Alisa Childers joins me to discuss  progressive Christianity and her journey of rebuilding her faith after being taught by a progressive pastor.

Questions Alisa and I Discussed:

1. (5:21) You have walked with Jesus a long time and as an adult you experienced a faith crisis when you began attending a Sunday School class led by one of the church pastors.  Will you share a bit of that story with us?
2. (9:22) What were some of the steps you took to dig in and research if you what you had believed as a Christian was true?
3. (14:24) It was not a university professor that challenged all you believed, but a progressive Christian pastor.  What is progressive Christianity and what are some of their core beliefs?
4. (18:24) Share a little about what you discovered when you began to research why the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God?
5. (31:07) How do progressives view the Bible?
6. (34:49) Listener Question (Erica): What are some buzz words or red flags that may point toward progressive Christian thought?
7. (39:10) Progressive Christianity can be very subtle changes made to God’s Word and often seem true and good and right.  How do you encourage Christians to educate and prepare themselves to interact with progressive Christian claims?
8. (47:31) We are both commanded to love God and love our neighbor.  How are these commands being misinterpreted by progressive Christian thoughts and ideas?

Quotes to Remember:

“So the Christianity that I grew up with was very wholistic…it wasn’t just a Sunday thing and it wasn’t just a church thing. This was something that we lived as a family.”

“The pastor invited me to be a part of this small class situation that he compared to seminary…. In the context of the class, the pastor early on, revealed that he was actually agnostic and that really kind of shook me…because by this point I had come to respect this guy, and really trust him as a pastor….Over the course of about four months, just about everything that I ever believed about God, and Jesus, and the Bible, in particular, was picked apart and explained away.”

“I’m just singing hymns into the darkness, in this state of what you might call cognitive dissonance, where I sort of believed two opposite things at the same time and it was torment. I knew God existed, but I had been intellectually persuaded that He didn’t.”

“You might also hear a lot of references to personal conscience, in regard to morality. The Bible isn’t going to be the authority that’s going to inform what we believe about morality, it’s going to be our personal God given consciences that’s going to decide those things.”

“You’ll also hear a lot of, ‘I couldn’t believe in a God who,’ and then fill in the blank. Whatever it may be, that they have trouble with the Bible or with the historic Christian gospel, you might hear them say, ‘Well, I couldn’t believe in a God who could send people to hell or in a God who could condemn homosexuality…” But that goes back to their personal conscience. They’re really comparing God with their own morality, rather than comparing their own morality with God’s holy nature.”

“When we’re encountering really any kind of claim against the gospel, progressive Christianity included, is to make sure…we have a really good working knowledge of the real thing [gospel]….We need to be biblically literate…”

“The word tolerance by nature means that you disagree with somebody, because you don’t have to tolerate someone if you agree with everything they’re saying. That’s not tolerance. That’s just called agreement. By its very nature, tolerance requires disagreement, but that’s not what the word means anymore. Now, tolerance has become this catch all phrase to mean, basically, what love means affirming and celebrating whatever someone thinks, or wants to do, or believes about the world. And biblically speaking, that’s not loving.”

Resources Mentioned:

• The Alisa Childers Podcast
• Book: Another Gospel
• Book: Cold Case Christianity
• Book: Mamabear Apologetics

Related Episodes:

• 90: Hillary Morgan Ferrer | Empowering Kids To Challenge Cultural Lies
• 77: Rosaria Butterfield | Christian Identity, Intersectionality

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