A few years ago, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who happens to be an atheist. We were talking about a couple of different Bible passages. It didn’t take long to realize that he was looking at these passages from a literalist perspective, and he was deriving their meaning based on that.
I said to him, “I realize where you’re coming from. But, I don’t look at the Bible like that. I look at the Bible more as myth that’s about the relationship between the Divine and the human, how they relate, and the significance of that relationship for our lives.”
He replied, “Yes, I get that, Bo. But, that’s not what Christians believe.”
A TAle of Two Christianities
Today, I want to try to identify the differences between Evangelical and progressive Christianity so that you can understand each of them better as religious options for those who identify as Christian
It’s safe to say that the evangelical perspective dominates the Christian voice in America, even to the point of being equated with it. Case in point, my friend’s comment. He knew I was a Christian, and still he said what he said as if I wasn’t. That’s how strong the cultural tie is.
But evangelicalism isn’t the only way to be Christian. There is no such thing as a core doctrine that all Christians have believed at all times. In fact, there are many different types of Christianity out there. And there always have been.
Of course, my main interest is progressive Christianity, because I’m a progressive Christian. While the evangelical voice dominates, I strive to strengthen the progressive voice because I think it is the one most needed right now.
Evangelical Christianity
But, what is “evangelicalism”? It’s actually hard to define. So I’m going to lean on the wider interpretation found in The Atlantic article, “Defining Evangelical”. That article identifies four emphases that tie the movement together.
- Biblicism
- Crucicentrism
- Conversionism
- Activism
I will look at each of these and offer my own understanding of what they mean for evangelicals. Then I’m then going to look at each again from a progressive Christian perspective.
I’m not trying to tell people what kind of Christian they are based on their beliefs. It is not a black-and-white diagnostic process meant to force you into a category. If you identify with one more than another, that’s perfectly fine. If you find that you like parts of both, that’s fine, too.
The point is to deepen understanding. I simply want to illustrate that not all Christians fit the same mold, and you don’t have to fit into the evangelical mold to be a Christian. The Christian baptismal waters are both deep and wide.
Let’s start walking through those four emphases one at a time.
1. Biblicism
Evangelicals view the Bible as the primary authority for faith and life. Of course, one could push back and say that the primary authority for faith and life is Jesus and God. But, where do we learn about Jesus and God? The Bible. Therefore, the Bible itself as the Word of God is the sole reference point.
When evangelicals read the Bible, they tend to prefer a “plain reading of the text”. Simply stated: If the Bible says it is so, then it is so. It’s very straightforward. The Bible is accessible to everyone who can read it, and through the Bible, anyone can have a one-to-one relationship with God, without anyone else interpreting and telling them what the Bible says.
So, biblicism asserts that the Bible is the primary authority for your faith and life, and it’s easily accessible and understandable through a plain reading of the text.
2. Crucicentrism
Crucicentrism asserts the primacy of the historical act of Jesus dying for your sins so you can be saved from hell, get into heaven, and be with God forever. For evangelical Christians, the entirety of the Bible points to this moment in time when God’s grace breaks into the world through the sacrifice of God’s only son. The centrality of this act is so important that evangelicals typically shy away from any sense of universalism (the idea that everyone receives grace and there is no hell).
More than once, I’ve been in a conversation where I asked an Evangelical, “What if there is no heaven?” And the response: “Then what’s the point of being Christian?” That response reveals the extent to which the singular moment in time of Jesus dying on the cross for your sins is indispensable to this approach to Christianity.
3. Conversionism
In order to receive God’s saving grace that frees you from hell to enter heaven, you have to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Otherwise, you miss out. That means you have to convert as an act of free will. This is true for all individuals. That’s why infant baptism makes no sense to evangelicals.
In many mainline, Catholic, and other versions of Christianity, infant baptism is a common practice. Parents bring their infants forward to be baptized into the family of faith.
Since evangelicals expect individual adults to choose Jesus, they don’t accept infant baptisms. The earliest someone can profess faith in Christ is after confirmation (around the age of 13), when they have reached an age where they have the ability to consider and make that kind of commitment for their lives.
So, conversionism comes down to what you say when someone asks you, “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” When you accept that and open yourself up to Jesus, you open the door that allows saving grace to flow into your life.
4. Activism
Activism is simply the idea that your faith should affect your life. When I think of this for the evangelical perspective, I think of three ways it should happen.
First, avoid sin. Of course, we all have sin in our lives and nobody’s perfect. Evangelicals accept this. However, the “sanctification process” (the process of being made holy) is all about cleaning up. So, there is the expectation that once you give your life over to Christ that you will do what you can to reject sin. That means a whole bunch of “don’t do this” and “don’t do that”.
Second, Jesus calls us to love our neighbors. Clothing the poor and feeding the hungry are two examples of how they might do this. So, evangelicalism isn’t just about “don’t” do the sinful things; it’s also about “do” the loving things.
Third, personal witnessing to others. What’s the most loving thing you can do for others? From the evangelical perspective, it is saving souls. What could be more loving than inviting people to accept Christ into their hearts so they can escape the torments of eternal hell? Again, this brings us back to the very nature of the gospel itself: Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Overall, activism is about not doing sinful things, doing loving things, and witnessing in order to convert others to faith in Jesus.
Progressive Christianity
Now, let’s look at an alternative. Progressive Christianity is very different from its evangelical sibling. In order to understand the difference, I’m going to walk through the same four emphases of evangelicalism and offer a progressive perspective.
1. From Biblicism to a Critical REading of the Texts
Evangelicals and progressives read the Bible very differently. Progressives strongly value higher levels of academia. So, when we look at the Bible, we look at it as a text written by human beings to address things that are happening in their lives, not ours. The Bible is not timeless. It’s a contextual text.
To understand the Bible, we view it through a critical lens. And, “critical” doesn’t mean pointing at it and saying, “That’s wrong, and that’s wrong, and that’s wrong”. Rather, it means you are actively engaging the power of critical thinking.
Several different kinds of critical methods inform our studies. Historical criticism looks at the text in context. Form criticism looks at what kind of text it is, such as a letter or a hymn. Literary criticism asks what type of genre a text belongs to. These are just a few.
All these are ways of looking at a text within a context. Once you understand that a text comes out of a context and is written by people who are addressing the real issues of their day and their questions, then you can ask how their wrestling with faith can help you.
We look at the Bible as the stories and testimonies of people coming before us who wrestled with the questions of faith. This view of the Bible turns it into a dialogue partner who helps us to wrestle with our questions in the here and now. And we recognize that their answers to their questions won’t necessarily be the answers for us today.
Overall, the Bible isn’t a document that gives you answers. The Bible is an opportunity to converse with those who’ve
Evangelicals and progressives read the Bible very differently. Progressives strongly value higher levels of academia. So, when we look at the Bible, we look at it as a text written by human beings to address things that are happening in their lives, not ours. The Bible is not timeless. It’s a contextual text.
To understand the Bible, we view it through a critical lens. And, “critical” doesn’t mean pointing at it and saying, “That’s wrong, and that’s wrong, and that’s wrong”. Rather, it means you are actively engaging the power of critical thinking.
Several different kinds of critical methods inform our studies. Historical criticism looks at the text in context. Form criticism looks at what kind of text it is, such as a letter or a hymn. Literary criticism asks what type of genre a text belongs to. These are just a few.
All these are ways of looking at a text within a context. Once you understand that a text comes out of a context and is written by people who are addressing the real issues of their day and their questions, then you can ask how their wrestling with faith can help you.
We look at the Bible as the stories and testimonies of people coming before us who wrestled with the questions of faith. This view of the Bible turns it into a dialogue partner who helps us to wrestle with our questions in the here and now. And we recognize that their answers to their questions won’t necessarily be the answers for us today.
Overall, the Bible isn’t a document that gives you answers. The Bible is an opportunity to converse with those who’ve come before you so they can help you wrestle with your questions about your faith and your life in the here and now.
Progressive Christians are not biblicists. We engage the Bible in a very different way.
2. From Crucicentrism to the Divine Identity Revealed
This is a big one because it gets right to the very heart of the Gospel itself. For evangelicals, the Gospel—the good news for the world—is that Jesus died for your sins so you don’t have to.
When progressive Christians look at the cross, they don’t see a form of blood atonement. For us, the good news is not the satisfaction of divine wrath, but rather the revelation of the Divine Identity. Jesus fully reveals to us that God is love.
This is truly good news for everybody because it means God is not some sort of scary, all-powerful being waiting to catch you doing something wrong (whether you knew it was wrong or not) and put you into hell for it.
Rather, we strongly proclaim that God is love. God is not just out there, but God is also with you. And God is for you. God wants you to experience abundant life—the joy of living—in the here and now.
And it is on the cross that the Divine Identity is most fully revealed. For it is there, amidst those who are actively crucifying Jesus that he says, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do”. This is an incredible, extreme, and inhuman degree of compassion. It is nothing less than divine.
But, we don’t just see this compassion in Jesus’ crucifixion. We see it throughout his entire ministry. He lived and breathed compassion. Marcus Borg has said (and I paraphrase because I seem to have lost the book), “compassion is the holiness of God”.
The spirit of compassion is the Holy Spirit of God that we are all trying to tap into. This especially means compassion toward those who are marginalized—the poor, orphans, and widows of this world. These, too, are human beings, children of God, each and every one.
We believe the spirit of Christ stands especially with the marginalized. For those who have had their voices taken from them, the spirit of Christ speaks. For those who have had their power taken away from them, the spirit of Christ acts. As it was in the gospel stories, so it is today.
So, for progressive Christians, the Gospel isn’t so much found in a blood atonement. Rather, in the ministry and crucifixion of Jesus we see the Divine Identity is fully revealed to us, and that is this: God is love…and God is for you.
3. From Conversionism to Transformation
Evangelicals emphasize a need for personal conversion to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It’s a conversion to a belief system, primarily the belief that Jesus is Lord. Having the right belief system is known as orthodoxy (“right belief”).
Progressive Christians tended not to emphasize orthodoxy. Rather we emphasize orthopraxy (“right practice”), which is more about converting to a way of being in the world.
Remember, God is love. So we are more interested in converting people to a loving way. When people are living lives that are more loving, they are being filled with the divine spirit of compassion, which is the living Spirit of Christ.
But, what is Divine love? For us, it’s not just any kind of love. Rather, is a particular kind of love—a love that is other-centered, justice-oriented, and self-giving. It is a love that supports, enriches, and deepens the experience of life for all of those around you. Anything less than that is less than divine.
This conversion to a more loving way of being in the world doesn’t have to happen in a specific moment, such as through a conversion experience. You might have conversion experiences in your life, and such life-changing epiphanies can give you new spiritual insight. Or your conversion might happen very slowly over time, maybe even years. You might not even notice it until you look back and realize that you are not the same person you were 10 years ago.
This is where I clash with the term “conversion” (not that it’s wrong). I actually think it’s better to describe what progressive Christians are after as “transformation”. As we open ourselves more fully to the spirit of love, that Spirit of Love flows through us for others. As that happens, we naturally transform into a more Christ-like way of being in the world.
So, conversionism? I don’t think that word captures the spirit of what we’re trying to do. I personally prefer to talk about transformation into a way of being in the world that is filled with—or a conduit for—an other-centered, justice-oriented, and self-giving love.
4. From Activism to Pluralism & Justice
The moment you shift from thinking of the Gospel as a blood sacrifice that saves you from your sins and helps you to get into heaven (assuming you accept Jesus Christ as Lord and savior) and shift to the Gospel as being the revelation that God is love, it changes how you understand what you’re meant to do in society. There are a couple of key differences I want to focus on here.
Other Religions
First, what do we do with other religions? The typical Evangelical answer is “convert them to Jesus so they can get into heaven”. That’s the most loving thing you could do for anyone.
From a progressive Christian perspective, it’s not about converting people to an orthodoxy (“right belief”) but rather converting people to a way of being in the world which is more loving (orthopraxy, or “right practice”).
So, we work alongside people from other faith traditions to help make the world a more loving place, and we don’t expect them to abandon their belief systems and accept ours while we do so. We are perfectly comfortable just letting them be them, which is a very loving thing to do.
Social Justice
Second, when you start to think in terms of God is love as being the Gospel itself (the revelation of the Divine Identity), then we have to ask, “What is the significance of that for society?”
When we look at society, we see that there are those who move into the center of power and wealth and marginalize others as they get there. Sometimes they even callously walk all over other people and leave devastation in their wake.
That’s when we as progressive Christians emphasize the need for justice in society. And, “justice” is simply what love looks like at a societal level. When you have a just society, you have a loving society.
Just as Jesus gave himself to the poor, just as Jesus included the marginalized, so too do we work toward doing the same in our own society. That’s why you will find progressive Christians on the forefront of social movements, such as the push to make sure all people have quality health care, or working to make sure that all people regardless of sexual or gender identities are fully included in society as valued members, rather than being cast aside.
Activism for us, the activism that pushes for a more just society is all about love. It’s about saying there are a whole bunch of people out there who are not being loved right now because of the way the system is working; we need to change things so that we can start including them and making things right.
Progressive Christian activism flows from the Gospel itself, which says “God is love”. And how do we become agents of love in the world? We work with others to make the world a more loving place, while respecting their otherness. And, we work to make changes in society so that those who have been marginalized become more fully included.
A Gracious Account
There you have it, my take on the difference between a progressive approach to Christianity and an evangelical one. Obviously, I am biased. After all, I’m a progressive Christian. However, at one point I would have identified more with the evangelical position, so I certainly understand it. I hope that my presentation of the evangelical perspective comes across as respectful of that tradition.
I believe it is extremely important when we present the perspectives of others to be as gracious as we can in order to better understand them. It doesn’t mean we can’t be critical or challenging. But, we need to try to appreciate where others are coming from first.
I hope this has helped you to understand the difference between the evangelical and progressive Christian perspectives. Again, this is not about pigeonholing anyone into a rigid category. It’s about letting others know that there is more than one way to be a Christian in today’s world.