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November 4, 2024 19 mins

Nate Williams talks about why he believes progressive theology is parasitic and poisonous, and then offers a challenge to those who would disagree with him.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Progressive theology is a parasite, it is poisonous.
And I also want to talk about achallenge I have for
progressive Christians.
This is the Dangerous FaithPodcast.
My name is Nate Williams, let'sdive in.
The first thing I think that wehave to do is define

(00:36):
progressive theology,progressive Christianity and a
lot of other people.
They've written books, theyhave podcast episodes, and so I
will not go in depth.
There are others you can lookto for more details on those
things.
I think of Mike Winger, I thinkof Elisa Childers and others.
There have been again thesethree areas, three battlefields.

(01:09):
We've had the Jesus Wars, theBible Wars and then the Social
Culture Wars, and progressivetheology will walk through where
they land or the spectrum oftheir positions in all three
battle areas.
Let's talk about Jesus.

(01:30):
The Orthodox Christian believesthat he is fully man, fully God
, so two natures, divine andhuman, and we believe that he
died, was buried, resurrectedand ascended.
It was a physical event inhistory.

(01:52):
We believe in something calledthe penal substitutionary
atonement theory, which is hewas punished on our behalf.
The Father poured out his wrathupon Jesus for our sins, he
took our place and he sufferedour punishment.

(02:13):
And it was awful, it was ugly.
We read about this in theGospels and this is what
Orthodox Christians believe,among other things as well.
There are other theories of theatonement, like Christus,
victor and others, but that'sone of them.
He took our place andprogressive theologians,

(02:36):
progressive Christians they'llpush back, depending on the
individual, on different partsof that, and so they might
believe that Jesus was a specialman.
They might believe that Jesus,while a good guy, he was a
sinner.
They might believe that hisdeath, burial and resurrection

(02:57):
was a spiritual resurrection,etc.
Etc.
They don't like the whole.
Jesus took our place,punishment was poured upon him
by the Father, because theythink that's barbaric and you
can't do that, and so anyway.
So they'll shy away from Jesusand Orthodox biblical
Christianity when it comes towho he is and what he did for us

(03:20):
and what he's doing for us.
Still, that's the Jesus wars.
Progressive theologians will goin the opposite direction.
And then there's the Bible warsas an Orthodox believer a
Orthodox just means historically, biblically faithful Christian.
We believe the Bible to be theword of God.

(03:41):
We believe the Bible to be theword of God, true, without fault
regarding the originalmanuscripts, and we believe and
obey the Bible.
When we contradict the Bible,we're the ones in the wrong, and
not the Bible.
Progressive theologians,progressive Christians they hold

(04:05):
that.
No, the Bible can be backwards,bigoted, misogynistic.
They don't like Paul and hisviews on women, they don't like
the Old Testament and thetreatment of the Canaanites, and
so what they'll do is they'lltake scissors and erasers to the
Bible and they'll cut it up.
They'll shape it how they want,but basically the Bible is a

(04:25):
backwards, bigoted book and itneeds reinterpretation.
So those are the Bible wars.
You think abortion, you thinkmarriage and transgender
ideology.
Progressive liberal Christiansthey tend to be pro-choice, so

(04:58):
pro-abortion, they tend to bepro any definition of marriage
that makes you happy, whereasthe Bible defines marriage as
between one man and one woman,both in Genesis and Matthew, and
then with transgender ideology.
They're very progressive thereas well.
You can be whatever you want tobe and believe whatever you
want to believe about yourself.

(05:19):
Who cares about science?
Who cares about theology, allof that, and so that is
progressive theology in anutshell.
You can also throw in thingslike universalism, religious
pluralism, throw out originalsin, that we're all sinners in
need of a savior.
Sometimes they'll believe thatwe're basically good, so on and

(05:41):
so forth.
Just very progressivetheologically, politically,
culturally, and my contention isthat progressive theology is
parasitic, it is poisonous.
Then, off of those claims I ammaking, I have a challenge for a

(06:03):
progressive Christian.
I put Christian in air quotesbecause I'm not always sure,
depending on the individual, ifthey are a Christian.
But let's start with a parasite.
Progressive theology is aparasite.
You define a parasite I havethis online, the definition an

(06:23):
organism that lives and feeds onor in another organism of a
different species and causesharm to its host.
So it's an organism that feedsoff another organism and causes
harm to that other organism inwhich it resides.
Parasites are bad, they'reharmful and something that's

(06:49):
interesting to note a parasitecannot exist on its own.
It has to have a host andprogressive theology.
It starts out inevitably withingood, healthy, biblical
churches and denominations andit feeds off those things until

(07:15):
it takes over.
We've seen zombie animals thatare taken over by bacteria or
bugs that are taken over byparasites, and so the bug or the
animal moves around, but it'snot controlled by itself.
It's been taken over bysomething that's controlling its
muscles and its actions.

(07:35):
That is progressive theology.
It is parasitic and not to gettoo far ahead of myself, but
part of my proof for this is thetheology.
It is parasitic, and not to gettoo far ahead of myself, but
part of my proof for this is thechallenge.
But moving on, we'll get to thepart where progressive theology
is a poison.
What it does is it kills itshost, it kills the organism, the

(08:00):
, the church, the denominationin which it took over, in which
it parasitically invaded.
And how do I know this?
Well, in the 1900s, variousdenominations fought the three
wars.
They fought over jesus, hisidentity.
They fought over the bible,what it is, and its authority.

(08:21):
They fought over the social andculture wars.
And progressive theologians andChristians overtook the
mainline denominations, one byone, by one, with the United
Methodist Church being the mostrecent casualty just within this
last little bit, the last fewyears.
And what it does is it's apoison, it starts to kill the

(08:43):
denomination.
And so I have different articlesfrom Christianity Today talking
about how Methodists, lutherans, presbyterians, they just
started to decline.
Let me find the article todecline.
Let me find the article.
And basically, mainlinedenominations are showing drops

(09:05):
of 15, 25, even 40%.
Over the span of the lastdecade, evangelical
denominations have been holdinga little bit steady.
They're declining, but veryslowly.
And so mainline Protestants thegrouping scholars use for
denominations like the UMC, theELCA, the PCUSA.

(09:31):
They used to outnumberevangelical denominations by a
significant margin in the 1970s,in 1975, in the 1970s.
In 1975, just over 30% ofAmericans were mainline while

(09:52):
about 21% were evangelicals.
But by 1983, there were moreevangelicals in the United
States than mainliners, and bythe late 1980s evangelicals had
become about a quarter of thepopulation 25%, and the mainline
was around 20%.
In 1993, evangelicals hit theirpeak in the data just around
30% and have been in a slowdecline since then.

(10:15):
Between 2000 and 2018, thedecline among evangelicals has
been really modest, about twopercentage points.
But the mainline has declinedthree times as fast from this
time period, dropping from 16%in 2000 to just over 10% in 2018

(10:36):
.
So again, this is aChristianity Today article
titled Mainline Protestants arestill declining, but that's not
good news for evangelicals.
One thing that also needs to benoted when I say evangelical, I
often mean the version of themainline denominations that
tried to be faithful.
So the conservative offshootsyou think about the SBC,

(10:58):
southern Baptist Convention.
You think about for the UMC.
There's now the GlobalMethodist Church, gmc.
They're the versions of thedenomination that didn't
compromise in the wars the JesusWars, the Bible Wars or the
social wars and then alsothere's been the rise of the

(11:18):
non-denominational church and sonon-denominational church it's
harder to get those numbers, butthey've been increasing as well
, and they would count asevangelicals.
Let's see going down I'm tryingto find the number the 2020 US

(11:40):
religion census tallied 4,000more non-denominational churches
than in 2010, andnon-denominational church
attendance rose by 6.5 millionduring this time, and so
non-denominational churcheswould fall under the evangelical
umbrella, and that's importantto know.

(12:01):
So evangelicals, numerically,are doing much better.
However, progressive theology iskilling the mainline
denominations.
The strongest example of thisis in the Episcopal Church, and
there is one person in theEpiscopal Church, reverend

(12:21):
Dwight.
I'm not sure how to pronouncethis person's last name, but
Reverend Dwight basically saysby 2050, okay, so roughly 25
years from now, by 2050, theEpiscopal Church will
effectively cease to exist.
Numerically, in a span ofroughly a century, progressive

(12:48):
theology will have killed one ofthe oldest, the most historic,
used to be relatively orthodoxand biblically faithful
denominations relativelyorthodox and biblically faithful
denominations.
Progressive theology in the1900s took over and within a
century, will have killed a oncemighty denomination.

(13:09):
And you see those numbers allover the place.
So mainlines are collapsing.
Evangelical denominations, whencombined with
non-denominational churches, aredoing much, much better when
combined with non-denominationalchurches are doing much, much
better.
So progressive theology, it'sparasitic.
It doesn't exist by itself, ithas to attach onto a host and

(13:29):
it's poisonous.
It kills from within.
And so you might be hung up onthe parasitic part.
You might be like, okay, youmay have demonstrated aspects of
poison.
What about being a parasite?
Can you prove that?
I have a challenge and I'mwilling to be wrong and I will
apologize if I am.
A parasite can exist by itself.

(13:53):
This is the challenge, part ofthe episode.
You think about rust on a car.
The car can exist by itselfwithout rust, but rust can exist
without some sort of metal, andthat's what I mean by parasitic
.
Some things can exist withoutthe other.
Progressive theology will nevercreate something flourishing.

(14:19):
Look at seminaries like the IvyLeague schools.
You think Yale and Harvard.
Those were once faithfulseminaries to train up Christian
ministers.
Progressive theology took itover.
You think about denominations,the mainline denominations
Lutherans, methodists,episcopalians, baptists.

(14:41):
Again, progressive theologydidn't start any of those things
.
They were once vibrant andmajor forces in American life
and now they're no longerMainline Protestants.
Basically, they're in theextreme minority and they have
no influence.
Progressive theology doesn'tstart things, it doesn't build

(15:05):
things.
My challenge is this Name, aseminary name, a denomination,
started by progressivetheologians from scratch and
built from there.
Name for me.
My challenge to you is this ifyou're a progressive Christian,

(15:28):
name for me something thatstarted out progressive, not
started out conservativeevangelical no, not started out

(15:49):
conservative evangelical no,started out based on the tenets
of Jesus.
May or may not be God, hisresurrection may or may not be
literal, the Bible may or maynot be the word of God, but it's
any number.
You can be man, woman, unicorn,attack, helicopter, whatever
you want to be.
Name a denomination or aseminary that started out
progressive and then flourished.

(16:10):
Grew from there to beculturally rich and powerful,
effective and influential,beautiful grew numerically.
That's my challenge.
If you don't think, progressivetheology is parasitic and it
needs a host from which it caneat its way all the way to the

(16:31):
top, that's my challenge.
That's my challenge.
I don't think you can find aseminary or a denomination
because, again, it's death, it'sa sickness, it is a disease.
You're not going to grow fromthere.
You think about the biblicalwisdom of false teachers.

(16:51):
You will know them by theirfruit.
False theology you will know itby its fruit, and its fruit is
death.
So again, that's my challenge.
I hold progressive theology tobe parasitic and poisonous, and
I think I have the numbers toprove that.
But I'm willing to be wrong.
And I think, once the Westernworld completes its collapse in

(17:12):
Europe and America and it's justtaken over by other forces,
whether radical Islam, whetheratheistic communism in the style
of China, I think if the Westis overtaken completely,
progressive theology will die.
It'll die itself, and thenit'll be up to the orthodox,

(17:32):
conservative, evangelicalChristians to rebuild and then,
once they rebuild, it'll comeback, but it will never exist on
its own as a flourishing,growing movement.
All right, y'all, what did youthink?
Do you agree with me?
Is progressive theologyparasitic and poisonous?
Do you think a progressiveChristian can answer my

(17:56):
challenge?
Well, if so, let me know.
You can reach out to me throughsocial media.
We have a Facebook, instagramand Twitter account.
You can also leave comments indifferent ways on various
podcast platforms as well.
I would love to know yourthoughts.
Anyways, that's all I have fortoday.
I hope y'all are having a greattime out there.

(18:18):
Until next time.
I'll talk with you later, thankyou.
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