Alisa Childers and Anne Kennedy discuss the late Progressive Christian, Rachel Held Evans.
Here was Anne Kennedy’s initial blog after Rachel died. There she said she hoped Rachel “turned in her final hours to the true Christ.”
This caused a lot of backlash. Anne responded to one of her commenters who tried to tell Anne that her and Rachel were at the same table. (Like Historic Christianity and Progressive could be at the same table.)
Anne responded here. “And so we are not sitting at opposite sides of one long table. We are not eating of the one bread and drinking out of the one cup. We are talking about two different faiths, two different kinds of love, two different lords.”
Rachel Held Evan’s mentor was Progressive, Peter Enns. Enns wrote a book about the Bible and said “The Bible is an ancient book and we shouldn’t be surprised to see it act like one. So seeing God portrayed as a violent, tribal warrior is not how God is but how he was understood to be by the ancient Israelites communing with God in their place and time.”
So Peter Enns basically says the way the Bible describes God isn’t how God is and that was just their understanding. That’s progressive Christianity and it is the break down of the validity of Scripture which starts the whole house to crumble. That’s why we are NOT at the same table with Progressives.
Rachel Held Evans wrote a book called “Inspired” and said “But this is the deleterious snare of fundamentalism: It claims that the heart is so corrupted by sin, it simply cannot be trusted to sort right from wrong, good from evil, divine from depraved. Instinct, intuition, conscience, critical thinking—these impulses must be set aside whenever they appear to contradict the biblical text, because the good Christian never questions the “clear teachings of Scripture”; the good Christian listens to God, not her gut.”
I, Teresa, think this goes right along with the teachings of Progressive Christianity that says “Your heart is good” and probably is behind the teachings of progressives that don’t believe in original sin.
She (Rachel) definitely had a human centered hermeneutic. The hermeneutic that you then use is your definition of love. You can accept certain things from the Bible based on your definition of love. And that way you can cut out all of the Old Testament except for some of the psalms….you have a little bit from the gospels although not very much because Jesus talked about hell a lot..then you don’t have to have Paul and the book of Revelation doesn’t make any sense. ~Anne
They take what they want from the Bible based on their definition of love.
Rachel (arrived at her deception) by using these methods to interpret the Bible:
1. Historical criticism who don’t believe the Bible is divinely inspired.
2. Liberation theology which is a way of interpreting the Bible through a lens of oppression and liberation
3. Feminist Bible interpretation
Her (Rachel) gospel is the exchange. You exchange moral therapeutic deism for a progressive therapeutic deism. You are still left with the human person trying to do good. You never encounter the work of Jesus, the grace of Jesus, the power of Jesus, the power of the word and the Scripture. You are always left with your own stuff and your own self and your own effort at the end of the day. That was her gospel. It is a great tragedy. ~Anne
