Progressive Christianity is neither Progressive nor Christian. It’s more like Conservative Hereticism.

Readership: Red Pilled Christians;

Introduction

In early September, I was honored to find that Dark Brightness dedicated a post, The state of things (Thanks Jack) (2020 September 5), to review what I had written about what has been happening in the Manosphere, as reported in the post, Moon Day Review – The Manosphere Reshuffles its Deck (2020 September 2).

In this post, DB reiterated a few statements I’ve made in previous posts about the Red Pill schism that has occurred this year, resulting in a philosophical divergence between secular RP and Christian RP.

“In many of my past posts, I (as well as Deep Strength) have alluded to these differences between the secular Red Pill, and the Christianized Red Pill…

The separation and distinction of the Christian Covenant structure from the Red Pill praxeology is an important and pivotal development.  The Red Pill is largely an amoral description of human psychology and behavior, whereas the Christian Covenant recognizes human psychology and behavior, but adds to this awareness an aspiration to a God-ordained ideal.

I propose that the Christian exegesis of Red Pill precepts should be called something else, just to be more specific and to avoid confusion in future discussions.”

This post will address one such precept – what is meant by “progressive”?

The Confusion surrounding the word “Progressive”

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives.  The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.  The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.”

G. K. Chesterton
img-1783685927-6a50e327b2c3c2.18792077.jpgDescent of the Modernists, by E. J. Pace (1922)

In the same post linked above, DB highlighted a page on Σ Frame, Red Pill Clique Bate, in which I described Dark Brightness and other blogs like Adam Piggott (Pushing Rubber Downhill), Cane Caldo (Things That We Have Heard and Known), Dalrock, Larry Kummer (Fabius Maximus), and Vox Popoli as being “Progressive Protestant”. Here, I defined “progressive” as “favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are – not to be confused with the “Left” or “Liberal”.” On this, DB wrote,

“Jack [assessed my blog] correctly, when he noted that I am aiming for reform of the church and ourselves.  We should always promote such.  Despair leads to sloth, an abandonment of effort.”

Dark Brightness added a personal message to me in a footnote.

“Jack, progressive == socialist == satanic.  You need to change your vocabulary.”

I agree with DB that the word progressive has been adulterated by Leftism.  Progressive Christianity has a connotation of including theological convergence, Critical Race Theory, Feminism, and Intersectional fluff, among other things.

To make this distinction clear to the reader, I’ll offer a few cases of contusion.

  • The website Patheos describes itself as Progressive Christian.  Enuff sed.
  • The website Progressive Christianity lists 8 Points of Progressive Christianity.  Point 3 says, “Seek and create community that is inclusive of ALL people, including but not limited to: …agnostics, Those of all sexual orientations and all gender identities… Those historically marginalized...”
  • The page on Progressive Christianity at Wikipedia states,

“Progressive Christianity represents a post-modern theological approach, and is not necessarily synonymous with progressive politics.  It developed out of the Liberal Christianity of the modern era, which was rooted in enlightenment thinking.  As such, Progressive Christianity is a “post-liberal movement” within Christianity “that seeks to reform the faith via the insights of post-modernism and a reclaiming of the truth beyond the verifiable historicity and factuality of the passages in the Bible by affirming the truths within the stories that may not have actually happened”.”

img-1783685929-6a50e3290e09a9.05284934.jpgNot much has changed since 1922. Is this truly Progressivism? It seems more like Conservative Modernism.

“Progressive Christianity is characterized by a willingness to question tradition, acceptance of human diversity, a strong emphasis on social justice and care for the poor and the oppressed, and environmental stewardship of the earth.  Progressive Christians have a deep belief in the centrality of the instruction to “love one another” (John 15:17) within the teachings of Jesus Christ.  This leads to a focus on promoting values such as compassion, justice, mercy, and tolerance, often through political activism.  Though prominent, the movement is by no means the only significant movement of progressive thought among Christians.

Progressive Christianity draws on the insights of multiple theological streams including evangelicalism, liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, pragmatism, postmodernism, Progressive Reconstructionism, and liberation theology.  The concerns of feminism are also a major influence on the movement, as expressed in feminist and womanist theologies.”

According to this description, Progressive Christianity is little more than cherry picking certain Christian teachings and coopting them to support the purposes of the wider post-modern Intersectional Feminist movement.  If we leave out the word Christian and the references to Christianity, and add in some socio-political-economic rhetoric from Kant and J. S. Mill, then this wouldn’t read much differently from a description of Progressivism!  (Click on the link if you don’t believe me.)

Obviously, the word progressive cannot be used to refer to a return to Covenant theology, Biblical Law, and the Natural Order described by the Christian Red Pill.  This word needs to be revised or replaced in order to avoid unnecessary confusion (and offence).

Exit Questions:

  1. What are your thoughts about Christian progressivism?
  2. What is a better word that we can use to describe “favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are”?

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