The New Heretics: Skepticism, Secularism, and Progressive Christianity by Rebekka King (review)

Reviewed by: The New Heretics: Skepticism, Secularism, and Progressive Christianity by Rebekka King Mark Mattes The New Heretics: Skepticism, Secularism, and Progressive Christianity. By Rebekka King. New York: New York University Press, 2023. 257 pp. What would a church guided by John Shelby Spong look like? Rebekka King does not ask this specific question, but she explores similar questions in her ethnographic study of five Canadian congregations which define themselves as “progressively Christian.” This book does not offer quantitative studies, but instead interviews and summations of group experiences, such as discussions at book clubs within these congregations. Two of the congregations are United Church of Canada, two Anglican, and one Lutheran. What makes for Christian progressivism? In a word, Christian progressives enjoy Christian practices like singing, liturgical worship, book clubs, advocating for justice, and helping people, but they eschew traditional Christian beliefs. Progressives value justice, humanitarianism, and social concern but dismiss traditional theology as outdated. They reject not only beliefs like the virgin birth, which many mainline Protestants would also reject, but even core matters like the existence of God. In their way of thinking, the scientific method comes packaged with a naturalist metaphysics, where to believe in miraculous interventions is a sacrificium intellectus. Even stronger, there is an ethical imperative to be an atheist. The God of the Bible plays favorites, has a chosen people. Such favoritism violates fairness (23–4). Hence, many progressive Christians are atheists. Progressive Christianity has largely grown out of, but is also different from, mainline Protestantism. Liberal Protestants demythologize traditional Christian symbols and look for a deeper truth behind the symbol. Progressives want to remove the symbols entirely. King writes, “Despite their discomfort, most progressive Christians indicate that they are resigned to their fate of becoming atheists because they see it as the most rational and honest end for Christianity” (154). King discloses that while she shares some of the same goals of the progressive politics, she herself does not identify with the movement. Her interviewees tended to be “more radical” (32), and, in most cases, dramatically older than her. Generally, she was thirty years younger than the other participants in the progressive book clubs with whom she engaged (39). Representatives of the congregations [End Page 492] she studied, her interviewees were at least middle aged, and most ranged from their 60s to 80s. An exception was a college-age student active in the movement. “Many progressive Christians were apprehensive about the lack of young people in their congregations and the sustainability of their movement” (195). King points out that it is not merely conservatives who would be put off by progressive Christianity. The majority of progressive Christians were involved in activities that assume disposable income and education (50), enterprises neither appealing to nor available to lower classes. All progressives were concerned to alter liturgical language and purify it of words which could trigger painful memories (65). “Whereas a metaphorical approach determines that there is no antidote to the problems inherent in language, and therefore the real or pure intention of the communicative act is located somewhere beyond language, the referential approach favored by progressive Christians seeks to refine language to a point where it can communicate essential truths in a nonmetaphorical manner” (166–7). Christianity has always adapted to its environments, yet presumably without selling out its core. As here defined, progressive Christianity however appears to do just that. It is composed of nostalgic secular humanists who like mainline Protestant behaviors but whose creed differs markedly. The movement’s inability to attract younger generations suggests that its days are numbered. Mark Mattes Grand View University Des Moines, Iowa Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc

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