Ministry leaders discuss the 'Christian Left': Is progressive Christianity biblical?
By: By Nicole Alcindor, CP Reporter
A very fair and well reasoned article about certain viewpoints and their impact on the whole. It is right on regarding the points made.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Ministry leaders discuss the 'Christian Left': Is progressive Christianity biblical?
Two Christian ministry leaders offered their thoughts on the "Christian Left movement" and if "progressive Christianity" is problematic for the Church in a recent episode of the "Challenging Conversations" podcast.
For Part 1 of the Edifi Network podcast series titled “ Is Progressive Christianity Biblical ?” Stand Strong Ministries founder Jason Jimenez interviewed Lucas Miles , author of The Christian Left: How Liberal Thought Has Hijacked the Church .
“Things are getting really ugly out there,” Jimenez said, “particularly when it comes to how you define Christian community, the people you can trust — not just look up to — but people you can trust with God’s Word, where their giftedness lies and that their interest, as the Bible says ... is to put ‘people’s interests above their own, and they’re not just narcissistic.”
To define “progressive Christianity,” Miles, a church planter who is the senior pastor of Nfluence Church in Granger, Indiana, said it’s important first to define orthodoxy, which means “right thinking” or “right belief.” He warned that “anything outside of that starts venturing into some sort of heresy.”
The two major heretical groups to affect the early Church were the Judaizers and the Gnostics, Miles said. He defined the former as an “upgraded” version of the Pharisees who adopted aspects of the story of Christ, along with a legalistic, performance-based view of salvation and faith.
Miles, a Christian speaker and founder of his own film company, identified Gnostics as progressives who invented new doctrines to justify different lifestyles and behaviors. The group, he said, would take portions of other religions and then bring them together to make their own set of beliefs.
“I always say that whenever you see heresy manifested in our modern world, it’s always going to come back to within that spectrum of the Judaizers and the Gnostics,” Miles explained.
“Progressive Christianity, or the ‘Christian Left,’ as I call it, is a growing constituency of left-leaning Christians, and at times, Christians by name only. ... At times, they are people on a spectrum caught in between.”
Miles, who has been involved in dozens of church planting efforts across the globe, argued that progressive Christians often become fixated on progressive ideology and philosophies, such as critical race theory and various forms of “wokism,” along with the rejection of original sin and a “downgraded” view of Scripture.
Miles stressed that many in the Church today believe that the Bible is “something less than the inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word of God.”
He contends that the trend is “spreading from Christian publishers, Christian recording artists that are going through what they call a ‘deconversion,’ a lot of Christian journalists, pastors that are ... supporting things such as critical race theory and critical theory and Marxism, and all the way to our Christian colleges.”
“This is not something we should take lightly,” the pastor added. “We need to be aware of what it is and some of the players that are leading this. We need to make sure that the Church that we’re in ... [is] really growing in an established Christian message. ... Christianity is not a new faith. It’s been around for 2,000 years. It’s well defined.”
Miles emphasized that some beliefs are imperative for anything to be truly defined as Christian. The Christian Left, he believes, is “tossing” some of these biblical truths aside.
He added that Paul’s epistles help identify those who are in error — and sometimes, it’s necessary to identify false teachers by name.
“We are to speak the truth in love; that’s what Ephesians 4:15 says,” Jimenez, who served as a pastor for about 15 years, agreed. “So when we have to name names sometimes, it’s, ‘What is your intent?’ And as Paul told Timothy, ‘Have a good conscience, a sincere faith and labor in how you’re presenting things.’ When we do that, it’s not to rip on someone.”
Pastors like Steven Furtick of Elevation Church, Jimenez said, hold some problematic beliefs that are necessary to call out and identify.
“When we do have disagreements biblically ... we want to do it respectfully,” he said.
According to Miles, there is a “spectrum” among progressive Christians. Some have entirely “flopped” or “folded” on issues, while others slowly begin to doubt certain parts of Scripture.
“Typically what we see ... is that oftentimes they lean toward a universalist mindset,” Miles asserted, adding that many professing Christians want to seem inclusive. Other times, he said, people want to deconstruct their faith without repairing it later.
“What we rarely see with those on the left is any sort of repair of theology. It’s typically just a dismantling and then they leave it in shambles, and they go on,” Miles said.
Miles further argued that the Christian Left also doesn’t talk about repentance of forgiveness of sins, reflecting the “early heresies” the Church dealt with.
“That allows a very ... ‘positive Christianity’ to develop that is free from these messier aspects of having to ask for forgiveness,” he said. “‘It’s a very distorted, confused doctrine that has little emphasis on the salvation process.”
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Progressive “Christianity” is not biblically true or accurate. Too much pick and choose cafeteria Christianity.
Are you familiar with the term, "self-righteous(ness)"? Please, elaborate on it or state that you do not understand it.
Of course I am familiar with it.
Elaborate on what it means to you, please.
You went there. I know you realize that Donald Trump stated/states he does not ask God for forgiveness. So I am curious why you think it is safe to criticize those brothers and sisters in the faith who do seek God's forgiven and rest in God's salvation plan for humanity while absolving Trump for a lack thereof.
This seed is not about Donald Trump. Please stay on topic which is how progressive left Christianity is not in-errantly Biblical.
Check your @1.2.4 again - fits this situation perfectly. Just imagine it - a Christian who will not humble him or herself to be told 'what the Lord loves.'
Found wanting in some. . . .
One of my own: A man or woman who turns off his or her conscience so as not to be hampered by 'deep things' of spiritual awareness.
Enough shallow discussion. Why do you some conservative Christians believe it is proper to usurp the role of God in the life of believers and unbelievers alike (through advocating for total government control and/or the use of guns)?
Conservative believers are not the ones who believe that we can substitute our opinion for Gods on any given issue and decide to override His will with our own. We are not the ones who think an powerful all knowing God is primitive and that us super modern 21st century pro science ignorants can substitute our vision of the way things ought to be for His.
That is the issue, conservative believers are substituting their values for God's. So tell the true and stop living in self-righteousness. God is coherent and consistent. That is, God has told us to give unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesars.
Reconcile this advice in your heart and life! Reconcile. Reconcile. Reconcile it.
(This is why it is good to listen to a variety of perspectives, so one can develop good discernment skills.)
Why do you discern that God (Spirit) is a "he"? Has it occurred to you that spirit has no set gender? I am fully aware that biblical writers gave God's "entrances" into the human order gender status, but genderization is carnal (fleshly). This is one 'complication' with conservatism: One sets a course of action and stridently holds on to it for dear life.
God inspired the writers of the Bible in what they wrote on the covered topics. We don’t need to use our vivid imaginations to replace our conception of Him that He gave us. Are you now going to deny that Jesus came to earth to die and save us from our sins as a man or that He is The Son of God?
So God(head) is flesh now? Is that your 'conclusion'? If so, tell me: Can God bleed-out? Jesus bled out once on a cross. You suppose Jesus can do so (bleed) yet again?
You see how absurd this way of depicting God can get? It is as ridiculous as people thinking and praying about "the baby Jesus."
Jesus is and always will be for the rest of time both God and man in the flesh and He will return in the 2nd coming that way. The Holy Spirit is obviously not flesh and blood. God the Father has only revealed Himself in person to Adam and Eve before they sinned. He was heavily shrouded when He appeared and wrote the 10 commandments upon the tables of stone with his finger.
Even then He greatly scared the general population. God can manifest Himself in any form He chooses. At the judgement after the 3rd coming every eye shall see him. Then we will all know regardless of which side of New Jerusalem’s mighty walls we are standing on at the time.
Why would God be carnal --natured in Heaven (a timeless realm)? You imagine flesh (time-limited) is able to dwell in Heaven? Why?
Every eye will see (something); it is a mystery as to what it is that shall be recognized. That is, how we shall see, keep this in mind: Flesh is not eternal - for it can not be - it is temporal. Haven't you heard?
Us flesh creatures with our new bodies like Adam and Eve before the fall will be in Heaven after the 2nd coming. Enoch, Elijah, and Moses are there now. I was referring to God the son, who took human form to save us and still has it, not God the Father.
Why would the God-head (Trinity) be flesh? Flesh is temporal (of this world) not spirit. That is, Jesus too, is Spirit of necessity. Why? Because flesh is corruptible. Nothing corruptible, perishable, exist in the heavenly realm.
Therefore, thinking deeply, whatever spirit is it not flesh. And whatever Jesus is it is not flesh.
See Paul's writings:
This (along with several other verses) expresses that we do not know what the "tone and texture" of a spiritual being is (having no interaction or experiences with such). So we should leave speculation about such bodies out of sermons, speeches, and discourse. Simply, say there are spiritual beings: composition unknown precisely.
Pastors and teachers saying too much about matters that they should not delve into happens because, again, as Paul calls it, "the foolishness of preaching" continues as we await the presence and essence of God to materialize. People, leaders, can not help themselves or not fully stop themselves from speaking and writing into the void left behind by Jesus' absence and advent of the end delaying for thousands of years.
What say you?
God has told us some about Himself and His nature. Only God the Son has assumed a flesh body. A perfect body because He’s God and because He never sinned so its a perfect before the fall human body. God the Holy Spirit is described as a spirit being. God the Father is beyond all human description as only Adam and Eve ever saw Him in all His glory.
God is Spirit? Yes or No? Flesh can not inherit the kingdom of God? Therefore, this "perfected body," Jefferson is better considered a glorified spiritual body for which we can not sufficiently imagine its composition. What say you?
God is Spirit. Spirit essence is not gender-specific.
BTW, discussing Godly 'matters' is made weird looking at your "presence."