Why progressive Christianity is 'another Gospel'

Christian Post ^ | 10/19/2020 | John Stonestreet

[SeekAndFind]

According to recent survey, nearly a third of self-described evangelicals do not believe that Jesus Christ is truly God. Arianism, as it turns out, is a heresy that plagues multiple generations of the Church, not just the one of the fourth century.

Well, over and over the Church has, in various times and ways, ruled that some beliefs are not acceptable alternatives within Christianity. Adherents are, in fact, outsiders to the faith. For example, nearly 100 years ago, in a book entitled Christianity and Liberalism, Presbyterian scholar J. Gresham Machen argued, in an extensive scholarly treatment, that liberal Christianity was not a version of the one, true faith handed down once and for all to the saints. Liberalism was, he argued, a completely different religion from Christianity.

The Liberal Christianity of Machen’s day focused on a social-reform agenda, fueled by feelings and informed by secular thought, barely draped in religious language. The God it preached was not sovereign over creation and providential over the affairs of men; did not really come in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, who did not really perform miracles or physically rise from the dead. The Bible was not really the fundamental and decisive revelation of God, nor the final authoritative source for morality, but must be understood according to our evolving scientific knowledge and political agendas.

Today, there is also an effort to update Christianity, to adapt and re-form it according to the spirit of the age. From church pulpits to the Christian blogosphere, from once-reliable Christian publishing houses to the campuses of Christian colleges that are Christian in name only, from beautiful and historic churches decorated with gay pride flags and pastored by ordained ministers who “bless” abortion clinics to the “exvangelicals” who become self-styled spokespersons for “what Jesus would really say and do,” there is, in our day too, a Christianity that is no Christianity at all.

Devoid of the truth claims and moral teachings of historic Christianity, what is today called “progressive Christianity” is not another side of the same coin. It is a different religion founded on a different worldview.

Machen’s crucial insights were presented in a largely academic book written for a largely academic audience. Since the progressive Christianity of our day is far more populist than the liberalism of his, I am pleased that a new book, theologically robust and very accessible, is now available to address the ideas deceiving so many Christians. The book is titled Another Gospel: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity.

Alisa Childers grew up in the church and eventually became a member of the very successful Christian pop group “Zoe Girl.” Despite that pedigree, as she told my colleague Shane Morris on his Upstream podcast, she was completely unprepared when she learned her pastor was a skeptic, and confronted her with questions and counterclaims about the reliability of Scripture, the morality of the atonement, whether God answers prayer, or cares about our sexual choices, or even exists.

Flailing in doubt, Childers went to work to find answers, studying Scripture, church history, great apologists for the Christian faith (past and present), and critiques of the claims of progressivism. In the process, she found that her beliefs had rock-solid foundations, and answers to the toughest questions.

A “progressive Christianity” that denies the divinity of Christ, treats His incarnation and resurrection from the dead as myths, and reimagines human nature away from God’s created design and according to sexual libertinism isn’t just another take on the faith. It’s another gospel entirely.

Childers’ book Another Gospel is an incredibly valuable resource. Every week it seems, I talk with pastors, youth pastors, parents, and grandparents watching the next generation buy into a false gospel and questioning the historic truth claims of Christianity. Using the framework of Childers’ story, Another Gospel provides a thorough, rigorous, and entirely readable take-down of progressive Christianity, and a reliable introduction to the non-negotiables of the Christian faith.

[xp38]

Amen

[boycott]

I listened to an interview of her on the radio recently. She tells it like it is. I look forward to reading her book.

[doc maverick]

“Progressive Christianity” is a “religion“ based on collective salvation and communism.
It is anti-Christian. A wolf in sheep’s clothing permeated by the spirit of the anti-christ.

[delta7]

Understanding first comes by “ fear of the Lord”....I shiver for those re- writing God’s word...

[ConorMacNessa]

Bergoglio is fanning the flames of this heretical outbreak.

"Dia shábháil ar fad anseo!"

[Honorary Serb]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMEz63hUSW4

The Orthodox Church is the original and true Church!

The “progressive” “churches” are far, far away from her and are against her. They are also against any other churches that still have some or most of her original faith!!!!

[LeonardFMason]

“A “progressive Christianity” that denies the divinity of Christ, treats His incarnation and resurrection from the dead as myths, and reimagines human nature away from God’s created design and according to sexual libertinism isn’t just another take on the faith. It’s another gospel entirely.”

I object to “ANOTHER” Gospel.

It is a LIE from SATAN. Believing this LIE is the UNPARDONABLE Sin.

[lightman]

H. Richard Niebuhr indicted liberal Protestantism for teaching

“a God without wrath
who brings humans without sin
into a kingdom without judgment
through a Christ without a cross.”

I call that that anti-Creed...and orthodox Christians (small “o” and capital “O” alike should commit that to memory, the better to understand what they are up against.

[daniel1212]

The Orthodox Church is the original and true Church!

And the Romans make the same claim, despite distinctive Catholic teachings not being manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels). And cults also assert themselves to be the One true Church. However, the one true church which the Lord promised to overcome the gates of Hell was and is the body of Christ that the Spirit baptizes every believer into, (1Co. 12:13) and to which He is married, (Eph. 5:25) for it uniquely only and always consists 100% of true believers, while organic fellowships in which they express their faith inevitably become admixtures of wheat and tares, with Catholicism and liberal Protestantism being mostly the latter.

[boatbums]

The Liberal Christianity of Machen’s day focused on a social-reform agenda, fueled by feelings and informed by secular thought, barely draped in religious language. The God it preached was not sovereign over creation and providential over the affairs of men; did not really come in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, who did not really perform miracles or physically rise from the dead. The Bible was not really the fundamental and decisive revelation of God, nor the final authoritative source for morality, but must be understood according to our evolving scientific knowledge and political agendas.

With those kinds of beliefs, I find it impossible they could even refer to it as "Christian"!

[metmom]

I think the Orthodox are far closer to Biblical Christianity than Rome is, but they still cannot claim to be THE OTC because the true church is the spiritual body of Christ made up of born again/born from above believers in Jesus Christ.

It’s not a religious denomination that one can join through ceremony or ritual.

Jesus did not come to establish another religion. He came to restore a broken relationship and give man the opportunity to come into right standing with God once again.

[Elsie]

NO,
no,
NO!!!

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The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latterday Saints is the original and true Church!

[wita]

Thanks for the kind words, however, screaming is not proper technique. That said, it would behoove all Christianity to move toward Christian living as far as their version of truth leads them. Far better than focusing on what their limited knowledge of all things Christian points out the weakness and failure of others within the movement.

We are all children of the same God and Creator, who has proclaimed we must love our Brothers and Sisters as he has loved us. That alone is difficult enough without the rancor and wrangling done in the name of doctrinal purity, or any number of other reasons.

Taken as a whole the Christian world groans in unbelief and confusion on so many levels we are our own worst enemy. So, consider the efforts over centuries and through the reformation the attempts at unifying the Christian Church after the literal coming of the savior in the flesh.

All those efforts have failed as we continue to harangue one another with perceived wrongs, misdirection, fault finding, and general accusations. Is that not precisely what our antagonist the Father of Lies was engaged in when he wanted the Glory of God and was thrust out of Heaven in a real war along with a third of the host of Heaven that believed as he did?

We might all take some measure of pride in passing the first test to be allowed to come to earth to be further tested by Satan and his minions who failed the first test. In my opinion, we all had better get united or we will be divided when it matters most that we be united. Christians helping Christians what a novel idea, disregarding or at least able to live with differences while we endeavor to spread the Gospel of “love one another”.

[Mark17]

I shiver for those re- writing God’s word...

Like Revelation 22:18-19? 😁

[fishtank]

Christianity and Liberalism - J. Gresham Machen
7 videos3,638 viewsLast updated on Oct 8, 2013

The message of this famous classic of the Christian faith is more desperately needed in the 21st century than it was in the early 20th century. Since Machen wrote, the philosophical and theological trends that generated the issues he was addressing have become more firmly entrenched in the consciousness not only of the culture at large, but of evangelical Christianity in particular. The major thesis of this books is not that theological liberalism is bad, although Machen leaves little doubt of his opinion of it. Rather, the major thesis is that theologically liberal Christianity is not Christianity at all, and that toward every one of the most fundamental teachings of historic Christianity, theological liberalism takes an antithetical stance.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL62C4D2D718F07779

[Elsie]

All those efforts have failed as we continue to harangue one another with perceived wrongs, misdirection, fault finding, and general accusations.

Do you agree with all these quotes from LDS leaders??

---

 

Orson Pratt proclaimed:

"Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the 'whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent" (The Seer).  

Page 273 found HERE LINK

More confusion:  LINK

 

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Questions put to Joseph Smith:

"'Do you believe the Bible?' [Smith:]'If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects of the day that do'. When asked 'Will everybody be damned, but Mormons'? [Smith replied] 'Yes, and a great portion of them, unless they repent, and work righteousness."

Found in section 3 --> http://www.boap.org/LDS/Joseph-Smith/Teachings/T3.html  (search for 119)

 

 

"for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (from Pearl of Great Price 1:12).

Found here --->  LINK

 

"What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world"

Found in section 5 --> http://www.boap.org/LDS/Joseph-Smith/Teachings/T3.html  (search for 270)

 

 

---

Brigham Young stated this repeatedly:

"When the light came to me I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness" (Journal of Discourses Section 5 page 73);

"The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God" (Journal of Discourses  Section  8 page 171);

"With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world" (Journal of Discourses Section  8 page 199);

"Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity" (Journal of Discourses Section 10  page 230).

"And who is there that acknowledges [God's] hand? ...You may wander east, west, north, and south, and you cannot find it in any church or government on the earth, except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (Journal of Discourses Section  6 page 24);

 

 

 

 

---

Orson Pratt also said:

"This great apostasy commenced about the close of the first century of the Christian era, and it has been waxing worse and worse from then until now" (Journal of Discourses , Section 18, page 44);

"But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be ...But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance" (Journal of Discourses , Section 18 page 172).

---

 

President John Taylor stated:

"Christianity...is a perfect pack of nonsense...the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century." (Journal of Discourses , Section 6 page 167);

"Where shall we look for the true order or authority of God? It cannot be found in any nation of Christendom." (Journal of Discourses , Section 10 page 127).

 

---

 

James Talmage said:

"A self-suggesting interpretation of history indicates that there has been a great departure from the way of salvation as laid down by the Savior, a universal apostasy from the Church of Christ". (A Study of the Articles of Faith, p.182).

 

---

 

President Joseph Fielding Smith said:

"Doctrines were corrupted, authority lost, and a false order of religion took the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as it had been the case in former dispensations, and the people were left in spiritual darkness." (Doctrines of Salvation, p.266).

"For hundreds of years the world was wrapped in a veil of spiritual darkness, until there was not one fundamental truth belonging to the place of salvation ...Joseph Smith declared that in the year 1820 the Lord revealed to him that all the 'Christian' churches were in error, teaching for commandments the doctrines of men" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3, p.282).

 

---

 

More recent statements by apostle Bruce McConkie are also very clear:

"Apostasy was universal...And this darkness still prevails except among those who have come to a knowledge of the restored gospel" (Doctrines of Salvation, vol 3, p.265);

"a perverted Christianity holds sway among the so-called Christians of apostate Christendom" (Mormon Doctrine, p.123);

"virtually all the millions of apostate Christendom have abased themselves before the mythical throne of a mythical Christ whom they vainly suppose to be a spirit essence who is incorporeal uncreated, immaterial and three-in-one with the Father and Holy Spirit" (Mormon Doctrine, p.250);

"Gnosticism is one of the great pagan philosophies which antedated Christ and the Christian Era and which was later commingled with pure Christianity to form the apostate religion that has prevailed in the world since the early days of that era." (Mormon Doctrine, p.290).

 

 

 

President George Q. Cannon said:

"After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon" (Gospel Truth, p.324).  <-- can't find an onlink link, but there ARE a lot of hard copy books for sale that include this quote.

 

 

President Wilford Woodruff stated:

"the Gospel of modern Christendom shuts up the Lord, and stops all communication with Him. I want nothing to do with such a Gospel, I would rather prefer the Gospel of the dark ages, so called" (Journal of Discourses , Section 2, page 196).

 

[Elsie]

Thanks for the kind words, however, screaming is not proper technique.

Oh; ok...

I'll keep this in mind.

[Elsie]

In my opinion, we all had better get united or we will be divided when it matters most that we be united.

I know a good place to start...

---

Today, there are as many as 100 organizations claiming to be a part of the Latter Day Saint movement;  most centered in Utah or Missouri. 

Most regard their own group, however small, to be the only legitimate Christian church. Most of these organizations are very small, but overall, but the second largest denomination, the Community of Christ, reports over 200,000 members.

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. The Church of Jesus Christ, and the LDS) is by far the largest Mormon denomination - about 11 million members;  It is a continuation of the "Rocky Mountain Saint" branch of Mormonism.
• The more liberal Community of Christ (formerly called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) is second in size. It is a continuation of the "Prairie Saint" movement. Although generally referred to as "Mormons," they do not use the term themselves, because of its association with polygamy and because they believe the name was not part of the original church.  the "RLDS Church". It was formed in 1860 by remnants of the original church who did not make the trek to Utah. They reject certain beliefs and practices of the LDS church, including marriage sealing for eternity; they allow both men and women into the priesthood; their services are open to the public. They have about 250,000 members.
• Many additional small Mormon faith groups, including:
• • The Church of Christ "With The Elijah Message," established anew in 1929 12,500 members worldwide
  • United Order Effort: a polygamy practicing group, excommunicated by the main LDS church, of perhaps 10,000 members
  • Apostolic United Brethren: about 7,000 members. They disagree with the LDS' decision to allow ordination of African-Americans and allowing women to assume leadership positions.
  • Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite): about 2700 members
  • The Restoration Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It split from the Reorganized Church in 1991 because of the latter's liberal theology. It is centered in Independence, Missouri, and had an estimated membership of 2,500 in mid-1996. They publish a periodical "The Restoration Advocate" six times a year
  • Church of Christ (Temple Lot): about 2400 members
  • Church of Christ (Fetting/Bronson): about 2000 members
  • Aaronic Order: unknown membership; 6 centers; 20 ministers

[wita]

Good one LOL. On your previous point that was then and this is now. The words of old dead prophets matters less than the words of the living.

On the other hand one could also say, the truth hurts, if it’s truth it isn’t going to change, and if it is you wouldn’t want it to change would you!!!!!!!

...but in the interest of loving one another as he has loved us perhaps we should soften the message? Just talking out loud. Not sure that is even a thought on the living Prophet’s table. I know this, they don’t dwell in the past. Time and life go on and there is generally NO discussion of past words said other than what appears in Scripture. Sorry to have to repeat it, but only Bible, Book of Mormon, D&C. and P of GP qualify.