Pausing my series on “Progressive Christianity”

Approximate Reading Time: 4 minutes

Failure is an important part of growth.

I recently set out to write a series that tackled the serious errors I saw within Progressive Christianity. I decided to try something new, doing a different tone and style of explanation. From the beginning I didn’t love it, but I had already written several articles and didn’t want to just bail out on all that work.

As I was recording my episode about the Sunk-Cost Fallacy, I realized I was doing the thing I was encouraging others to avoid. I’d committed to a course of action, I’d put in hours of researching and writing, and I was stubbornly trying to make it work. Realizing that, I’m putting a pin in the series for now, but would like to revisit it in the future with something that is much more natural to me.

For those curious, here are some things that were dragging me down:

• It was more of a conversation or commentary on Progressivism. I don’t think anyone really cares about my opinion on something, yet it felt more like an opinion piece than anything else.
• It was very narrowly focused. Very few people who visit this blog are likely to define themselves as “Progressive Christians.”
• It grew more unwieldy with each article. I said that discussing Progressive Christianity really deserves an entire book – with the things I wanted to discuss, I realized just how true that was. There’s just so much to discuss that it either needs a surface-level discussion or a very deep dive – me attempting to find a middle ground didn’t work.
• Progressive Christianity is prevelant in far more areas than we realize. It’s often discussed as a synonym for “incredibly liberal Christians who support abortion, LGBTQ issues, etc,” but many of the specific issues I listed in my very first article are common among conservative Christians in less obvious ways.
• In the end, my desire is to serve God’s people. The trajectory of the series made it difficult for people to either see themselves in the problems I discussed, or to recognize early warning signs in their beliefs or the teachings of a church. By focusing on the extreme end of where Progressive Christianity ultimately leads, it was of little help to those who were being influenced by a progressive worldview without realizing it.

Abandoning this has set me behind on my schedule, but a little pain now is better than pushing through with something that won’t serve anyone.

I hope all of that makes sense. This confession/explanation is trying to condense weeks of prayer, reflection, and self-criticism into a brief blog post. For those who have enjoyed the series so far, I do apologize for not finishing it yet. When it returns in the future, I hope it will serve you even more.

As I said, failure is an important part of growth. While I’ve had ups and downs in this ministry, this was a definite flop for me. But with this failure, I’ve learned a good deal about myself and how this ministry can be valuable to others.

Finally, for anyone still curious, here is the general thrust of what each article was meant to discuss:

Part 2: Trend Chasers – When we keep trying to make Christianity keep up with a secular world, we just end up with Christian wrapping on a worldview that is against God.
Part 3: Gimmicks Before Gospel – When we draw people in with entertainment or feel-good speeches, there’s little choice but to keep them there with anything except the truth (i.e. a church can’t successfully pull a “bait and switch,” either a church preaches the truth, or they preach to make people feel good)
Part 4: An Overwhelming Fear of Man – In a post-Christian world, there’s a desire to maintain the favorable opinion of the world that we once enjoyed when Christianity was the default for many people. As a result, it becomes easy to change or abandon teachings that the world hates or mocks in order to maintain good PR.
Part 5: Death By No Foundation – Ultimately, I think being consistent with a progressive line of thinking will consume itself. With no absolute and unchanging truth to fight for, we’ll lack the foundation to stand for anything. In time, perhaps over several generations, this line of Christianity will die out because there’s really no point in following it.
Part 6: Predictably Popular – There are many reasons this way of thinking and living is popular. It makes us more acceptable to the world, it doesn’t require wrestling with difficult biblical issues, and the common style of preaching appeals to our desire to feel good about ourselves. We have itching ears, and we are drawn to people willing to scratch them how we want.
Part 7: Why I’m Still Hopeful – There’s good reason to be alarmed, but I also see hope in the rising popularity of progressivism. It demands that Christians truly understand their own beliefs, it makes it difficult to live as “cultural Christians” who want to hold on to a few traditional beliefs while living like the world, and it makes the truth of Jesus Christ shine even brighter against a world that is always slipping farther into darkness.