What Is Progressive Christianity?
If you’ve stumbled onto this blog, chances are you’ve heard “progressive Christianity” tossed around at a dinner party or seen it in your social media feed—maybe with genuine curiosity, maybe with a raised eyebrow. I get it. The phrase carries weight, and not everyone’s sure what to make of it.
So let me try to explain what it actually means, at least from where I’m standing.
The Short Answer
Progressive Christianity is a movement within the Christian faith that reinterprets customs and beliefs through the lens of modern perspectives on spirituality, justice, and inclusion.
But honestly? That definition doesn’t capture much. Let me break down what this looks like when you’re actually living it.
Questions Over Certainty
The heart of progressive Christianity? It’s less about having the right answers and more about being brave enough to ask hard questions.
Can I love the Bible without treating every word as literal history? Can my understanding of God grow and change without my faith collapsing? What if the God I learned about in Sunday school feels too narrow for the complexity I see in the world?
Progressive Christianity doesn’t treat these questions as threats. They’re invitations to go deeper. Doubt isn’t faith’s enemy—rigid certainty that refuses to evolve is.
We engage critically with our religious heritage. We challenge conventional doctrines. Not because we hate tradition, but because we believe faith should be intellectually honest and spiritually life-giving.
Jesus the Teacher, Not Just the Doctrine
A lot of conservative Christianity focuses on getting your beliefs about Jesus exactly right—the mechanics of atonement, specific doctrinal checkboxes, theological statements you need to affirm.
I’m more interested in what Jesus actually taught and how he lived.
Love your neighbor, especially when it’s inconvenient. Welcome people others have pushed to the margins. Challenge the systems that crush vulnerable people. Practice hospitality so radical it makes others uncomfortable. Lead with mercy instead of judgment.
We see Jesus as a moral teacher whose life demonstrates what it means to embody God’s love in the world. That doesn’t mean we deny his significance—it means we prioritize following his example over defending rigid doctrines about him.
The Bible: A Living Document
I don’t read the Bible literally. I read it seriously.
There’s a difference. Reading seriously means I pay attention to the historical moment when these texts were written, the cultures that shaped them, the literary styles the authors used. The Bible includes poetry, metaphor, ancient legal codes, competing perspectives—not one unified voice delivered straight from heaven.
This lets me ask what these ancient stories might say about climate change, or systemic racism, or how we treat immigrants. I’m not twisting scripture to fit my politics—I’m wrestling with how timeless wisdom speaks to right now.
The Bible becomes a living document that speaks into our lives, not a static rulebook frozen in time.
Core Values That Define Us
Radical Inclusion
Everyone deserves love and acceptance. Full stop. No asterisks, no fine print.
That includes LGBTQ+ people. People with disabilities. Women who want to lead. People of every race and ethnicity. Folks who’ve been wounded by church. People who’ve never darkened a church door.
This isn’t about begrudging tolerance—it’s about celebration. Diversity isn’t something we put up with. It’s how God designed things to work.
Justice as Faith in Action
James wrote that faith without works is dead. I think about that a lot.
My faith can’t be separated from justice work. Advocating for racial equity, pushing for immigration reform, fighting for disability rights, protecting the environment, working toward economic fairness—these aren’t extracurriculars. They’re what it looks like to take Jesus seriously.
The progressive congregations I know don’t just pray about injustice. They show up. They organize. They partner with community groups and sometimes even secular movements, because creating change matters more than protecting religious territory.
Learning from Other Traditions
I don’t believe Christianity has cornered the market on divine truth. God is bigger than any single religion.
So I engage with people from other faith traditions—and people with no religious affiliation at all. I learn from them. I collaborate with them. The idea that only Christians have access to wisdom about the sacred? That’s never sat right with me.
Where This Came From
Progressive Christianity didn’t just appear overnight. You can trace its roots back to early 20th-century thinkers like Walter Rauschenbusch and Harry Emerson Fosdick, who started asking how faith could hold its own alongside scientific discovery and biblical scholarship.
The civil rights movement pushed things forward. Pastors like Martin Luther King Jr. showed what it looked like when Christianity couldn’t be pried apart from the fight for justice.
Since then, the movement’s kept growing—expanding to embrace LGBTQ+ folks, center disability justice, take environmental care seriously, and more.
It’s not a destination you arrive at. It’s a path you keep walking.
But What About Tradition?
People sometimes think progressive Christians want to toss out everything from the past. That’s not it.
I have deep respect for Christian history—ancient liturgies, contemplative practices, theological wisdom built up over two thousand years. Some of that stuff is beautiful and true and worth keeping.
But respecting tradition doesn’t mean I’m imprisoned by it. When an old interpretation causes harm or excludes people, I’m willing to say, “We can do better than this.”
Faith is alive. It grows. It changes. Treating it like a museum exhibit kills what makes it powerful.
The Pushback Is Real
I won’t sugarcoat it: progressive Christianity gets plenty of heat.
Some conservative Christians see us as dangerous, as people watering down the faith or letting culture call the shots. We’re accused of abandoning orthodoxy, of caring more about being liked than being faithful.
Those accusations hurt, especially when they come from family or old friends.
But here’s why I keep going: a faith that crumbles under questioning wasn’t sturdy to begin with. The God I know doesn’t need me to defend outdated theology. And the gospel Jesus preached is big enough for doubt, diversity, and disagreement—even when that makes people uncomfortable.
But There’s Hope
Despite the resistance, progressive Christianity is growing.
More people are walking away from toxic theology and looking for communities where they can ask questions without getting shut down. Social media’s connected progressive Christians who used to feel isolated in conservative areas. Online, they’ve found others who share their struggles and hopes.
As culture shifts toward accepting more diversity—in sexuality, gender, ability, race—progressive Christianity offers faith that doesn’t force you to check your values at the door.
You don’t have to pick between following Jesus and standing up for justice. Between ancient wisdom and contemporary understanding. Between being faithful and being honest.
Progressive Christianity says you can hold all of it. Faith doesn’t have to shrink to fit in a box.
Is This for You?
Maybe. Maybe not. Only you can figure that out.
If your faith feels too small for your questions—if you’ve been hurt by churches that excluded you or people you love—if you want a Christianity that puts love ahead of judgment—then yeah, this might resonate.
But progressive Christianity isn’t about finding the “correct” version of faith. It’s about finding faith that’s honest, that welcomes everyone, that actually gives life instead of taking it.
It’s about believing your questions have value, your experience matters, and God’s love is wider than any fence we try to build around it.
Want to explore more? Check out my blog posts on progressive theology, or subscribe to my newsletter for weekly reflections on navigating faith in the modern world.
Still have questions? Good. That means you’re doing it right.
