I was talking with a progressive Christian pastor yesterday and again encountered the argument that there is a true Christianity that is inherently progressive and that Christians who deviate from that type of “authentic” Christianity are just heretics at odds with their faith.

I think I get why this rhetoric is so seductive for pastors, it lets them function as a moral authority, and overall that might be good, but at the end of the day, it’s bad analysis and a misunderstanding of history.

Slaveholding, genocide, misogyny, transphobia, and a lot of other stuff have all been Orthodox political positions at one time or another!

If you believe that Christianity is *truly* progressive and the bad stuff is just bad actors you basically have made a Christianity that is a get-out-of-jail-free card for yourself.

If you’re going to bother with religion, you have to find ways to metabolize all of it and recognize that it’s a hermeneutic project where you just accept some of it and reject some of it, but regardless you’re responsible for all of it.

All of that doesn’t make for good preaching though! There’s also something important and powerful about being able to call people out. So, I don’t really know what to do with that.

Religion is complicated I guess.