I’ve been thinking about “progressive Christianity” over the past couple of years. Very often these mind-journeys are spurred by John Pavlovitz, whose posts get shared frequently on social media and whose quotes are sometimes turned into memes. There are also various Facebook pages like The Christian Left and ProgressiveChristianity, just to name a few.

The longer I’m an atheist, the more all religions start to look the same — the nonsensical claims about a deity and/or “spiritual world”, the often archaic rules for life, the not-very-tempting promises of “reward” after death, etc. But anyone with any sense can see that each religion has its gradations, from the ultra-fundamental to the relaxed and often liberal adherents. Often, they’re called “moderates”, as in the phrase “moderate Muslims”, to indicate groups that are more tolerant, less stringent. Typically, they’re more modern, more in tune with secular society.

In Christianity (and possibly in other religions, though I’m unaware of it) there is a branch labeled “progressive” and/or “liberal”, in that its ideals often match up with secular progressives and/or liberals. So much so that I start to wonder why they’re hanging on to the religious part at all.

My own background in Christianity makes it difficult for me to understand progressive Christianity and how it works. My experience in the Assemblies Of God was mostly apolitical — we were concerned primarily with saving souls and “getting closer to God”. When we did touch on politics it was almost always the regressive point of view (anti-LGBTQ rights or anti-taxation, for example). And just when many evangelical Americans began swerving hard into right-wing politics, I began leaving Christianity.

When I peek back into evangelical circles now, I see many things I recognize — though now it’s often a parody of its former self. But because I (try to) run in progressive circles online, I see a ton of self-identified Christians trying to distance themselves from the religious right. Pavlovitz is one of these, but there are plenty of others. I have self-identified Christian family members and friends who are pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-feminism, in favor of progressive taxation, and who believe in climate change.

I think the effort is admirable, and of course I want more people to hold progressive ideas and fewer people to be drawn into the oppressive ideology of the religious right. But I can’t for the life of me figure out where they’re coming from.

At least with regressive Christians, I can read their source material — twenty centuries of church doctrine, not to mention the Bible itself. Some of their positions might be internally inconsistent (because the Bible itself is contradictory), but when something is clear, they latch onto it and stick with it. Though these positions are often morally repugnant, at least I can see how they got there.

But the liberal ones, the progressive ones, I don’t understand. I don’t know how a person can at the same time profess to believe in the God of the Bible, the Jesus of the New Testament, and also pretend the rest of their Holy Book doesn’t exist.

For example, Pavlovitz wrote a blog entry in 2017 called “No, Being Gay (Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgender) Is Not A Sin”. Okay, I agree with the title, and as an atheist I’m convinced all of “God’s laws” are made-up, but where did he get the idea? Because he still believes in God, still believes in the Bible (he says). In the actual blog entry, he makes the startling claim that the Bible isn’t against anything LGBTQ. Though he does cite a few examples of where certain folk are probably misunderstanding something, he ignores that the Bible is indeed fairly clearly against it.

It’s one thing for us progressives to point out the hypocrisy of right-wingers quoting Leviticus 20:13 when they ignore other laws and rules handed down by God himself in Leviticus. But to me it’s just as hypocritical to claim the Bible is cool with gay people when what it actually says is that they should be put to death.

The problem here isn’t that Pavlovitz and others want to advocate for progressive positions. That part is admirable. I firmly believe that any well-considered set of morals would coincide with most progressive positions.

No, the problem is that they’re still trying to use the same source material as their regressive brethren. And if you stick with that source material, the regressives are going to win every time.

A similar conundrum presents itself in the historical case of slavery in the U.S. Many Christian groups used the Bible to justify owning slaves. Some people are quick to point out that progressive Christians were on the other side, fighting for abolition. Well, good for them, but the Bible was on the side of the slave-owners. Not only does it never once give the opinion that chattel slavery is immoral, but it in fact repeatedly gives instructions on how to buy and sell slaves, who may or may not be sold into permanent slavery, and how to treat ones slaves. I’m all for being progressive, and I’m 100 percent anti-slavery, but there’s no way I can use the Bible or Christian doctrines to get to that position.

Some Christians, of course, never claim to believe in the Bible. This makes it much easier for them to be progressive. Weirdly, some of them still belong to churches that believe the Bible, and this is something else I can’t wrap my head around. Several Catholics I know will readily admit the Bible is junk — full of historical and scientific inaccuracies, loaded with misogyny, and so on — but yet they profess allegiance to a church that still adheres to the Bible and claims to get all its doctrines therefrom.

On a handful of topics, the Bible clearly is progressive — such as the multitude of admonitions to treat foreigners with kindness and compassion when they enter your country, or the continuous entreaties to help the poor. These two in particular were part of the widening gulf between myself and many conservative Christian family members and it’s damn weird when an atheist is more biblical than a Christian. These are two positions on which every Christian should be progressive — because the Bible never wavers on them.

On other currently hot political topics, like abortion or gun rights, the Bible is entirely silent — it only mentions the destruction of fetuses when God is predicting really nasty ways to punish people, and of course guns hadn’t been invented yet so God didn’t know about them back then.

And on still other topics, it can be awfully confusing. An example of this is how and whether religion should interact with government. In the Old Testament, God seems strongly in favor of theocracy and in fact commands it explicitly, while in the New Testament he is apparently unconcerned with the functioning of civil government (other than minor reminders to pay taxes and pray for civil leaders.

And much of the Bible is, of course, deplorable. Outstanding examples are the anti-LGBTQ screeds and slavery-is-fine laws mentioned above, but also the consistent and overt degredation of women.

I don’t mean this entry to be another Bible study — I think some of those examples needed to be mentioned in order to make my point, if I can indeed get around to making it. I also hope this isn’t another example of “the left eating its own”. It should be clear that, at least on the social and political issues mentioned here, Pavlovitz and his ilk are on my side. Their advocacy is certainly welcome. When certain rights are under attack, you take help where you can get it.

All I mean to say is that it’s confusing. Perhaps this is a result of my fundamentalist upbringing — that I can only see the Bible in terms of literalism or not-at-all. But maybe the confusion isn’t on my side. Maybe it’s the progressive Christians who are holding onto, for whatever reason, a religious belief and a book that can’t possibly fit their improved morality.