now (since Pius IX at least, on the Catholic side and since literal fundamentalism in Protestant circles), with the exact reverse effects from those they argue their position is producing. But since they are radical conservatives (reactionary really), perhaps it's doing a real effect, which is to provide a rallying point and a cover for the reactionaries that they are.
Many partisan conservatives are only now claiming they are Christians now but are still non-practicing. It is because they are responding with cultural contrarians to the anti-theism on the left. These are not the Evangelicals that brough GWB to power.
I'd say one reason you don't hear it much is because most detractors call it 'liberal' Christianity and are not so nuanced as to use the word progressive unless a particular church or denomination makes a point to call themselves that and let everyone know that is what they are.
Progressive Christianity is an oxymoron.
Perhaps, but regressive Christianity should also be an oxymoron. Sadly, it isn't.
So you're some odd Catholic or Anglican? There is only Traditional Christianity an no other form and if you do not like it that does not concern the laity of traditional Christianity one bit, despite any or all sound and fury you may react with.
J. Gresham Machen made that point 100 years ago in Christianity and Liberalism.
Mercham was writing about classical liberalism which has little in common with 21st century Christianity which also is not the same thing as being politically progressive (althougalthough there is overlap). One problem is that people intentionally obscure these terms and use whichever one fits their current argument best.
I would argue that Machen was arguing about theological liberalism, not classical liberalism. And the theological liberalism of his era has evolved into 21st century “progressive Christianity,” or whatever moniker you call it. He would posit that neither are historic, credal, Biblical Christianity. His book still has relevance today, perhaps more so than in 1923.
The biggest things Meachum took issues with, though, were antisupernaturalism and a form of relativism. Today many progressive Christians have embraced spirituality, maybe even to the point of bring a flaw while relativism seems to be a much bigger problem on the right now than on the left.
Just to be pedantic: his last name is Machen.
I'm an atheist Unitarian-Universalist, and I see the same dynamic at play in the Unitarian-Universalist Association, which last June removed "God" from its statement of UU identity as part of a post-liberal, top-down make-over.
The UU church might as well drop the word "Unity" from its identity, because it has become extremely "woke' and divisive. It didn't used to be that way.
Things changed a little in 1997 and a lot in 2017
The sooner "progressive" churches die and shutter their doors, the better. They are lukewarm and being spit out by God and spiritual people. They deny Jesus. Why do they bother and pretend to be followers of Jesus? It is a charade.
Are you saying that progressives have captured the mainline church? Well, that’s trouble right there.
Yes.
They have conquered the churches that once professed the Nicene Creed but no longer do (though many Marxists like Bishop Idiot Feminist who lectured our POTUS are glib liars). The only way to get free of those people is to defrock all the clergy who don't believe in God, or Jesus, or all the other things talked about in the Nicene Creed.
Hi Loren, thank you for this thoughtful essay. I guess that I see theology itself as necessarily progressive. Progressive ideologies derives from Jesus's teachings, not vice versa. To advance toward the Reign of Love, which we are so far from, necessitates agapic progress, loving change, constant work, bold leadership, courageous perseverance. It's a religious endeavor, in every sense of the word, hence transformative by nature. My students, for example, see religious social activism as lifegiving, and see "pure worship" as less meaningful, and sometimes even manipulative. Respectfully submitted.
If you haven’t already, check out my previous post on Worship and Activism