Progressing Beyond Progressive Christianity

Searching for a missing story

Photo by Tim Swaan on Unsplash

(A five-minute read.)

A few years ago, a friend referred to me as a “progressive Christian.”

It gave me pause—not because it was the first time someone described me as such, but because I think it was the first time I heard someone who considered themselves “progressive” referring to me in that way.

If a progressive Christian refers to me as progressive, then I must be . . . progressive?

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for any length of time, you perhaps know I’ve addressed this before.

To sum that up: I don’t consider myself to be either “progressive” or “conservative.” And I don’t say that just to be “cute” or difficult.

As I shared in that previous piece, what I’ve discovered is that—among other things—“conservative Christianity” leaves me feeling beat-down, while “progressive Christianity” leaves me feeling empty.

I want to develop this latter idea a little more in my reflections today.

To be sure, there’s a lot about progressive Christianity that I resonate with. I very much appreciate the emphasis on social engagement, on inclusion, on justice and compassion, on caring for the poor and marginalized, and on what I might call the “prophetic critique” of power.

And if I absolutely had to choose a “side” in this particular cultural moment, especially in light of what’s going on in America right now, I’d probably gravitate toward those who label themselves “progressive Christians.”

Of course, I don’t think I have to choose a side.

And to be clear: this isn’t to say that I agree with every value or belief that progressive Christianity—to whatever degree we can talk about “progressive Christianity” as a monolith—pushes.

But, by and large, there is wide resonance.

However, one of the main—though certainly not only—reasons I resist casting my lot completely with progressive Christianity is not so much because of what it affirms (though, again, I certainly don’t “affirm” everything that progressive Christianity affirms) but because of what it either denies or ignores.

Let me explain it simply this way: one of the main reasons I’m not “all in” with progressive Christianity is because I find its story to be too small.

What do I mean by that?

I suppose it’s one way of saying that I find progressive Christianity to be theologically thin.

Simply put, I find that I still long for the bigger story—about a God who has actual personhood, who is seeking to restore the universe back to love, who sent his Son, Jesus, to die for us so that we could experience reconciliation and eternal bliss, and who will really return one day to bring full renewal to all of creation and bring all of history—which is to say, his story—to a glorious climax, achieving full and final justice and setting everything aright.

And I also find that it’s only when I place all the goods that progressive Christianity is after within the context of this bigger story that those goods have ultimate meaning, purpose, resonance, and urgency.

Without that bigger story, those goods lack serious context—and, to some degree, motivational power and force.

As Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously wrote in his book, After Virtue, “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story . . . do I find myself a part?’”

That’s because as “story-telling animal[s],” MacIntyre explains, humans need to understand how we fit into a larger narrative. Otherwise, we can’t really make sense of what we believe is being asked of us.

Thus, again, the goods that progressive Christianity is after only fully make sense within the context of a larger narrative. And to whatever degree I lose sight of that narrative—to whatever degree I lose the plot—I will have a hard time ultimately procuring the goods I’m after.

A lesson from the life of Jesus

I was reminded of this again yesterday morning in my reading of Luke’s Gospel. Towards the beginning of the book, when Luke is recounting the early years of Jesus, he takes the time to recount a strange episode of when Jesus’s parents lose him on a trip to Jerusalem when Jesus is twelve. After a frantic search, which, according to Luke, lasted three days, Mary and Joseph retrace their steps and find him in the temple in Jerusalem, engaging in conversation with the religious scholars. When his parents question him, Jesus asks an interesting question of them.

“Why did you seek Me?” he wonders, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49).

What I find so intriguing about his response is what he calls his “Father’s business.” In this instance, his “Father’s business” is not healing the sick, confronting oppressors, or announcing inclusion—though those were certainly important and integral parts of his Father’s business, as the rest of the Gospel accounts attest to.

His “Father’s business,” at least in this instance, was participating in theological discourse and religious discussion. It was engaging the leading theological thinkers of his day in healthy dialogue.

Granted, we don’t know what exactly they were talking about. The text doesn’t say.

But based on what we know the rabbis generally talked about, and based on what Jesus himself often talked about in his ministry, I think it’s safe to say that he was engaging them in a discussion of how to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures and perhaps hinting at how his own life and ministry did or would fit within the narrative of those Scriptures (which is what we see him doing at the end of Luke).

In other words, Jesus—the very Jesus that progressive Christians seek to model their lives after—was seemingly discussing and “doing” theology. He was making ontological claims. He was likely even making eschatological claims (that is, claims about how God’s grand story will come to a climax and resolution).

On the other hand, too often, the “story” of progressive Christianity collapses into a single maxim: love one another. That is very good and important and critical as far as it goes of course.

But the Jesus who most embodied and promoted that message of love also made bigger and bolder and more transcendent claims. He had a larger story to tell.

In fact, he even died for telling that story.

I know, of course, that debates and arguments about the proper way to tell this story have led to some terrible and tragic outcomes. The history of Christianity is soaked with the blood of people who went to war over the “right” way to tell that story (or, perhaps a better way to describe it is that many Christians lost sight of the idea that it was, in fact, a “story,” and instead turned Christianity into a list of abstract doctrines that had to be analyzed, dissected, and violently fought over).

And this is one of the reasons why some have determined to opt out of such debates, choosing instead to reduce Christianity simply to its ethic of inclusive and compassionate love.

I get all that and greatly sympathize.

But I think there is a way to have the best of both worlds—realizing that, again, Jesus presented his ethic of love within a larger story that provides critically important context, power, and motivational force.

So, yes, I appreciate many of the goods of progressive Christianity.

But I find myself wanting to progress beyond progressive Christianity, pursuing even greater progress than what progressive Christianity seems able or willing to imagine.

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Shawn is a pastor and church planter in Portland, Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational and embodied expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.