Stages of Progressive Christianity

what does it mean for someone to be a progressive Christian sometimes it just means they're a normal Christian who gets a bit woke sometimes and other times it means that they deny that Jesus is God and don't believe in anything Supernatural at all and Christianity is just a metaphor for social justice [Music] hey guys welcome back to Kingdom craft where I build this big church in Minecraft while I talk about Christianity in my last episode I defined well not really defined I just sort of rambled about what theological what theological liberalism is and today I'm

going to be talking about how it's a spectrum and some churches are definitely more theologically liberal or Progressive than others so as I always say um theological liberalism is not the same as political liberalism although there's overlap and a form of theological liberalism called Progressive Christianity is what you'll find in a lot of Mainline Protestant churches today I am part of a Mainline Protestant church that's a bit theologically liberal but not nearly as bad as some of the other ones so I what I've done is I have just kind of divided uh divided it into

like five stages so to speak of progressive Christianity and some stages are like you know they're a bit liberal but they're still Christian and some is like yeah they're not Christian at all they're just um secular progress progressives um calling themselves a Christian church so um a brief overview I basically defined it in the last video but theological liberalism means you don't really care about the essential beliefs of Christianity and Progressive Christianity means Christianity needs to change and progress um Elisa Childers is a YouTuber who has a lot of resources on Progressive Christianity the only

thing is she mostly talks about Progressive Christianity within the context of Evangelical Christianity but I come from a more Mainline Christian background and I I have I do know about what goes on in Evangelical churches but I'm only second hand for I know what goes on in Mainline churches firsthand because that's um what I've generally been more involved with I'm like probably the most conservative Mainline Protestant that exists in the world and it's not to say that Mainline Protestants are conservative they're not it's just you know I'm as as far as all Christians go I'm

kind of moderate slightly conservative but as far as Mainline Protestants go I'm like the most conservative one um I'm certainly the most conservative one theologically in my specific church congregation I know that for a fact so let's go over the five stages so stage one is what I would call Christian guilt if you if you think Christianity needs to change or progress um it's gonna start with feeling like there's something wrong with Christianity so stage one out of five of progressive Christianity is where you believe all the Christian things you don't deny any of them

but you feel like Christianity as a whole has sinned not just individual Christians have sinned I don't know a single person who would deny that I don't know a single person who deny that there's instances of the church doing bad things but if you say Christianity as a whole has sinned has been bad and needs to change that is Christian guilt um another another thing that I think you could identify with this sort of Christian guilt mentality is um if you here's a Here's a thought experiment if you are not a Christian if you don't

do not identify as a Christian and Christianity does not give you hearing the word Christianity does not give you positive feelings then you're just a normal person who's not a Christian you're just a normal non-Christian if you are a Christian if you identify as Christian and the word Christian gives you positive feelings then congrats you're a normal Christian now if you call yourself a Christian but the word Christian gives you negative feelings if you have negative thoughts associated with the word Christian you may be a progressive Christian um because the first the very first stage

in Progressive Christianity is feeling like there has been something wrong with Christianity historically and Christianity as a whole might need to change it could be as simple as the church has been racist right um and if you look at you know specific cases absolutely the church has done racist things and perpetuated racism but if you look at the whole picture the Christian religion has been more racially inclusive and done more to end uh racial oppression like segregation slavery than any other religion by far it's not even close or if you think Christianity oppresses women are

there some you know fundamental Circles of Christianity where women are oppressed absolutely but historically speaking even in the Middle Ages we're talking Christianity was a woman's religion in fact women are we're in large part responsible for the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire because um even though Christianity wasn't some like you know radical feminist thing it was um it was a way for women to legitimately you know uh not be controlled by men be like sort of autonomous beings uh and Christianity has always promoted the unity of the family but Christianity has also always

promoted the humanity of women and of most other ancient religions and ideologies did not um like in medieval times uh you know queens and empresses could have like a lot of political power of course their political power is still connected to men um but you know think of like you know Queen Elizabeth the first Catherine the Great um a lot of women having a lot of influence on society in the Arts there was Hildegard Von bingen who was probably the I'm a you know scholar a music student she's probably the most influential Medieval music composer

uh compare that to like Chinese or Islamic Society where women were just like hid away from society because uh they and you know think about like the foot binding practices in ancient China and stuff so Christianity as a whole has been has not practiced Injustice any more than anyone else has and has in fact done much more to correct Injustice than to propagate it but you know people who are have this Christian guilt will either not know about that or um just kind of ignore that so stage two is what I would call a disordered

Focus so this means they don't necessarily deny the essentials of the Christian faith but that's not what they talk about enough um you'll see this a lot in some sort of more woke evangelicals and honestly I would say this sometimes applies to my pastor now I've learned a lot from my pastor he's a brilliant man uh he has he says a lot of things I think uh both Mainline Christians and Evangelical Christians need to hear because he has criticized both that many times but um sometimes he does focus on the wrong stuff so um Christians

who have a disordered Focus are likely to sound very woke in a lot of what they say they're likely to um they're they're likely to focus much more on love and Justice than on sin and salvation they're likely to not focus on theological accuracy but focus on the church you know being loving enough and engaging the world in the right way so yeah that's what I would call stage two progressivism um stage two Progressive Christianity uh yeah that it's like it's like a disordered Focus where yeah like it's pretty self-explanatory the focus is disorder if

focus is not necessarily where it should be um the focus of course all these a lot of things they talk about are things we should be talking about but you know how much do we talk about you know the things you talk about show you know what is important and I know different things are important at different time periods but there are a lot of churches that you know only really talk about issues of love and Justice and inclusivity and that's not the most important thing about the Christian faith like I don't know like I

think a lot of progressive Christians need to hear that God loves you is not the gospel um unless it's like the the gospel is that we are forgiven of our sins but you can't really have the gospel without the law and I'm gonna die here aren't I uh yeah actually wait wait wait yeah crap now I gotta get back so yeah um that's basically stage two there's a disordered Focus you get the idea they believe the right things but they're not focusing on them now stage three is where they start to really deny the essentials

of the Christian faith that's why I call stage three scripture denial they deny that the scriptures have authority and at this stage they're not actually heretical yet they still would affirm things like the Trinity or the resurrection but they would deny things that the scriptures blatantly and explicitly say like the people at stage three are basically always you know gay affirming lgbtqia p k w x y z Theta affirming um so yeah that and if you bring up that the fact that the scriptures obviously condemned that stuff sometimes they'll say they'll give some you know

weird silly argument like oh the homosexuality the scriptures we're talking about was a different kind of homosexuality than the it's like well yo um the only time scripture talks about same-sex relations it's in a negative light scripture has a clear model that you know marriage is a man and woman Jesus said to himself deal with it now I'm not coming as from a perspective of someone who was brought up in some sheltered Evangelical bubble I was raised in a very Progressive culture but I was raised basic I was basically was raised to support gay marriage

um that was what I was always taught to support as a kid and for the longest time I I did I just eventually learned that you know if I'm going to be a Christian I can't I can't support that stuff um anyway but people in stage three progressivism will support that stuff because even though the scripture teaches against it they will just not care because um they do not hold uh the Bible to be an authoritative Revelation from God they'll say maybe it contains things that are authoritative but the Bible as a whole is not

authoritative so um in uh in any given Mainline uh denomination you'll find I think all five stages of progressivism about evenly dispersed and something like 70 of my denomination the pcosa voted to allow like um gay clergy uh gay ordination so that means um about 70 of my denomination is about at least stage three Progressive so there's like a thirty percent of stage one and two there might be a really small minority of churches that are not Progressive at all but most of those churches have long since left the PC USA now um I don't

think they should have left because if the reason it got so liberal is because the conservatives left I talk about that a lot most people disagree with me I don't care I think I'm right deal with it so so yeah stage three progressivism is basically an explicit denial of the Authority or maybe it's maybe it's not explicit and sometimes it's more implicit but either way it's the denial of the authority uh and reliability of the scriptures and that's a big problem so like a Roman Catholic church or an Evangelical Church would never be stage three

it's only really the mainline Protestant churches that are stage three and above in terms of progressivism um and uh one of the also another thing in stage three is they're almost usually they're almost always universalists um the lady who was leader of Christian education at my church and still is is a Universalist and while she is a true Christian herself uh you can be stage three is the highest stage you can be in and still be a true Christian like I by true Christian I mean you're not damned for being a stage three I don't

mean that what you preach is like consistent with historic Christianity um but she is a true Christian she is a very kind loving person but because she was Universalist she didn't really care about making sure the Sunday school kids were taught well and they weren't taught well like I know a bunch of kids in my church who went through all the Sunday school program and they were really never taught the essentials of Christianity they weren't taught against it either but they ended up not uh having the essentials of Christianity talk to them and ended up

you know smoking weed when they got to high school so um of course you know the fact that they don't believe Christianity is more serious than the fact that they're smoking weed I'm not some old Baptist lady but uh I think the fact that they smoke weed shows that Christianity never really took root in their hearts because it was never really taught to them um yeah so stage three you can still be saved if you are a stage three Progressive but your theology will be horrible for your impact on the kingdom of God now stage

four that's where it gets into explicit heresy if you're a stage four Progressive uh you're not a Christian and uh I have unfortunately met a lot of pastors still who are in stage four and my church when my church was transitioning between pastors for two years we had a temporary interim pastor she was only meant to be temporary but she yes she um was stage four Progressive so she said explicitly it doesn't matter whether the resurrection happened historically um she said obviously the Bible's not the word of God that's um a stage three sort of

thing yeah but obviously it applies to things that are higher than stage three um I don't know if she would deny the Trinity but denying it the Trinity is part of is part of stage four uh or saying that Jesus is not God things like that denying the Divinity of Christ knowing that Jesus is truly God and I don't know if if she denied that I I think she she at least used trinitarian terms I don't know if she means the same thing that um Orthodox lowercase o Orthodox christians mean by that but um I

there have been quite a few Pastors in the PC USA that deny the Divinity of Christ and you know got away with it they weren't kicked out um the EPC split from what the northern thing that would become the PC USA after um One Pastor was kicked out for not ordaining women but another Pastor was not kicked out after denying the Divinity of Christ he said something like well Jesus Jesus was one with God but I too am one with God something like stupid like that so yeah If you deny the Divinity of Christ you're

not a Christian If you deny the Trinity you're not a Christian If you deny the resurrection like struggling with faith is different than denial so some people are like sometimes I have my doubts that's not the same as denial so don't worry about that okay finally got that in this stuff don't worry about that I am not talking about you I'm talking about those who explicitly deny the resurrection and think they're smarter than all those primitive uneducated Christians who believe in the resurrection that that's what I'm talking about um so yeah they are not Christians

so how could you get any worse than that how could you possibly get worse if how is this still just stage four well people who are in stage four will deny the resurrection maybe deny the Trinity maybe but they'll still at least act like there's some spiritual reality out there like there's some maybe mystical Supernatural spirit that we can connect with they're they're not atheists um they're not hard like materialists but um and that's why I say my interim Ambassador was a stage four because she really did believe there was something spiritual of course what

she believed wasn't Christian spirituality it was just sort of a a vague um ecumenical spirituality and of course she was super woke with social justice and all that but stage five is what I would call Essential agnosticism where you really do not affirm anything mystical or Supernatural or spiritual at all other than to say that it's a metaphor for something purely you know physical or materialistic um and unfortunately especially in like Unitarian Universalist churches or UCC churches or the United Church of Canada there are churches like this there are pastors like this um where not

only can you deny the essentials of Christianity but you can literally be an atheist and still be a pastor so uh they say you know they don't believe God actually exists they just think you know how can the idea of God Inspire us to do social justice and how can we look at um religions throughout history and how sometimes they inspired people to work for the good like um and this is something that applies to all forms of progressive Christians a lot of times they're theologically liberal which is rooted in post-modernism these days which says

that truth is subjective and they would say that applies to religious truths so they may say things that sound like they believe in God when they actually don't so they'll talk about God as if God is a real thing so you'll be like okay cool they believe in God but they believe oh God exists like subjectively like in our minds not in reality not as the actual real objective source of all existence the way historic Christianity has said so yeah they're like like I said there's a big difference between um historic Christianity and how a

lot of progressive Christians talk so whenever I tell people about Progressive Christianity people who are not super familiar with it people who might have uh grown up in either an evangelical church or it's not just that it's even like atheists I talk to are really confused about this like the thing I've been able to agree with most atheists on is that you know church for atheists is kind of stupid it's like there's no point to it but um I do know the reason why they why pastors like this continue to be pastors and it's not

a good one so there's a different I'd say there's a difference in the reasons pastors State pastors and the reason that you know the individual laypeople the congregants stay there the congregants usually stay there in Progressive churches most of the time because they grew up in something more conservative whether it's Catholic or Evangelical or just a more conservative form of protestant and they wanted to leave that but still wanted to feel like they're kind of in a church in Christianity somewhat so that's like no one converts to Progressive Christianity from either atheism or from a

different religion they always either were raised that way and stay that way but even more frequently they were raised in a more conservative form of Christianity and just want to get away from that but are basically too wimpy to go full atheist that's the reality now why do Pastors why would a pastor dedicate their entire life go to Seminary get a bunch of degrees and Mainline churches do to demand a lot of degrees from their pastors which is a good thing in theory but the problem is the seminaries what happened what happened was the sort

of established Church institutions in protestantism the seminaries Got Hijacked by secular people um it's something that happens not just in the seminaries but in really all academic institutions they were hijacked by cultural marxists and uh Marxism and secularism is like a virus it hijacks things that it didn't create in order to produce replicas of itself so leftists hijacked higher education institutions and they reprogrammed those institutions to just churn out more leftists that's exactly how viruses work they'll hijack your cells and reprogram your cells to produce more viruses um so leftism can rightly be called a

virus and the same thing happened with secularism the reason that they are in the church is so they can hijack it from within and they've been extremely successful and the conservatives the ones who have been opposed to them have not reacted well for the reason Evangelical churches exist is because the conservatives reacted just by running away they didn't want to confront the problem they were just like and there's starting to invade our churches we're not going to fight for them we're not going to take them back we're just we're just going to run away um

and that's why evangelicalism has a lot of the problems that it does because it's not really as historically rooted as more traditional protestantism or as Mainline protestantism so yeah those are the five stages of progressivism and uh yes so not every church that's Progressive will be as Progressive but I hope you get a general idea so thanks for watching and I'll see you later bye