Is Progressive Christianity Hurting Christianity

Progressive Christianity is often portrayed as a threat to the foundation of the faith. That is the storyline many conservative evangelicals repeat. But when we slow down and ask what is really going on, the picture becomes more nuanced than the memes and hot takes suggest. My hope here is not to score points for one team. My hope is to invite honest wrestling with Scripture, history, and spiritual formation so that we learn to treat one another with greater kindness and courage even when we disagree.

If you are new to this conversation, there are two broad streams Christians often talk about. One is the conservative evangelical stream that emphasizes continuity with tradition and a strong commitment to certain doctrinal guardrails. The other is the progressive stream that tends to ask fresh questions about how the way of Jesus meets the realities of the modern world. Politics has flooded this language with unhelpful baggage. We import right and left, red and blue, into church life, and we act as if those labels define discipleship. That has done real damage. I grew up within conservative evangelical and Pentecostal spaces. I know the instincts, the language, and the strengths of that world. As I have grown in faith, I have also learned a more beautiful way to talk about Jesus and the Scriptures than the framework I was handed as a young believer. I have watched both sides accuse the other of ruining Christianity. I have also watched plenty of us repeat talking points we have never actually studied. The result is a lot of heat and not much light.

Let me be clear about who I am talking about. I am not addressing people with no interest in Jesus or spiritual formation. I am speaking to people who actually want to follow Jesus and who care about living a life that looks like him. For us, the goal is not to win arguments but to become the kind of people whose speech and actions look like the kingdom. We have to do better at that. We need a kinder and more thoughtful conversation. That includes the hottest topics where tempers flare most easily. Sexual ethics. Gender. The beginning and end of life. These are not trivial. These are weighty. But hurling insults and declaring one another outside the family of God is a failure of discipleship. I know many conservatives who say progressive Christians are not Christians at all. I know very few progressives who say the same about conservatives. Wherever you sit, there are things you can learn from your brothers and sisters on the other side.

Let us talk about one of the biggest pressure points. The authority of Scripture. When we say Scripture we mean the Old and New Testaments, the writings of Israel and the early church. Many conservatives confess the Bible as the Word of God and go on to say it is without error. The logic often runs like this. If God is perfect and the Bible is God’s Word then the original writings must be perfect. The more closely you read the Bible, the more you discover that the story of how God gave us these writings is more complex than that neat equation. Progressive Christians tend to say the Bible is inspired but not without human limitation. God breathed through real people in real places with real emotions and cultures and choices. That does not make the Scriptures less sacred. It means God chose to work through human partners.

Consider a case study that shows how complicated this gets and why the conversation matters. In Acts 15 the early church faced a crisis. Non Jewish people were coming to trust Jesus as Israel’s Messiah. A huge question surfaced. Did Gentile believers need to become fully Jewish in practice. Circumcision. Dietary laws. Purity codes. The leaders met in Jerusalem and after prayerful debate they sent a letter to the churches. Among other things they instructed Gentile believers to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality. The instruction about idol food makes perfect sense in that world. Religious, social, and civic life were woven together. To join your guild for a feast was to attend a sacrifice. Life and worship were not separated. Abstaining would have been both spiritually significant and socially costly.

Now hold that decision in one hand and read 1 Corinthians 8 with the other. Paul addresses a Roman city full of new believers trying to follow Jesus in a deeply pagan culture. He talks directly about food sacrificed to idols. He affirms that idols are nothing and that there is one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ. He acknowledges that not everyone is settled about this. Some believers with tender consciences stumble. Paul’s point is pastoral. Do not use your freedom in a way that wounds a brother or sister. If eating this food will cause them to fall, then I will not eat it. Notice what he does not do. He does not simply restate the council’s rule. He does not say the practice is always and everywhere forbidden. He treats the issue with wise discernment that honors love and maturity in a specific community.

What changed between Acts 15 and 1 Corinthians 8. The mission was moving. The family of God was widening. The leaders were navigating new situations. Paul expands on the earlier decision and applies the heart of it with pastoral wisdom. If your view requires a single flat rule that never bends to context, these passages will feel like a problem. If your view allows for inspired human authors who are listening to the Spirit and applying the way of Jesus in real places, then you see the Scriptures offering us wisdom for discernment. That is not an excuse for anything goes. It is a call to become people who can read the times and love our neighbors well.

There are many other signs of human presence in the text. Paul gets heated in Galatians and says things he would not say in a church creed. That is not a denial of inspiration. It is inspiration through a human life. The Bible is wisdom literature. It is not a technical manual. It contains commands and boundaries, yes. But its deepest gift is wisdom that forms us into people who can walk with God in changing circumstances. Wisdom is timeless because God is timeless. That is why the Scriptures can be deeply authoritative without needing us to pretend that context and growth do not exist.

A second fault line is how we handle doctrine over time. Progressive Christians are comfortable saying that creeds and doctrines are precious and they are also living. They are not museum pieces. They are convictions hammered out in particular moments that often need to be revisited as the church encounters new realities. Conservatives often worry that this sounds like compromise. People say Christians have always believed X when a closer look at history shows a far more contested story. The early councils were not exercises in unanimous agreement followed by instant compliance. The Nicene Creed was affirmed and then fought over for decades. The Reformation is another obvious example of doctrinal reevaluation. The church has always argued, repented, and learned.

Take the history of Christians and slavery. For a long time many believers defended slaveholding with Bible verses. Others argued for the equal worth and freedom of every image bearer. In their moment the abolitionists were called progressive and dangerous. Today most Christians would be appalled to hear that defense of slavery. That is doctrinal and ethical development. Or consider the shift after Constantine. When the empire turned favorable to the church, Christians had to think about war and power in a new way. Augustine’s work on just war did not appear out of thin air. Culture changed and the church asked what faithfulness looked like in a new setting. The church has always lived in culture and has always been influenced by culture. The question is not whether culture shapes us. The question is how we discern what God is doing amid cultural change.

This is why progressive Christianity feels threatening to many conservatives. If one cherished interpretation moves, they fear the whole house will collapse. That fear is real. It is also an invitation to rebuild on rock rather than sand. Jesus is the authority. All authority in heaven and on earth is his. The Scriptures are authoritative because they point us to him and train us in his way. The goal is not certainty for its own sake. The goal is fidelity to Jesus that produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

So is progressive Christianity hurting Christianity. It can, just as conservative Christianity can. Any stream can harm the church when it turns into self righteousness and refuses correction. But progressive Christianity can also help the church. It pushes us to wrestle with the text we actually have rather than the one we wish we had. It helps us ask what faithfulness looks like right now with real neighbors in a real world. It provokes needed questions and it reminds us that following Jesus has never been about protecting a mythic past. It has always been about joining the Spirit in the present and moving with hope into the future.

My challenge to my conservative friends is to stop treating progressive Christians as enemies. My challenge to my progressive friends is to resist the urge to caricature conservatives as fearful or ignorant. We need one another. We need patient conversation and courageous honesty. We need the humility to say I might be wrong and the grace to say you still belong. If we love Jesus we must keep learning how to love each other. That is how the world will know we are his.