What’s In a Name? The Linguistic Error of Progressive Christianity

When I was a college-aged student, I almost fell for it.

In the first few years of legal adulthood, as the ” emergent ” church movement peaked, I was gobbling up everything I could learn about the Bible, the Lord, and all things Christianity. While most of the content I engaged with was faithful and orthodox, a particular string of videos piqued my interest as the gospel was presented in a “new” way, with novel interpretations receiving more weight than the stuffy old ones.

The videos were Rob Bell’s “Nooma” series, which, to his credit, were incredibly well produced. This led to further exploration of his other content, including seeing him live during his “Everything is Spiritual” tour. Our group literally took pictures with the guy. 

To be honest, with my underdeveloped discernment, the content seemed harmless. It ‘helped’ me feel “deep” thinking about Christianity as so mysterious, nuanced, poetic, and flowery. 

Thank God I was baptized in the Holy Spirit before I truly imbibed too much of that nonsense. Though I was already hungry for the Word, that baptism left me insatiable. Before I realized it, I naturally lost interest in these “fringe-y” extras because the nourishment of the Word itself was so much more appealing. By Grace, His Word shielded me from something I didn’t yet have the toolset to combat.

It wasn’t until a few years later that I realized how close I was to stepping on a slippery slope with no traction on my shoes, a slope that destroyed the faith of many people in my generation.

At a random thrift store with my wife, I found a book (I always double-check the book section when we go to thrift stores – never know what you can find) called, “Why We’re Not Emergent (by two guys who should be),” by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. For whatever reason, though the material was dated and the emergent movement was basically over by this point, I felt the need to buy it. Straight up, I didn’t even realize what the emergent movement was and didn’t realize that I had sampled it all those years before.

The picture became much more evident once I began to read the book. What I had been unwittingly served before, in an evangelical church, was the gateway drug to this movement. It seems everyone was “duped” by it at the beginning, and the people I was with would not endorse it now. 

I devoured this book, and through it, the Lord birthed in me a passion for dismantling these counterfeit ideas with ferocity.

At the time though, I felt a little bit like an arrow without a target or a warrior without a war. I had a fresh fire in my belly to war against a “movement” that had slowed to barely a crawl, and it felt like I was about six years late to the party. I had a “solution” to something that no longer felt like a problem. 

I struggled to understand for quite some time why the Lord would cause a passion within me that appeared useless. As a pastor with bigger fish to fry, it didn’t seem to me, though I couldn’t stop doing it for some reason, a good use of time to go down rabbit holes learning about the dangers of a slippery slope that had been leveled. That was until I heard the term “progressive Christianity.”

Progressive Christianity is recycled garbage.

It didn’t take long for me to understand that this new wave of progressive Christianity was just the emergent church movement with a slightly more political bent. Some of the same leaders, such as Brian McClaren (run from his content with track shoes on), are even the same as they were before.

It began to make sense to me why the Lord lit that fire in me about the emergent church before progressive Christianity became more mainstream. It equipped me to see progressive Christianity for what it was from the jump. I knew exactly how to spot it and recognize its coded language, even if the terms had switched from the previous movement. Linguistic theft is one of PC’s favorite tools in their toolbox.

I knew it would switch the authority and inspiration of scripture for autonomous interpretation of scripture based on whatever inspired the interpreter outside its own words. I knew that the resurrection would be presented as more of a metaphor than an actual event with actual ramifications. I knew that “sin” would be redefined because, after all, it ain’t that bad. I knew that with sin redefined, the cross would have to be. I knew that instead of seeking to live biblically in a postmodern culture, it would seek to shove postmodern culture into the bible. 

The problem with the name

While I could spend all day playing the comparison game—and maybe I will at some point in the future—the thing that shoots the “movement” in the foot from the jump is literally in the name: Progressive Christianity.

Let me be clear: Christianity IS progressive – in the actual, purest sense of the word. Don’t get scared, I’ll explain.

God, the Lord, changes not, yet His redemption plan is progressive. He reveals the plan of salvation progressively through the scriptures. We are currently invited to participate in a story that is “in progress” as the church is called to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom until the culmination of all things. In a certain sense, the truest sense of the word, the church and Christianity are progressive.

Here’s the rub – the content of the gospel is not. You can’t “progress” from the perfect work of Jesus on the Cross, the answer to the most profound problem on the planet, and all its implications. “The Faith” is always based on the same work and same theological concepts—the same ones from the beginning. 

“3 Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the [a]saints.” Jude 1:3

“3 For I delivered to you [b]as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

The message remains the same. It doesn’t need to “progress.” The same message that saved the lost 2000 years ago still saves today.

This is why the moniker “progressive Christianity” doesn’t work or make sense.

The problem with identifying as progressive is that by that very identity, you have to progress continually. And if there are immovable, unchangeable, or timeless things, you have to regress in those areas and paint them as progress. As humans, we need to act in a way that is consistent with what we believe is our identity. So if the identity is based on “progressing,” the moment you stop progressing, you’re at war with your identity. When this is your first identity, with Christian tagged on next (which is based on a completed work with no need for progress), you have to regress and find a way to brand it as progress.

The problem with progressive ideologies is that they’re based on something other than timeless truths, characteristics, or virtues, so they must continually “progress.” They hit a place where they turn something not virtuous into something that seems virtuous because they must have movement to continue identifying as progressive. They must always be progressing, so they must keep turning non-virtuous things into something virtuous until they inevitably get to the point where they start calling good evil and evil good. They have to keep “progressing” the faith that has been handed down once and for all, so they have to degrade (because that’s at least some form of movement) and call it progressive.

This is precisely what progressive Christianity does. In truth, it should be called regressive or degrading Christianity.

This leads to ridiculousness like calling sex work “holy,” abortion “mercy,” and incorporating worship practices of other gods as part of a “journey.” Progressive Christianity seeks to try to put Christian language on encouraging people to regress to their basest, evilest desires and modes of operation. Since it can’t move forward, it must regress and call it “good.”

Imagine being so progressive that you have to explain why satan was the good guy in some cases and just had misguided intentions. That the church is full of anti-Luciferian propaganda, and he’s really just a charming character who’s trying to make social change. I wish I were making this up, yet the first article when I went to progressivechristianity.org was precisely that.

This should make it clear where this nonsense comes from right off the bat.

Why am I showing you this? 

Satan loves being a bridge builder to things that are harmful from things that appear initially benign. He won’t generally introduce you to something outright evil. Still, he will work overtime to build a bridge between things that appear harmless initially and eventually harmful so that by the time you cross the bridge, he can break it down behind you; you won’t be able to get back.

We don’t need some “new” take on Christianity. Some shining, new, flowery, cutting-edge version. The same gospel from thousands of years ago still saves today. It doesn’t need re-invention. It doesn’t need a post-modern agenda superimposed on it. We must be discerning in this hour.

Just because something says “Christian” on it doesn’t make it Christian. PC’s have shown they can slap it on just about anything. When you see our terms used, you have to go a layer deeper and see how they’re used. Progressive Christianity uses our terms to build a bridge to a place that ultimately shipwrecks faith. It’s an eternal kind of error.

Progressive Christianity is not progressive at all. It’s not even Christianity. When they are joined, both names prove false.

There’s no progress in it. Only regression and degradation. Don’t even entertain its notions. Fix your attention on the faith handed down once and for all. It still saves today.