Welcome back to another tour of the craziness that is progressive Christianity. Sometimes, I approach these columns with a theme in mind, but that wasn’t my plan this week. It wasn’t until I finished compiling these examples that I realized that there was a theme, and it’s that progressive churches will preach anything but the gospel.
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Let’s start with a doozy. My friend and colleague Sarah Anderson sent me a post on X featuring a woman pastor (shocker) with sort of a mohawk (bonus) spouting a bunch of left-wing clichés that start with “I’m a pastor…”
I’m a pastor. Of course, I believe that all lives matter, but right now, black lives are the ones under attack.
I’m a pastor. Of course, I take seriously God’s command to welcome those who are foreigners in your land, because you too were once strangers in a strange land.
I’m a pastor. Of course, I believe in the separation of church and state, which means theology never gets codified into law.
I’m a pastor. Of course, I believe in healing brokenness, but you will never hear about shame, judgment, or even sin at this church.
I’m a pastor. Of course, I believe that all lives are sacred, which means that women, and those who can bear children, should make the decisions that they, their doctor, their family, and their God believes is best for them.
I’m a pastor. Of course, I believe in the salvific nature of the cross, but it was because Jesus nonviolently stood up to empire and refused to fight back or back down, not because some immature, unhealthy parent of a God required blood and guts.
I’m a pastor. Of course, I believe we should be exactly as God designed us to be, which means that queer lives are worthy, divine, beloved, and acceptable exactly as they are. No exceptions. (emphasis added)
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“I’m a pastor, but you will never hear about shame, judgment, or even sin at this church.”
Um, so Pastor … why did Jesus die?
Yikes on bikes 😬
pic.twitter.com/En2t5yUwg4— Jennifer Greenberg 🕊️ (@JennMGreenberg) May 14, 2025
So much heresy. So much blasphemy. And none of it is the gospel.
I can’t find where this church is or who this pastor is (probably because I don’t have TikTok), but the handle @faith.ucc0 leads me to believe that it’s part of the ultra-liberal United Church of Christ (UCC). In my search, I found where somebody shared this reel on Instagram. One of the comments caught my attention: “It’s interesting to me how some groups/denominations cling to the traditional elements like stained glass, the collar, candles, etc [sic] but abandon Truth. Has anyone else noticed that? I wonder what that is.”
I know what it is: It’s progressive Christianity.
Related: Progressive Christianity Watch: ‘Glitter Blessings’ and Women Pastors Who Say ‘Queer’ a Lot
Let’s travel to Rockford, Ill., where two churches merged a few years ago. First Presbyterian (a liberal PCUSA congregation) and Second Congregational (a UCC church) merged to form Second First Church. In a recent sermon, a woman pastor (shocker) named Rebecca White Newgren talks about how she’s racist because she doesn’t have enough black friends.
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A woman walked up to me last weekend while I was visiting my alma mater college, and I — We were not friends because she is black. We were not friends because I used to get nervous when I talked to a black person, not because I thought less of them and not because I didn’t want to be friends, but I was intimidated by the difference, nervous I may — might say the wrong thing.
We were not friends because I was naïve and frankly ignorant of what we had in common and all that could have made us friends. And that realization made me sad. I missed out knowing and being friends with an amazing soul. And I need you to know that that was an expression of racism.
This isn’t so much indicative of progressive Christianity as it is of progressivism in general. She didn’t make friends with black people because she was scared of saying things that might offend black people.
The clip isn’t long enough to show us where Newgren actually gets to any biblical content, but it sounds like her primary text is “White Fragility”:
We know a type of creeping, self-perpetuated sin, and we need to be liberated from this as well, delivered by the almighty God from the depths of privilege, raised to new heights through repentance and the retraining of our habits and our biases, shown an alternative to a preference for all things white, an alternative to thinking that what is white is normal.
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Rev. Rebecca White Newgren at First Presbyterian Church of Rockford, Illinois, turns her sermon into a brutal struggle session over her unintentional racism of not having more black friends. pic.twitter.com/hs4Fbq3unU
— Protestia (@Protestia) May 14, 2025
What is she even talking about? I can tell you that she’s not talking about the gospel.
Related: Most Pastors Preach the Gospel — Not This Guy
To close out this edition of the madness, we’re not looking to a video but instead to an image. This one comes to us from a church called HA:N United Methodist Church, whose website says that the congregation “a multi-ethnic and LGBTQIA celebrating church. It was originally founded by a small group of lay Korean American Christians looking for an alternative to evangelical and conservative theology.”
The lead pastor of HA:N is Sulkiro Song, “a queer Korean American woman” (shocker) who uses “she/they” pronouns. The church went virtual in 2020 during the pandemic and has stayed that way.
In February, the church hosted a guest speaker. Kimberley Briana Gordy trumpets her pronouns as “she/hers/ella” — Are these people doing multilingual pronouns now, too? — and a bizarre bio: “Kimberley is a Womanist and LGBTQIA + affirming spiritual caregiver whose identity as a multiple spiritual belonger draws her to those in liminal spaces with a focus on liberation for each individual.”
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The UMC is at it again. pic.twitter.com/bOwd5mAeXs
— Protestia (@Protestia) May 15, 2025
What does any of that mean? It almost sounds like a parody of leftism. But I can tell you what it doesn’t sound like: the gospel.
That’s it for this week. I’ll continue shaking the trees for more low-hanging progressive Christian fruit that will make us laugh and shake our heads at the same time.
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