The Problem With Progressive Christianity (And It’s Not Small)

This is a conversation that has been rattling around in my head for a while. 

I already wrote a little about progressive Christianity back in 2022, specifically in response to a YouTube video I had watched by Brandan Robertson, “noted author, pastor, and public theologian at the forefront of the progressive faith movement.” It’s a doozy, and it was later taken down. I’d have taken it down, too, if it were me. But since he’s gone on writing and speaking in the same vein, I doubt he’s repented of his awful theology.

His take that ‘Jesus was a racist’ and ‘Jesus needed to repent’, among other things, really bothered me, as it should bother any person who calls themselves a Christian. That depiction of Jesus is unbiblical, blasphemous, and just plain rubbish. You can read more on what I had to say about that here.

In my original article, I said big dramatic things like, “this pervasive ideology, left unchecked, could signal the death knell of the church“, and “the infiltration of this movement was hijacking genuine Christianity“, not really, truly, thinking that could actually happen.

I did very little at the time to press further into the troubling aspects of the movement itself. To be honest, I probably still considered it a bit fringe – concerning, without a doubt – but something that would stay on the margins, unlikely to gain any real traction. An American problem, most likely.

My commentary then felt more like a warning shot than a present danger – words meant to wake people up, not a prophecy I expected to see fulfilled.

But here we are. The movement hasn’t slowed down. It has gathered momentum.

And the more I’ve seen, the more convinced I am that Progressive Christianity is not simply a minor distortion or a passing trend. It is a cancer in the body of Christ, and if left unchecked, it will hollow out the gospel from the inside.

Progressive Christianity Is Now Mainstream

Progressive Christianity is loud, persuasive, and has become increasingly mainstream.

Like a toxic tobacco plant that wild-seeds in your backyard – insignificant one day, towering over you the next – it has taken root, spread fast, and is now dominating the landscape. And it isn’t harmless.

Friends with the liberal left, its ideology has infiltrated both church and state. You see its language in pulpits, on social media, in school curricula, and even in government policy.

It cloaks itself in compassion, that dreaded word empathy, justice, and inclusivity, but underneath the polished slogans is a theology that denies the authority of Scripture and replaces the gospel of Jesus Christ with a gospel of self.

Progressive Christianity is not just another flavour of faith. It’s not a “different stream” in the body of Christ – your weird, slightly awkward but still lovable uncle at a family BBQ – nor is it a fresh update for a modern world. It is an entirely different religion, disguised with Christian vocabulary and reeking of the sulphuric stench of hell. 

Borrowing biblical words, emptying them of their meaning, and refilling them with cultural slogans, the result is not Christianity at all, but a hollow counterfeit that twists the gospel, gaslights believers, and preaches a gospel that damns and a Christ who cannot save.

A Gospel Without Christ

At the centre of Progressive Christianity is the claim that the gospel is primarily about compassion, justice, and inclusion. These words sound biblical – and in one sense, they are. Jesus did call believers to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and care for the sick and imprisoned.

But notice what is missing in the Progressive version of the gospel: repentance, forgiveness, new birth, holiness, and following Christ as Lord.

The Book of Acts, which recounts the early days of the first-century church, tells the story of how the great commission of Matthew 28 – “go and make disciples” – was outworked, first in Jerusalem, then throughout Judea, in Samaria, and finally to the ends of the earth. 

The same good news that Jesus preached – that God is setting the world right through His Son and that Jesus was King – was taken and preached by Jesus’ disciples to all who would listen. This message was then followed by the directive: “Repent of your sins, turn to God, and be baptised for the forgiveness of your sins.”

Repent of your sins and turn to God, revealed in Jesus Christ, is the biblical imperative. Yet a common Progressive line goes like this: “Jesus never said you had to believe in him to be saved.” 

Of course, you won’t necessarily hear those exact words. You won’t even be sure half the time that you understand what’s really being proposed, exactly. But push in just a little and you’ll soon realise that what is usually being challenged are the biblical teachings of exclusive belief, penal substitution, or damnation for disbelief .

Or you may hear, “It doesn’t matter if you go to church, read the Bible, or pray – what matters is how you treat people”, shifting the focus away from doctrinal belief toward relational practice and divine love.

The truth? Jesus said the exact opposite. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36).

Good deeds are the fruit of faith, not its foundation. When you take Christ out of the centre, you no longer have Christianity.

The Gaslighting of Believers

One of the most common tactics of Progressive Christianity is gaslighting. It doesn’t just argue for a different interpretation; it constantly upends reality so that orthodox believers are made to feel like they are the problem.

You’ll often hear accusations like:

“You’re committing eisegesis – you’re forcing your theology into the text.”

“You’re obsessed with Paul, not Jesus.”

“Your interpretation is violent, abusive, and exclusionary.”

“You worship the Bible instead of following Christ.”

On the surface, these may sound like thoughtful critiques. But look closer and you’ll see what’s happening: it’s inversion. The charge of eisegesis is the very thing Progressive ‘teachers’ themselves are guilty of.

They claim to be rescuing the Bible from centuries of “misinterpretation” (as Brandan Robertson puts it, “wresting the Bible away from the people who use it as a weapon against queer people“). But what they’re really doing is projecting the spirit of the age onto and into the text – forcing modern ideologies of sexuality, identity, and social theory onto ancient Scripture that never spoke in those terms.

Take the example of Genesis 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. For centuries, the church has recognised that one of the clear sins of Sodom was sexual immorality, particularly homosexual practice (confirmed later in Jude 1:7). Yet Progressive Christianity flips the text and says, “No, the real sin of Sodom was inhospitality.”

Now, of course, a lack of hospitality was present – but to claim that the passage is only about refusing to welcome strangers is pure inversion. It ignores the plain narrative, downplays Jude’s commentary, and reinterprets the story through the lens of modern activism.

And then, when Christians affirm what Scripture plainly teaches, they are accused of reading their own prejudice into the Bible.

That’s the pattern: take a clear text, strip it of its meaning, inject a modern agenda, and then accuse everyone else of eisegesis.

And this is consistent across the board. When Paul says in Romans 1 that men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with passion for one another, Progressive teachers reply, “That’s not about homosexuality, it’s about exploitation.”

When 1 Corinthians 6 lists homosexual practice among sins that keep people from inheriting the kingdom of God, they reply, “That’s a mistranslation.”

When Jesus defines marriage in Matthew 19 as between a  man and a woman – male and female becoming one flesh – they say, “That was just cultural context.”

At every point, the plain meaning of the text is explained away, and then you are accused of twisting Scripture if you refuse to agree. That’s inversion. That’s gaslighting.

And it’s a tactic that works because most normal humans don’t want to be accused of being narrow, harsh, or unloving. We want to be seen as compassionate.

But Progressive Christianity exploits that humility and weaponises it against conservative Christianity. It says: if you don’t agree, you’re the hateful one. If you hold to biblical teaching, you’re the abuser. If you state Jesus as the only way, you’re the oppressor.

The irony is this: what they condemn as eisegesis – reading theology into the text – is precisely what they’re doing, only with modern ideologies of sexuality, gender, and power.

(And if I hear one more person waxing eloquent about “speaking truth to power…“)

It isn’t interpretation, it’s inversion. And it leaves ordinary Christians second-guessing whether believing Scripture at face value is itself unchristian, undermining the authority and veracity of the Word of God.

The Authority And Trustworthiness Of God’s Word

At the heart of Progressive Christianity is a crisis of authority. Everything it teaches stands or falls on one question: Can we trust the Bible?

Progressive voices will say things like:

“The Bible is just an ancient book written by flawed men.”

“We can’t take Paul’s words as timeless truth – he was a product of his culture.”

“Scripture contains God’s Word, but it isn’t the Word of God.”

This is not a new strategy. From the beginning, the serpent’s question in Genesis 3 was, “Did God really say?”

Every distortion of the gospel begins with a seed of doubt about God’s Word.

But Jesus treated the Scriptures as fully trustworthy. He said, “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). He affirmed the authority of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. He quoted the Old Testament as the very Word of God, not as cultural commentary or ancient opinion.

The apostles did the same, teaching that “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

If Scripture is God-breathed, then it carries His authority. If it is inspired, then it is trustworthy. And if it is trustworthy, then it judges us – we do not judge it.

The moment we set ourselves above the Word of God, deciding which parts to keep and which to discard, we are no longer following Christ but our own desires.

This is why Progressive Christianity is so dangerous. It doesn’t begin with Christ and his Word; it begins with human experience, then edits and reshapes Scripture until it agrees with that experience.

But a gospel built on shifting human opinion or subjective experience cannot save. Only the Word of God, living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, has the power to convict, to comfort, and to bring new life (Hebrews 4:12).

The authority of Scripture is not a side issue. It is the foundation. If we lose trust in the Word of God, we lose the voice of God. And if we lose the voice of God, we lose the gospel itself.

A False Christ

Progressive Christianity doesn’t simply reinterpret doctrines – it reinvents Jesus.

Instead of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, we are given a mascot for cultural causes. Instead of the holy God who calls sinners to repentance, we get a spirituality that affirms and blesses every identity and desire. 

The goal is not to preach the Jesus of the Bible, but to collapse Christ into whatever group society currently champions. As one Progressive preacher recently declared: “That transgender person you rejected – that was Jesus.” 

Yes, Jesus identifies with the suffering. But he never said that suffering justifies sin, or that affirming brokenness is the same as loving people. The real Jesus calls all people – straight, gay, trans, rich, poor, religious, secular – to repent and believe the gospel.

Anything else is not the gospel.

Real-Life Sayings That Reveal The Problem

Progressive Christianity can often be spotted by its slogans. Here are a few, along with why they collapse under Scripture:

“Love is love.”
No. God is love (1 John 4:8). And His love defines ours. True love does not celebrate what God calls sin; it calls people out of darkness into His marvellous light.

“Jesus never talked about homosexuality.”
Scripture is clear that God created us male and female, and that sex is designed to be experienced within the committed bonds of marriage. Further, Jesus himself affirmed marriage as being between male and female (Matthew 19:4–6). And as the Son of God, he stands behind all of Scripture, including the Old Testament and the apostolic writings.

“The Bible is just an ancient text written by flawed men.”
Scripture itself claims to be the breathed-out Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16). To deny its authority is to deny Christ’s authority, because he endorsed it in full.

“We’re saved by how we treat others, not by faith in Jesus.”
This is the exact opposite of the gospel. We are saved by grace through faith, not by works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8–9). Good works flow out of salvation; they do not earn it.

“Exclusivity is harmful. All paths lead to God.”
Jesus himself said the road is narrow and few find it (Matthew 7:14). If all paths led to God, the cross would be unnecessary. The way to God is uncomfortably exclusive – it only goes through one man, the mediator between God and humanity, Jesus Christ.

Each of these slogans reveals the same underlying problem: human experience and cultural trends are placed above God’s unchanging Word.

Why This Matters

Some people shrug and say, “Why worry? Progressive Christianity is just another perspective. The church has always had disagreements. This is just one more.” But this isn’t about secondary debates. It isn’t about denominational differences. This is about the very heart of the gospel.

Friends, Progressive Christianity is a deadly cancer in the body of Christ. It will not nurture faith, it will not produce holiness, it will not save a single soul.

Left unchecked, it will hollow out the church from within until what remains looks Christian in language but is empty of the gospel’s power.

It promises freedom, but in reality, it delivers slavery. 

It preaches compassion while cutting people off from the only true source of life. It offers a Christ who affirms but cannot redeem, who comforts but never transforms. And a Christ like that is no saviour at all.

Why does this matter? Because it determines eternity. If sin is real – and Scripture says it is – then affirming people in their sin is spiritual cruelty. It leaves them enslaved when Christ died to set them free. It leaves them condemned when Christ offers forgiveness. It leaves them comfortable in the present but lost for eternity.

It also matters because of the church’s witness. A church that embraces Progressive Christianity may still use Christian words, but it has emptied them of any kind of transformative meaning.

It preaches love without truth, grace without repentance, and heaven without hell.

And this doesn’t go unnoticed by the secular world. Why would anyone need the church if it offers nothing different from the surrounding culture?

It matters for the next generation. Young believers are being taught that affirming every identity is the height of compassion, that saying “Jesus is the only way” is bigotry, and that obeying God’s Word is oppressive. If they are not anchored in the authority of Scripture and the truth of the gospel, they will be swept away.

And it matters because Christ himself warned us. He said that false prophets would arise, that the love of many would grow cold, and that even the elect would be deceived if possible.

Paul the Apostle said that in the last days, people would not put up with sound teaching, but would gather teachers who say what their “itching ears” want to hear. “Beware of wolves“, Paul warned the church at Ephesus, echoing Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. “Beware of men who arise speaking twisted things, to draw disciples away after them.” (Acts 20:29-30) That is exactly what we see today.

Friends, eternal destinies are at stake. Christ’s glory is at stake. Truth is at stake.

You Are A City On A Hill: Shine!

This isn’t just an internal church debate. It is a battle for the soul of Christianity in the West. If we lose the gospel, we lose everything. Programs, buildings, sermons, and songs mean nothing if the gospel is gone.

The church is called to be the pillar and foundation of truth in a world full of lies, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. We need to speak clearly, loudly, and courageously for that truth, “warning all people everywhere to repent.“

Progressive Christianity offers a counterfeit Christ and a powerless gospel.

But the real Jesus still speaks through his Word, still saves sinners, still transforms lives, and still calls us to follow him.

That is the truth we must hold fast to – whatever it costs.

Note to my readers: I said what I said. But if you disagree and want to chat, feel I misrepresented the movement, or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch through the contact form on our website.