I have had many conversations with people who call themselves “progressive Christians.” I’m still no closer to understanding what that label means. For some it seems to be loosely orthodox belief with a good dose of liberal politics (not the economic kind). For others, its a completely reimagined spirituality that has more in common with Oprah than with Jesus. The label seems to cover everything and requires almost nothing.
In an interview some time ago with the late Christopher Hitchens (an atheist), Marilyn Sewell (a Unitarian and self-described liberal Christian) gives front row seats to the kind of reimagined spirituality I’m talking about. Hitchens didn’t flinch to call her out on it.
Marilyn Sewell:
“Well, let me ask you this: When you speak of religion in your book “God Is Not Great”, it seems to me that you’re generally referring to fundamentalist faiths of various kinds. Now I’m a liberal Christian, um, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?”
Christopher Hitchens:
“Well, only in this respect. I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ (in other words the Messiah), and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you are really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”
Marilyn Sewell:
“Well I, I disagree with that. I consider myself a Christian. I believe in the Jesus story as story, as narrative, and Jesus as a, a, a person whose life is exemplary and that, that I want to follow. But I do not believe in all that stuff that I just, uh, just outlined.”
Christopher Hitchens:
“Well I, I simply have to tell you that every, every major Christian and theologian has said that, without the resurrection and without the forgiveness of sins… it’s meaningless… Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
Marilyn Sewell:
“Yes.”
Christopher Hitchens:
“[Do you have] Faith in the resurrection?”
Marilyn Sewell:
“Ah… You know, I don’t believe in the resurrection literally. I do believe in a new life…”
Christopher Hitchens:
“A way to believe in it?”
Marilyn Sewell:
“The way I believe in the resurrection is, I believe that one can go from a death in this life, in the sense of being dead to the world and dead to people and can be resurrected to new life. And when I preach about Easter and resurrect that is the way I go with it in a metaphorical sense. I do not talk about literal resurrection. I do not believe in that…”
Christopher Hitchens:
“Then you are… I… I hate to say it… We’ve hardly been introducted… But I… I hate to seem… um… a bit too critical… But then you are simply living on the inheritance of, as a Christian, a monstrous fraud that was practiced for many centuries, when that was preached to millions of people as the literal truth…”
Marilyn Sewell:
“Well of course people believe, ah, believe what they need to believe. And earlier, earlier in time people believed all kinds of things. But times change, and peoples beliefs change…”
