Evangelical vs Progressive Christianity

What do they actually believe?

Part seven: Purpose of Spiritual Community

This is the 7th in a series of blogs where we are comparing the mission statements of an evangelical congregation with that of a progressive congregation. By scrolling down you can find the previous six blogs.

1. Foundation of Faith
2. The Trinity
3. God’s Relationship with Humanity
4. Nature of Salvation
5. Humanity’s Relationship With God
6. Spiritual Practices

They are located below in reverse order (newest to oldest). Feel free to read them in any order you choose, but they might make more sense if you read them in order. For what it’s worth.

Also, I need to interject here that I do not believe in the theology of either congregation (including, in this blog, the story of the Flood). But I do have an opinion about which dogma or which view of God is healthier for humanity. Once again, what matters here is how each congregation views the…

Purpose of Their Spiritual Community 

Evangelical: Therefore, we want to be a colony of hope reminding the world all of life is sacred and all of our fears, failures, and brokenness can be restored and made whole. Our church does not exist for ourselves, but to join God in his redemptive work… and we see ourselves as agents of God’s Kingdom for the betterment of his world. The church is at its best when it serves, sacrifices, and loves, caring about the things God cares about.

Progressive: As a faith community, our call is to accept that we are already accepted by God, and to live a life imitating God’s love.

So much of the evangelical statement needs to be questioned. So, let’s break it down sentence by sentence.

Therefore, we want to be a colony of hope reminding the world all of life is sacred and all our fears, failures, and brokenness can be restored and made whole.

For what it’s worth

I was intrigued by the expression “all of life is sacred,” because it’s not really an evangelical belief unless, of course, it’s an unborn life. When I googled “all of life is sacred,” one of the results that came up is from a website called Bible Gateway. It is a bible study site that seeks to help people understand what they are reading. The passage that included the phrase “all of life is sacred” ironically comes from the story of Noah and the flood. Imagine the irony of that! You know the story, but let’s focus on this section about God’s directive to Noah’s family after the flood.

Genesis 9:  More than that, do not spill the blood of any human. If anyone spills your blood, I will hold him responsible. It makes no difference whether it is a man or an animal, both will be accountable to Me! If someone murders a fellow human being, then I will require his life in return.  Whoever sheds the blood of a human, that person’s blood will be shed in return by another for God made humanity in His own image. Now all of you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out and populate the earth.

First off, it was the last verse that struck me as rather humorous. Let’s read between the lines. “Now all six of you, be fruitful and multiply. Oops, I just realized that you’re all members of the same family. Guess I should have included another family. You’ll just have to practice some incest to repopulate the earth and make sure you spread out; we wouldn’t want you to feel crowded.”

It is here that the biblical experts from Bible Gateway inserted their own ideas about what is being said in Genesis 9. This is what they added about the above passage.

“All life is sacred. Human life is especially so. Protecting it is of utmost importance to God. He takes this so seriously and personally because He made humanity to reflect Him. We are His earthly representatives, made in His image. To murder another person is to mount an attack on the One who created him.” Bible Gateway

Here are two points that I find oddly interesting.

First, it seems contradictory to find this sentiment regarding the “sanctity of human life” immediately following the “story” of God destroying nearly the entire human race. It’s as if the Bible Gateway editors are saying, “Never mind what you just read in Genesis 9, even though God just killed millions of men, women and children, protecting human life is “of utmost importance to Him.” However, protecting human life is not something we see a lot throughout the Old Testament. Apparently human life isn’t that much a priority for God.

Second, the Old Testament contains many stories of God directing the Israelites to kill every man, woman, and child in the conquest of the “Promised Land”.  Apparently, non-Jews were not made in God’s image and it was okay to kill them. Numbers 31: 17&18.

Genocide and a Moral God?

Many people, (myself included) point to verses like this throughout the Old Testament as an indication that the god of the Isrealites was a barbaric monster. Many of us (rightly so) view genocide as morally objectable. However, when I googled “Numbers 31” I found a plethora of christian websites  justifying genocide. All of them are quite shocking in their defense of this particular case of genocide, but this one is my favorite. It comes from a website called 2BeLikeChrist. If you’re not an evangelical, prepare yourself to be shocked.

The Events

• As a punishment for intentionally leading Israel into idolatry (Numbers 25), God told Moses to make war with the Midianites.
• 1,000 soldiers were selected from each of the 12 tribes.
• They killed all the male citizens,
• All the women, children, and animals were taken captive before the towns were burned.
• The Israelites brought the captives to Moses and Eleazar, but Moses became angry with the officers because they spared many of the women who were responsible for enticing the men of Israel into idolatry.
• Moses told the officers to kill all the captives except the virgin women. (So they could become slaves and raped in the process.)

The Justification

• This story typically draws an emotion response from readers, but from a purely rational viewpoint there isn’t anything in the story that shows God to be immoral. (Huh?)
• It’s easy to for us to feel like taking life is morally wrong, but remember, we and God are not in the same position. (Forget about what was said in Genesis 9)
• Furthermore, if God saves the innocent, which the Bible tells us He does, the Midianite children were being taken out of an immoral world (by killing them) and going to live in Heaven with God.
• There would have been some pain associated with that journey, (like the pain of being run through by a sword, or having your throat slit, or being beheaded) but pain, in itself, is not morally evil. Consider our practice of poking babies with needles to give them important medicine. It causes the baby momentary pain, (killing them was the momentary pain) but we consider it a long-term good, (because the children got to live in heaven with the god who ordered their murder and the murder of their loved ones. How benign!)

As shocking as this may be for those of us who do not use the bible as our moral compass, justifications like this can be found in great number on Christain websites. But it doesn’t end there. This skewed (and sick) form of morality also has ramifications in our day and age and will be the topic of a future blog.

Now back to our original discussion about how evangelicals view the purpose of their spiritual community.

Evangelical: Our church does not exist for ourselves, but to join God in his redemptive work…

So, here we are back to God’s redemptive work? As we’ve seen before, evangelicals believe that we are all born into sin and are lost and depraved. Therefore, it is their job to get as many people to join the Jesus club as possible. But exactly how do they accomplich that?

Evangelical: …and we see ourselves as agents of God’s Kingdom for the betterment of his world.

I know that Christians want to believe that they are lights on a hill, showing non-believers a better way to live. But, that’s not how non-believers see christians. If you’re a christian and you really want to know how non-believers actually view christians, email me and we can have a conversation.

Evangelical: The church is at its best when it serves, sacrifices, and loves, caring about the things God cares about.

First off, you’ll also notice that this statement, like the rest of their mission statement, isn’t specific about how or who the church serves or how and for whom it sacrifices or who it loves. Nor is it specific about what God cares about. How would they really know what God cares about?

It’s worth noting here that this is the first and only time the word “love” is mentioned in the 1,775-word  evangelical mission statement. In this case it refers to the church’s love. Interestingly enough, “God’s love” is not mentioned even once in either of the evangelical mission statements. Hmmm! This is actually something I found to be common among evangelical churches. For some reason God’s love is rarely mentioned in most evangelical mission statements. Having grown up in an evangelical church, this really surprised me. So much so, that it will be the topic of a future blog project that I’m calling, “What’s love got to do with it?”

Why is “God’s love” noticeably absent from Evangelical mission statements?

Conversely, as we have seen in the progressive mission statement “love” and specifically “God’s love” is mentioned many times. In fact, it’s their major theme. Why is “God’s love” noticeably absent from evangelical mission statements? I reached out to a pastor from the evangelical congregation and asked this very question. I wanted to know if it was an oversight to leave out mentioning God’s love or whether it was by design. He declined to answer and our correspondence ended. No surprise there.

Compare how the progressive congregation views the purpose of their spiritual community.

As a faith community, our call is to accept that we are already accepted by God, and to live a life imitating God’s love.

Wow, can it really be that simple? Believe that you are loved by God and love others the way God loves you?

Once again, unless you are an evangelical, this is an easy one.

Point for Progressive! 7-0

 

Coming up next

Social responsibility

Evangelical: We “equip people with vision and tools for joining in God’s redemptive plan. That’s why we are passionate about relieving suffering, fighting injustice, and hold out the gospel as the hope of renewing all things.”

Progressive: Our starting point in the story of God is that all humans were created in love and for love. There is no hierarchy of value for a human life. But when dehumanization occurs, especially in the form of violence, we must turn again to Christ, who taught us that what we do to the most vulnerable, we have also done unto him. And we must ask for guidance from the Spirit as we critically examine ourselves, our institutions, our beliefs, and our practices which retain and perpetuate expressions of violence against non-white bodies.

For more than ten years, Progressive Churchs have sought to answer the call to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. We will continue to take care of those who are harmed by unjust systems. We will insist on fairness for all people. We will remain loyal to those who have no voice. We will oppose authority when those in charge abuse their power.  We will hold sacred the bodies of black and brown people. We will work for justice until there is true liberty for all.

This is an essential part of our work as followers of the One who came and suffered in solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized, and who gave us the most important of all the commands: to love God, love our neighbors, and love ourselves.

 

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum