Why I Am a Progressive Christian

Many an individual question my religious faith as I do not fit into the general mold of the area in which I was raised, that being the Bible Belt. Virginia is a state of mainly Evangelicals, and I was raised to be an Evangelical. However, as I got older, I came to realize that this was not at all my faith or what I believed. In fact, much of it couldn't be farther from my beliefs. Thus began a search to find my own faith and its place in the Christian tradition. So I'd like to detail my journey for other Christians, and religious individuals in general, who are afraid to take the leap out of their childhood sect and into their own faith.

When I was a young child, I was taught that Christians, and only Christians, would go to Heaven, and that being a Christian was a simple matter of saying the right prayer. The older I became, the more suspect this widely accepted doctrine became for me. Eventually, I became convinced that this belief was a product of the church, not really a teaching of the one I followed, that being Jesus Christ.

I also began to look at the Bible, with which I am very familiar, in a new light. I started realizing the mythological nature of books such as Genesis and the way in which certain New Testament writers seemed to contradict themselves. I was always assured that the Bible was "the inspired inerrant Word of God," but this seemed like a cop-out answer for the questions I was raising. Why would God write a book full of hatred, genocide, and inter-writer confusion? This book, while monumentally important in the Christian faith, has to be something other than God's inspired and inerrant word. But what was it?

This is the question I had to answer to the best of my abilities, so I began to search. I found that the Bible was a rich epic history of Christianity and Judaism, a written collection of humankind and the ways in which they experienced the world around them and the presence of God. This wasn't a factually sound rulebook made by God for Evangelical Christians, it was much more. This marked my first official break with the Evangelical church as I was labeled a "false prophet and antichrist" for expressing my disagreement with the inerrancy doctrine.

I also couldn't accept the Evangelical church's double-standard on violence. How was the termination of a non-autonomous fetus markedly more evil than killing of living, breathing human beings in the name of justice. Why were we taught that God was love and then told in turn not to accept the loving relationships of those different from ourselves? Ask the church and you'll receive an oftentimes longwinded and feeble attempt to tie Bible passages together to prove the certainty of others' "sinfulness."

Ask whether or not Paul was a gay man, if the creation story was simply a mythological development, or if just maybe the afterlife was a primitive people's attempt at understanding the mystery of death and you'll be met with defensive anger, an anger that has quite obviously no affinity with a God of love. Sadly, many will continue to accept the church's official and poor explanations that cause nothing but pain and isolation for many. But for those able to break free, they will discover a Christianity rooted in love and service. That is the Christianity of which I choose to be a part. I do not mean to insinuate that those with traditional beliefs are always unloving and selfish, but rather that a dated system provides no hope for a bright future.