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Dangerous Faith
(99) Prove Me Wrong: Progressive Theology Is Parasitic and Poisonous – Dangerous Faith
Nate Williams talks about why he believes progressive theology is parasitic and poisonous, and then offers a challenge to those who would disagree with him.
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Progressive theology is a parasite, it is poisonous. And I also want to talk about a challenge I have for progressive Christians. This is the Dangerous Faith Podcast. My name is Nate Williams, let's dive in. The first thing I think that we have to do is define progressive theology, progressive Christianity and a lot of other people. They've written books, they have podcast episodes, and so I will not go in depth. There are others you can look to for more details on those things. I think of Mike Winger, I think of Elisa Childers and others.
Speaker 1:There have been again these three areas, three battlefields. We've had the Jesus Wars, the Bible Wars and then the Social Culture Wars, and progressive theology will walk through where they land or the spectrum of their positions in all three battle areas. Let's talk about Jesus. The Orthodox Christian believes that he is fully man, fully God, so two natures, divine and human, and we believe that he died, was buried, resurrected and ascended. It was a physical event in history. We believe in something called the penal substitutionary atonement theory, which is he was punished on our behalf. The Father poured out his wrath upon Jesus for our sins, he took our place and he suffered our punishment. And it was awful, it was ugly. We read about this in the Gospels and this is what Orthodox Christians believe, among other things as well. There are other theories of the atonement, like Christus, victor and others, but that's one of them. He took our place and progressive theologians, progressive Christians they'll push back, depending on the individual, on different parts of that, and so they might believe that Jesus was a special man. They might believe that Jesus, while a good guy, he was a sinner. They might believe that his death, burial and resurrection was a spiritual resurrection, etc. Etc. They don't like the whole. Jesus took our place, punishment was poured upon him by the Father, because they think that's barbaric and you can't do that, and so anyway. So they'll shy away from Jesus and Orthodox biblical Christianity when it comes to who he is and what he did for us and what he's doing for us. Still, that's the Jesus wars.
Speaker 1:Progressive theologians will go in the opposite direction. And then there's the Bible wars as an Orthodox believer a Orthodox just means historically, biblically faithful Christian. We believe the Bible to be the word of God. We believe the Bible to be the word of God, true, without fault regarding the original manuscripts, and we believe and obey the Bible. When we contradict the Bible, we're the ones in the wrong, and not the Bible. Progressive theologians, progressive Christians they hold that. No, the Bible can be backwards, bigoted, misogynistic. They don't like Paul and his views on women, they don't like the Old Testament and the treatment of the Canaanites, and so what they'll do is they'll take scissors and erasers to the Bible and they'll cut it up. They'll shape it how they want, but basically the Bible is a backwards, bigoted book and it needs reinterpretation. So those are the Bible wars.
Speaker 1:You think abortion, you think marriage and transgender ideology. Progressive liberal Christians they tend to be pro-choice, so pro-abortion, they tend to be pro any definition of marriage that makes you happy, whereas the Bible defines marriage as between one man and one woman, both in Genesis and Matthew, and then with transgender ideology. They're very progressive there as well. You can be whatever you want to be and believe whatever you want to believe about yourself. Who cares about science? Who cares about theology, all of that, and so that is progressive theology in a nutshell. You can also throw in things like universalism, religious pluralism, throw out original sin, that we're all sinners in need of a savior. Sometimes they'll believe that we're basically good, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Just very progressive theologically, politically, culturally, and my contention is that progressive theology is parasitic, it is poisonous. Then, off of those claims I am making, I have a challenge for a progressive Christian. I put Christian in air quotes because I'm not always sure, depending on the individual, if they are a Christian. But let's start with a parasite. Progressive theology is a parasite. You define a parasite I have this online, the definition an organism that lives and feeds on or in another organism of a different species and causes harm to its host. So it's an organism that feeds off another organism and causes harm to that other organism in which it resides. Parasites are bad, they're harmful and something that's interesting to note a parasite cannot exist on its own. It has to have a host and progressive theology. It starts out inevitably within good, healthy, biblical churches and denominations and it feeds off those things until it takes over. We've seen zombie animals that are taken over by bacteria or bugs that are taken over by parasites, and so the bug or the animal moves around, but it's not controlled by itself. It's been taken over by something that's controlling its muscles and its actions. That is progressive theology. It is parasitic and not to get too far ahead of myself, but part of my proof for this is the theology. It is parasitic, and not to get too far ahead of myself, but part of my proof for this is the challenge.
Speaker 1:But moving on, we'll get to the part where progressive theology is a poison. What it does is it kills its host, it kills the organism, the, the church, the denomination in which it took over, in which it parasitically invaded. And how do I know this? Well, in the 1900s, various denominations fought the three wars. They fought over jesus, his identity. They fought over the bible, what it is, and its authority. They fought over the social and culture wars. And progressive theologians and Christians overtook the mainline denominations, one by one, by one, with the United Methodist Church being the most recent casualty just within this last little bit, the last few years. And what it does is it's a poison, it starts to kill the denomination.
Speaker 1:And so I have different articles from Christianity Today talking about how Methodists, lutherans, presbyterians, they just started to decline. Let me find the article to decline. Let me find the article. And basically, mainline denominations are showing drops of 15, 25, even 40%. Over the span of the last decade, evangelical denominations have been holding a little bit steady. They're declining, but very slowly. And so mainline Protestants the grouping scholars use for denominations like the UMC, the ELCA, the PCUSA. They used to outnumber evangelical denominations by a significant margin in the 1970s, in 1975, in the 1970s. In 1975, just over 30% of Americans were mainline while about 21% were evangelicals. But by 1983, there were more evangelicals in the United States than mainliners, and by the late 1980s evangelicals had become about a quarter of the population 25%, and the mainline was around 20%. In 1993, evangelicals hit their peak in the data just around 30% and have been in a slow decline since then. Between 2000 and 2018, the decline among evangelicals has been really modest, about two percentage points. But the mainline has declined three times as fast from this time period, dropping from 16% in 2000 to just over 10% in 2018. So again, this is a Christianity Today article titled Mainline Protestants are still declining, but that's not good news for evangelicals.
Speaker 1:One thing that also needs to be noted when I say evangelical, I often mean the version of the mainline denominations that tried to be faithful. So the conservative offshoots you think about the SBC, southern Baptist Convention. You think about for the UMC. There's now the Global Methodist Church, gmc. They're the versions of the denomination that didn't compromise in the wars the Jesus Wars, the Bible Wars or the social wars and then also there's been the rise of the non-denominational church and so non-denominational church it's harder to get those numbers, but they've been increasing as well, and they would count as evangelicals. Let's see going down I'm trying to find the number the 2020 US religion census tallied 4,000 more non-denominational churches than in 2010, and non-denominational church attendance rose by 6.5 million during this time, and so non-denominational churches would fall under the evangelical umbrella, and that's important to know. So evangelicals, numerically, are doing much better.
Speaker 1:However, progressive theology is killing the mainline denominations. The strongest example of this is in the Episcopal Church, and there is one person in the Episcopal Church, reverend Dwight. I'm not sure how to pronounce this person's last name, but Reverend Dwight basically says by 2050, okay, so roughly 25 years from now, by 2050, the Episcopal Church will effectively cease to exist. Numerically, in a span of roughly a century, progressive theology will have killed one of the oldest, the most historic, used to be relatively orthodox and biblically faithful denominations relatively orthodox and biblically faithful denominations. Progressive theology in the 1900s took over and within a century, will have killed a once mighty denomination. And you see those numbers all over the place. So mainlines are collapsing. Evangelical denominations, when combined with non-denominational churches, are doing much, much better when combined with non-denominational churches are doing much, much better.
Speaker 1:So progressive theology, it's parasitic. It doesn't exist by itself, it has to attach onto a host and it's poisonous. It kills from within. And so you might be hung up on the parasitic part. You might be like, okay, you may have demonstrated aspects of poison. What about being a parasite? Can you prove that? I have a challenge and I'm willing to be wrong and I will apologize if I am. A parasite can exist by itself. This is the challenge, part of the episode.
Speaker 1:You think about rust on a car. The car can exist by itself without rust, but rust can exist without some sort of metal, and that's what I mean by parasitic. Some things can exist without the other. Progressive theology will never create something flourishing. Look at seminaries like the Ivy League schools. You think Yale and Harvard. Those were once faithful seminaries to train up Christian ministers. Progressive theology took it over.
Speaker 1:You think about denominations, the mainline denominations Lutherans, methodists, episcopalians, baptists. Again, progressive theology didn't start any of those things. They were once vibrant and major forces in American life and now they're no longer Mainline Protestants. Basically, they're in the extreme minority and they have no influence. Progressive theology doesn't start things, it doesn't build things.
Speaker 1:My challenge is this Name, a seminary name, a denomination, started by progressive theologians from scratch and built from there. Name for me. My challenge to you is this if you're a progressive Christian, name for me something that started out progressive, not started out conservative evangelical no, not started out conservative evangelical no, started out based on the tenets of Jesus. May or may not be God, his resurrection may or may not be literal, the Bible may or may not be the word of God, but it's any number. You can be man, woman, unicorn, attack, helicopter, whatever you want to be. Name a denomination or a seminary that started out progressive and then flourished. Grew from there to be culturally rich and powerful, effective and influential, beautiful grew numerically. That's my challenge.
Speaker 1:If you don't think, progressive theology is parasitic and it needs a host from which it can eat its way all the way to the top, that's my challenge. That's my challenge. I don't think you can find a seminary or a denomination because, again, it's death, it's a sickness, it is a disease. You're not going to grow from there. You think about the biblical wisdom of false teachers. You will know them by their fruit. False theology you will know it by its fruit, and its fruit is death. So again, that's my challenge.
Speaker 1:I hold progressive theology to be parasitic and poisonous, and I think I have the numbers to prove that. But I'm willing to be wrong. And I think, once the Western world completes its collapse in Europe and America and it's just taken over by other forces, whether radical Islam, whether atheistic communism in the style of China, I think if the West is overtaken completely, progressive theology will die. It'll die itself, and then it'll be up to the orthodox, conservative, evangelical Christians to rebuild and then, once they rebuild, it'll come back, but it will never exist on its own as a flourishing, growing movement. All right, y'all, what did you think? Do you agree with me? Is progressive theology parasitic and poisonous? Do you think a progressive Christian can answer my challenge? Well, if so, let me know.
Speaker 1:You can reach out to me through social media. We have a Facebook, instagram and Twitter account. You can also leave comments in different ways on various podcast platforms as well. I would love to know your thoughts. Anyways, that's all I have for today. I hope y'all are having a great time out there. Until next time. I'll talk with you later, thank you.