The Problem with Progressive Christianity, Part 2

The Ethical Consequences of Progressive Christianity

It is no secret that progressive Christianity’s abandonment of historic Christian orthodoxy is often motivated by a desire to be free of the constraints of traditional Christian sexual ethics.  While the Church has always believed that human sexuality should be expressed either through celibacy or through a lifelong covenant commitment of marriage between a man and a woman, virtually all progressive Christians reject this traditional Christian sexual ethic.  Virtually all progressive Christians approve of homosexual behavior and divorce, and most approve of fornication as long as it is in the context of a “committed” relationship.  Disturbingly, many go even farther, approving of adultery and sexual promiscuity, and abandoning any restraints on Christians’ sexual behavior.^[1]For a rather alarmed assessment of the state of sexual morality within progressive Christianity from a relatively orthodox progressive Christian, see this article:   … Continue reading

The first common criticism that progressive Christians give of traditional Christian sexual ethics is that it is “outdated.”  Given that the idea that people should only have sex within the context of a lifelong covenant commitment of marriage between a man and a woman was even more radically countercultural in first-century Roman society than it is in 21st century American society, this criticism is utterly baffling.  If being counter cultural were a good reason to abandon Christian moral teachings about sexual ethics, then Jesus and His apostles never would have given those teachings in the first place.  The church is called to live a radically countercultural way of life with regard to violence, money, power, and many other things besides.  Why would we think that Christians are not called to live a radically counterculural way of life with regard to sexual behavior as well?  If it is hard for 21st century American Christians to live according to a Biblical sexual ethic, the problem is with us, not with Scripture.  

The second common criticism that progressive Christians give of traditional Christian sexual ethics is that it is “repressive.”  This criticism is based in a pseudo-Freudian pop psychology that has no intellectual merit.  There is nothing “repressive” about choosing not to act on our desires.  As David F. Wells points out, “There is abundant evidence that people become strong by suppressing what is unworthy within them, not by expressing it.  This kind of suppression should not be confused with Freud’s ideas about repression.  Repression is an irrational and unconscious mechanism; suppression is a conscious and rational act undertaken out of moral concern and a sense of being owned by Christ.”^[2]David F. Wells, No Place for Truth, or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 178-179.  Choosing not to give in to sexual temptation is not “repressive” and harmful; rather, it is a good and necessary part of the pursuit of genuine human flourishing.  

Progressive Christianity’s approval of sexual immorality is egregious, since Jesus and His apostles make it very clear that lust is a very serious sin.  It is simply not true that sexual morality is unimportant compared to other moral issues like social justice.  Sadly, a commitment to Biblical sexual ethics is often the last vestige of the American church being visibly distinct from the world.  But this means that progressive Christianity’s efforts to abandon traditional Christian sexual ethics are contributing to the complete dissolution of the church and its complete absorption into the world.  

This leads us to one of the most fundamental problems with progressive Christianity: its complete abandonment of church discipline.  Jesus and His apostles very clearly taught that the visible church should be composed only of genuine disciples of Jesus Christ, that we must judge those inside the Church with regard to whether they are visibly living as disciples of Jesus, and that the church must discipline its members who have fallen into sin and exclude them from the visible church if they stubbornly refuse to repent.  The church exists only where the word of God is preached, the sacraments are administered, and church discipline is practiced.  Without church discipline, the church becomes, not a community of disciples, but a crowd of people paying lip service to Christian ideas.  

Progressive Christians reject the practice of church discipline, claiming that it is “unkind” and “unloving.”  Instead of disciplining and excluding people, they claim, the church should instead always value “inclusion.”  This arbitrary elevation of “inclusion” as the highest Christian virtue produces a vision of the church that is in radical discontinuity with the teachings of Jesus, His apostles, the Church Fathers, and the entirety of the Christian tradition up into the modern period.  Genuine Christian love cannot be separated from confronting people with the truth.  The church shows genuine love to its members by holding them accountable to their commitment to following Jesus as His disciples, and by disciplining them if they refuse to follow through on that commitment.  The practice of church discipline is one of the three marks of the church.  Without it, the true church does not exist.  Churches that are controlled by progressive Christian theology thus fail to be genuine Christian churches.  

Progressive Christianity’s abandonment of church discipline is, at root, an outworking of an even more fundamental problem: its lack of respect for the Holiness of God.  God’s Holiness is central to the theology of the Bible, Old and New Testaments.  God is wholly separate and other from His creation; He is sacred, majestic, awesome, perfect, and pure.  Because God is Holy, nothing sinful, evil, or impure can bear to be in His presence.  God has formed the church as His holy covenant people, which has access to God’s Holy presence through its union with Christ.  Christians must live out their identity as members of God’s holy covenant people by a radical commitment to repenting from sin and being conformed to the image of Christ.  

This understanding of the Holiness of God and the holiness of the church has essentially been completely lost by progressive Christians.  In place of the Biblical God, the God who is Holy Love, the God who is “a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29), progressive Christianity posits a flaccid god who is “loving” and “kind,” but not awesome and demanding, a god who accepts us just as we are rather than radically transforming us so that we are able to dwell in His Holy presence.  In place of the traditional Christian understanding of God as a passionate lover who jealously wants to be completely intimate with us and to possess us completely, progressive Christianity posits a god of senile benevolence, who drowsily wants us to do whatever will make us feel happy.  

With this picture of god in place, of course, any real respect for the holiness of the church is lost.  Genuine repentance, discipleship, and pursuit of holiness are no longer required to be part of the church.  Instead, the church becomes merely a human community whose only purpose is to make people feel loved, accepted, and included.  There may be some value in forming human communities that make people feel loved, accepted, and included, but if that is the central purpose of a community, it is not a church.  The central purpose of a church is the corporate pursuit of holiness and faithfulness as a community of genuine disciples of Jesus Christ.  

Conclusion: Progressive Christianity is Regressive

There is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”  Progressive Christianity is not apostolic, since it rejects the authority of the apostles.  And it is not holy, since it de facto abandons any respect for God’s Holiness and the holiness of the church.  Progressive Christianity is thus incapable of forming genuine Christian churches.  

The apostle Paul warned us that “the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Tim 4:3).  This apostolic warning has been fulfilled many times throughout the history of the church, and today it is being fulfilled by progressive Christianity.  Progressive Christianity tells people that they do not need to fear God, that they do not need to repent of their sins, that they do not need to suffer with Christ in order to be saved.  It tells people what their itching ears want to hear.  But it does not tell them the truth.

In a masterful critique of the religious right, Eastern Orthodox Christian Frank Schaeffer wrote that, “The call to journey toward Christ through suffering, discipline, hard work, and a sacramental life of liturgical-Eucharistic worship, in which the content of one’s character gradually changed for the better, had been wholly replaced by the easy “born again” experience, a little nostalgic sentimental political sloganeering about “traditional family values,” and the jingoistic drumbeat of American nationalism.”^[3]Frank Schaeffer, Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994).  We can clearly see that in progressive Christianity, the call to journey toward Christ through suffering, discipline, hard work, and a sacramental life of liturgical-Eucharistic worship, in which the content of one’s character gradually changes for the better, has been wholly replaced by whatever will make privileged, immature, 21st century Americans feel good about themselves.  Like the Christianity of the religious right, progressive Christianity offers a vapid, shallow religion that is a sorry excuse for genuine Christian faith.  

Progressive Christianity claims to bring about “progress” in the church.  The Biblical story of salvation history, though, is not a story of gradual human progress, but of the dramatic inbreaking of God’s New Creation into the old.  This New Creation has already been launched in and through Jesus, but, until He comes again to fully actualize it, Christians live in the tension between God’s New Creation and this present evil age.  Genuine Christian faithfulness, then, does not consist in trying to develop progressively better ideas and practices through human effort, but in continually seeking to think and act in light of what God has already said and done through Jesus and His apostles.  And we know what God has said and done, not by some vague, unverifiable appeal to the “Holy Spirit” that is used to reject the teachings of Scripture, but by ever more careful attention to the teachings of Scripture, the word of God.  As the great theologian Karl Barth put it: “Holy Scripture may be compared to the fiery cloud and pillar which in every age precedes the community and all its members as an invariably authentic direction to the knowledge of its Lord, to the gift which He gives and the accompanying task which he sets. . . We never do injury to a Christian or the community, nor are we in danger of leading a Christian astray, nor is it arbitrary but always and everywhere salutary and good, if we set ourselves, and the community on the way which leads backwards or rather forwards to Holy Scripture.  For since in Holy Scripture true words are always to be heard, this way is always backwards or rather forwards to Jesus Christ, to the one Word, to the reconciliation accomplished in Him, to the one covenant between Him and man, to the salvation effected and to be found in this covenant.”^[4]Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.69.2.  

True “progress” for the church, then, is always to be found in the church moving closer to the teachings of Scripture in its teachings and practice, subjecting itself to criticism in light of the teachings of God’s word, and on this basis making efforts to reform.  In contrast, “progressive” Christianity leads the church to move away from the teachings of Scripture and towards whatever ideas happen to be popular and fashionable at the moment in 21st century American culture.  Far from being truly progressive, then, “progressive” Christianity is actually regressive.  

Series Navigation

<< The Problem with Progressive Christianity, Part 1