What's all the buzz about "progressive Christianity"?

Progressive Christianity is not a church or a denomination. It's a broad network of Christians united by their liberal faith. These days there are many broad-based movements that cross lines of denomination and geography, aided largely by the internet. Progressive Christianity is one of them. But so is the Emerging Church Movement, Alpha or Willow Creek.

What makes a "progressive Christian"? According to the website of The Center for Progressive Christianity, this movement is "an approach to Christianity that is inclusive, innovative and informed." By definition, progressive Christians don't subscribe to creeds or dogmas, but they do share the following characteristics:
1) They have "found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus."
2) They "recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us."
3) They "understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus' name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God's feast for all peoples."
4) They "invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting they become like us in order to be acceptable."
5) They "know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe."
6) They "find more grace in the search for understanding than in dogmatic certainty-more value in questioning than in absolutes."
7) They "form [themselves] into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to do, striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of God's creation."
8) They "recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil and renunciation of privilege" (www.tcpc.org).

There's plenty in this statement of beliefs that I would say "Amen" to. And, I count among my friends people who would describe themselves as progressive Christians. But I think there are some real shortcomings with progressive Christianity that need to be noted.

Progressive Christianity appeals mostly to the educated middle class. It is really in the tradition of Friedrich Schleiermacher who, in 1799, tried to convince the educated elites of Berlin-Christianity's "cultured despisers" - that religion was not opposed to modern thinking. You don't have to check your brains at the door to be a religious person, Schleiermacher argued. Likewise, progressive Christianity appeals to people who like the Christian message, but don't want to swallow a lot of beliefs or practices that make them uncomfortable. And there's nothing really new about that.

Not that it's a bad thing to appeal to old ideas. Christianity is about drawing life from the wells of the past. But many (not all) progressive Christians fail to acknowledge their indebtedness to the past. And, they seem to believe that we're faced with an either-or choice. Either you can be a progressive Christian-inclusive, innovative and informed - or you can be a non-progressive Christian-narrow-minded, tradition-bound and ignorant. This attitude has been much encouraged by Bishop John Shelby Spong, one of progressive Christianity's main advocates, who repeatedly writes in his books that those who do not agree with him are simply narrow-minded fundamentalists who are afraid of the truth. While espousing openness and tolerance, I find many progressive Christians actually quite intolerant of views that don't agree with their own. The website of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity begins with this opening statement: "If you are searching for the security of rigid answers to the BIG questions of life, this isn't the right site for you. Many other sites can offer you traditional, absolute and dogmatic formulas for faith."

How's that for judgmentalism? If you don't want to play with us, it must be because you're one of those people who wants "the security of rigid answers." This attitude of condescension is widespread in progressive Christianity.

I'm always amazed at the rich diversity of Christian belief and practice. But many of the progressive Christians I've met don't see it. They think that orthodox, conservative or evangelical Christians are simple-minded souls who would agree with the words of old-time evangelist Samuel P. Jones: "I believe the whale swallowed Jonah. I would have believed it just the same if [the Bible] had said that Jonah swallowed the whale."

Evangelical Christianity includes powerful spokespeople for justice and dignity. I think, for example, of Philip Yancey, who repudiated his southern U.S. segregationist upbringing and embraced a vision of racial equality precisely because of his evangelical convictions. Yancey's wonderful essays on science, literature and religion demonstrate as rich and inquisitive and humane an attitude to life as any progressive Christian. (Check out http://www3.zondervan.com /features/authors/yanceyp.)

In fact, world-changing Christians are often quite conservative in their beliefs-great social reformers of the 19th century like Wilberforce and Shaftesbury, or Dorothy Day, the Roman Catholic social activist, for example. The reason Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth opposed the rise of Nazism was that they believed with all their heart that Jesus, and not human ideology, is Lord. Has there been a more articulate spokesperson for the dignity and sacredness of human life in our time than the very traditional Pope John Paul II? These are examples of people who were convinced that the Lord Jesus commanded them to sacrifice themselves for just causes.

I really question whether Christianity should aspire to being "progressive." The Gospel is not about progress but transformation. Progress is something that we manage out of our own resources. The idea of the Christian life as "progressive" always calls to my mind the words of a former United Church Moderator who was quoted as saying, "I have finally come to the place where I have found a God with whom I can feel comfortable." But the Bible doesn't talk about progress. The Bible talks about conversion, about being born again and being raised from the dead.

My problem with progressive Christianity is not that it is too radical but that it is not radical enough. It wants to search and question and doubt, to ponder and explore, which are all necessary; but I don't hear much about the incredible power of God to smash through our defenses and change us to the very root of our being. Why has the Alpha movement swept the world while progressive knock-offs like "Living the Questions" have not? It's not because Alpha is perfect but because Nicky Gumbel speaks with such passion and conviction about how Jesus changed his life, and invites others to risk being open to that possibility themselves.

I attended a conference in the U.S. last month where one of the keynote speakers was Cheryl Bridges Johns, who is a professor at the Church of God Theological Seminary in Cleveland, Tennessee. Prof. Bridges Johns is a Pentecostal. Bishop Spong has been known to rail against what he calls "irrational Pentecostal hysteria," but- let me tell you - this woman is nobody's fool. The conference was on the Church's role in salvation, and the title of Prof. Bridges Johns' address was "Jesus Saves, Heals and Delivers." She spoke about salvation as healing and restoration and the power of God to create something out of nothing. She talked about the power of the Holy Spirit to turn people who have been treated as objects into free subjects, liberating them to live in dignity and joy. And the people who experience this radical transformation are not the educated elites who want to keep their religious options open, who want to embark on a journey of exploration that precludes a definite destination, but the poor, the broken, the downtrodden and the marginalized.

For all that liberal Christians talk about being in solidarity with the poor, Pentecostalism is largely the religion of the poor. Prof. Bridges Johns talked about the hypocrisy of claiming to take the poor seriously but not taking the religion of the poor seriously. I simply do not hear in progressive Christianity the same kind of powerful potential to mend the broken and lift the needy out of the ash heap that I heard from this articulate Pentecostal academic.

Progressive Christianity may be good at raising the questions but it can provide few answers. Of course not. It wants to "find more grace in the search for understanding than in dogmatic certainty-more value in questioning than in absolutes." But that's a luxury that only people whose lives are in pretty good shape already, can afford. Jesus said that he came to be a physician to the sick, to seek and to save the lost. Those who believe that they're already whole and just need a little bit of enrichment; or those who believe that they can find God, rather than being found by God, won't have much need for him. Ultimately, unless you believe that God really has come among us in Jesus with the power to save us from sin and death, why bother?

I know I have over-simplified a very diverse movement. I know also there are progressive Christians who have a passionate commitment to the Gospel as they understand it. One is Eric Elnes, a Congregational pastor from Arizona, and a friend of mine, who is walking across the United States to bring a justice-centred, progressive Christian voice to Washington D.C. (Visit www.crosswalkamerica.com.) I'm full of admiration for folks like Eric.

But I think the world needs something with a lot more depth and breadth and strength than what I find in progressive Christianity. The world needs the saving power of God in Jesus Christ.

Rev. Dr. Paul Miller is a United Church minister in St. Catharines, Ont., and editor of Theological Outlook and Digest.