Different Christianities, Different Gods?

Why Progressive and Conservative Christians Can’t Talk with Each Other, Part 1

Gus diZerega grew up an evangelical. As an evangelical, he had powerful experiences of God's presence in his life. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop him from later becoming a Wiccan. Now, he has powerful experiences of goddess, whom he experiences as love.

That story comes from his book, Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience. In this book, he hopes to help adherents of the two religious traditions understand each other a bit better so they can talk with each other. (Perhaps it is not surprising that I absolutely love multi-faith dialogue books like this.)

One of the things that bothered me while reading the book, though, was the way he portrayed Christianity. He equated the Christian spiritual perspective with the evangelical one. I was not an evangelical. I did not resonate with this at all.

In fact, because of the way he portrayed Christianity, I actually found myself resonating more with the way he portrayed Wiccan spirituality. That was a bit of a surprise to me.

I think I get why he portrayed Christianity as he did. First, he grew up in an evangelical church, so that’s how he primarily understood it. Second, evangelicalism was the most dominant voice in Christianity at the time (and still is, though I hope to help change that), so I suspect most of his non-Christian audience viewed Christianity in the same way. And, third, it's just easier to talk about Christianity that way because that's what people in general are used to.

Still, I know that diZerega is quite aware of the existence and importance of progressive Christianity in America. In fact, he wrote an article entitled, “The Mirage of Monotheism” that I find fascinating to this day.

In it, he argues that the reason conservative evangelical Christianity and progressive Christianity are so radically different is because they worship different gods.

Say what???

That perspective threw me for a loop. I had never considered it before.

Could it really be that progressive Christians and conservative Christians are so different because they literally worship different dieties?

A couple of months ago I was pondering this yet again. I decided to post the question to my Threads account, where I have a variety of different followers, mostly progressive Christians.

Here's how my audience responded…

The progressive Christians said it was just a matter of different people having different interpretations of the same text. Evangelical Christians and progressive Christians simply understood the God of the Bible differently.

Meanwhile, I had a couple of pagans drop in. They thought it was obvious that the different Christian perspectives resulted from worshiping different gods.

How fascinating is that?

Personally, and perhaps not surprisingly, I believe that the differences between the two Christianities come down to different understandings of the same God. One of the reasons I say that is because I used to come from a conservative perspective, and now I am a voice for a progressive one. I don't believe I swapped Gods somewhere along my faith journey. (Although, I confess I do indeed leave the door open to the possibility of different deities.)

To me, the more interesting question in all of this is: what are the key differences between conservative and progressive Christianities that lead them to become so different from each other that pagans believe that they are clearly worshiping different gods?

Been there, done that, I get it

One of the things I admit I find almost laughable coming out of conservative evangelicals is the extent to which they think progressive Christians don't understand them and their theology. The reason I say “almost laughable” is because most of the progressive Christians I know came out of evangelicalism. In fact, most of those grew up in the evangelical church. They intimately understand conservative evangelicalism as much as—if not more than—those still on the inside.

So, it's not as though they became progressive Christians because they “didn't understand” the evangelical perspective. When you listen to their testimonies, you quickly discover that they generally left evangelicalism because they understood it so well.

Even though I did not grow up in the church like most others, I still went through a fundamentalist phase. So, I get it, too. I understand the theology, the mindset, and the zeal.

This month, I want to highlight what I think are the most distinctive wedges between evangelical Christianity and progressive Christianity. Keep in mind, that these differences aren't trivial. They make the two perspectives incompatible with one another, and in many cases, they even prevent the two camps from being able to have any meaningful theological conversation.

While I walk through these positions, I recognize there will always be oddball cases, and what I say will not apply to everyone. But, I believe what I see is the case, for the most part.

Without further ado, I invite you to join me on this journey as I explore why progressive and conservative Christians can't talk with each other theologically in a meaningful way.

Peace, Bo
www.evolvingchristianfaith.net

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Credits

• Thanks to NightCafe for the cover art