What Is Progressive Christianity?

Defining the undefinable

Eric Sentell
Backyard Church
Published in
6 min readSep 29, 2024

--

Statute of St. Paul. Photo taken by the author and edited in Canva.

The Reverend Keith Turner suggests five reasons why progressive Christianity has rendered itself irrelevant. Reason #1 is the lack of a clear, positive definition: progressive Christians define themselves by what they are not, not what they are.

We are not fundamentalists. We are not biblical literalists. We are not Evangelicals. Not. Not. Not. But what are we for? How do we imagine ourselves, and why? What kind of community, what identity, do we invite others to share?

Imagine if you invited someone to a concert, the person asked what kind of music would be played, and you answered, “It’s not rock, it’s not pop, it’s not country, it’s not ….”

As Turner eloquently writes:

Any identity based on nothing more than differentiation, contrast, and separation will not go very far. … Establishing an identity on distancing ourselves from those different than us doesn’t position us to establish relationships or connection.

Lacking a clear self-definition creates off-putting ambiguity for people seeking a community and, arguably worse, prevents the group from coalescing and organizing for a greater impact in people’s day-to-day lives. For relevance. It’s hard to come together around, “We’re not ….”

--

--