Some More On Progressive Evangelicals

Yesterday I shared Doug Pagitt’s list about progressive evangelicals at Onfaith. My comments may have been interpreted as critique, but that’s actually not how I intended them.

The fact is, perhaps for the first time ever, I find myself making peace with the idea of being a “progressive evangelical.” I’ve resisted it in the past because of the politicization of the word “progressive” – which, by the way, Doug does a perfect job of expressing in his piece. “Progressive” can be an uncomfortable label because:

We are seeking a progressive posture to help us engage in all the work of God in the world, not only along one set of binary political choices.

But what I felt was missing in that list, at least to my eyes, was a substantial definition of “evangelical.” In other words, I am a progressive evangelical precisely because I am not just a progressive, or even a progressive Christian more broadly. The evangelical part means something to me, and I think it needs to mean something if this category is going to have any significance or staying power.

To be honest, I think there is something incredibly powerful about combining the emphases of progressive thought with evangelical conviction. In that sense, as I’ve written before, evangelical conveys a commitment in both belief and practice to a biblical and historical Christian gospel. Instead of deifying doubt, evangelicalism clings to the hope of that belief – and welcomes the doubts that come as that which strengthen true belief. Evangelicalism does not, as my friend Karina Kreminski says, put forward a “hermeneutic of doubt.”

This is why I was asking about whether there is room for orthodoxy in Doug’s list. Orthodoxy – or put more generally, historic Christian conviction – is at the core of evangelicalism, and I didn’t see that element in Pagitt’s outline. That said, my favorite point was point 10, and maybe this is Pagitt’s way of expressing the core conviction of evangelicalism that holds even in the progressive form:

10. We still love Jesus

Really. Most of us find Jesus more compelling, more commanding, more converging than ever before. We believe Jesus and in the good news of the reign, commonwealth, or ecosystem of God, and we seek God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven by focusing on love — love for God and neighbor, for outsider and enemy.

Any thoughts on these clarifications or on being a progressive evangelical in general? I’d love to hear them!