.\u201d Now, here\u2019s what\u2019s interesting: you could arrive at every single one of those positions through standard secular progressive reasoning: appeals to autonomy, identity, equity, and the expansion of the administrative state. You don\u2019t need the Bible to get there. You don\u2019t need the atoning work of Jesus. Christianity is merely decorative. It\u2019s a rhetorical add-on bolted onto a political program that was already fully assembled before Scripture even entered the room.<\/span><\/p>\nHere is what I mean when I say progressive Christianity wears Christianity as a skin suit. The framework is secular progressivism: identity politics, abortion, sexual revolutionary politics, and redistributionist economics. Christian language gets stitched over the top of it to make the whole thing look familiar to voters who grew up in church. It is smarmy and syrupy in its appeals to the \u201cbrotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.\u201d But the theological content has been hollowed out and replaced. What remains is a set of emotional associations strangely redolent with progressivism (funny how that happens, isn\u2019t it?), and it goes something like this: Jesus loved people, therefore expand Medicaid; the prophets cared for the poor, therefore raise the marginal tax rate; love your neighbor, therefore no borders. The assertions don\u2019t hold up when the Bible is used responsibly, but they feel right to people who want the warmth and consolation of faith without the theological demands that counter progressive orthodoxy.<\/span><\/p>\nBut oddly, none of this actually works in the long run for the people who employ it. Liberals don\u2019t need Christianity to reach the conclusions Talarico is reaching. They already have a fully operational secular moral vocabulary \u2014 rights, autonomy, justice, and equity \u2014 that gets them to the same place. So why bother with the theological window dressing? The answer is purely electoral. Democrats have been hemorrhaging religious voters for a generation, and they\u2019re looking for a way to stop the bleeding. Talarico is the proposed solution.<\/span><\/p>\nBut the solution has a structural problem, and sociology is rather clear about it. Liberal theological commitments corrode religious belief across generations. This isn\u2019t a conservative talking point; it\u2019s one of the better-documented findings in the sociology of religion. Churches that accommodate the surrounding culture\u2019s moral assumptions tend to empty out within two or three generations. The children of progressive Christians disproportionately become religiously unaffiliated. Why? Because if Christianity is just a more emotional version of what MSNBC already told you, you don\u2019t need to get up on Sunday morning to hear it. You do not have to tithe; you do not have to bear social scorn for holding to supposedly outmoded dogmas \u201con the wrong side of history.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nTheological substance \u2014 creation, fall, redemption, resurrection, judgment, human dignity, sexual ethics, and the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ \u2014 is precisely what makes Christianity worth believing. Strip that away in the name of openness, and you\u2019ve kept the brand while destroying the product. That Talarico is having a moment should surprise no one. Previous generations of religious progressives had their moment, too, and in time, it all ends the same way: churches mutating into art museums and social justice clubs.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat Talarico and the progressive Christian project are doing is trying to make the Democratic Party look religion-friendly while simultaneously denying religion its actual substance. This betrays what Christianity really is by transforming it into progressive sentiment. Orthodox Christians won\u2019t be persuaded, because they can see the theology has been replaced. Secular progressives don\u2019t need Christianity anyway, so the whole performance ends up as a media-fueled vanity project to bolster progressive politics.<\/span><\/p>\nTalarico may mean well. But Christianity isn\u2019t a political tool. It\u2019s a truth claim about reality at odds with the progressivism of his \u201cChristianity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n* * *<\/p>\n
Andrew T. Walker serves as Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center. You can follow him on X: @AndrewTWalker.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nThe views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Talarico is having a moment. The Texas state representative and Democratic Senate candidate has gone viral more times than most politicians manage to in a full career, partly because he\u2019s young and articulate, and partly because he does something unusual for a Democrat: he talks about Jesus. A lot. He quotes Scripture on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-current-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}