(Don & Joy Veinot – Midwest Christian Outreach) As human beings, we cannot know the heart of another. We certainly do not know someone’s spiritual condition as it relates to the Lord. However, determining whether individual Progressives are Christian is a completely different question than determining if Progressive Christianity is Christian. This is hardly a new issue. In his excellent 1923 book, Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen compared and contrasted historic Christian teachings with those of theological liberals. At times he would say liberals are religious but not Christian. He didn’t speak to individual salvation but rather the overall doctrines in essential areas. In the Introduction he commented on why these sorts of questions are important,
In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology.
His book was so important because of this “dictionary problem.” Liberals of his time and today were using the same vocabulary as traditional Christianity but providing different definitions to the biblical terms, thus deceiving others. Liberals in Machen’s day were focused on social issues, not eternal redemption. Machen comments:
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Progressive (Social Justice) ‘Christianity’
CRN has compiled a list of false teachers and several other professing Christians we’ve warned you about over the years. The list also contains those we must keep an eye on plus movements, organizations and “frauds, phonies and money-grubbing religious quacks” to mark and avoid as per Romans 16:17-18