Short Take: What is progressive Christianity and what issues are the ones battled over?

Tell us what progressive Christianity is and some of the issues that are being battled over as you present in this film.

Progressive Christianity is a little hard to pin down as far as coming up with a definition everyone could agree upon, but there are some common things that a lot of progressive Christians believe. The main issue is with the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, so they would really deny that the Bible is the Word of God. Therefore, their feelings become the authority, not Scripture. If you ever heard of anything called Red Letter Christianity, essentially taking Jesus' words and elevating those over the rest of Scripture, but even with that view, they're still picking and choosing Jesus' words. Another aspect is they will deny hell, and of course Jesus talked about hell more than anyone in the Bible. The other issue, and this is mainly what this film is about, is the atonement. They really deny what is called the penal substitutionary view of the atonement, that Jesus died in your place to pay the penalty for your sins under the wrath of God. They will call this cosmic child abuse. A lot of the ways that they describe this are really just straw men versions of this doctrine.

It's not really represented accurately. So what I try to do in the film is to show the biblical view of that doctrine and tear down their straw men. You're basically left with a gospel that's no gospel at all. It ends up becoming just love God, love people. That's actually a summary of the law. That's not the gospel.