{"id":509,"date":"2008-11-18T17:42:09","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T17:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html"},"modified":"2008-11-18T17:42:09","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T17:42:09","slug":"crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html","title":{"rendered":"Crunchy’s Flawed Typology of Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our beloved Crunchy was on the right track<\/a> when he tried to get at the truly interesting part of the debate about Obama’s Christianity: what it says about the relevance of orthodoxy.
\nBut I’m not wild about the typology he creates for Christians. He believes that most Progressive Christianity amounts to “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”:<\/p>\n

Progressives think that religious truth is indefinite and subjective, and can change according to the perceived needs of people in a given time and place. Traditionalists believe that religious truth is definite and objective, and can be known with some degree of certainty.
\nPut another way, progressives tend to think that religious truth claims are statements of an individual’s thoughts and emotional state; trads tend to think that religious truth claims are statements about metaphysical reality. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I understand them, Progressive Christians believe that while some aspects of the faith ought to change over time, others are immutable, objective and permanent. Most would say the never-to-be-altered-regardless-of-current-fashions-or-emotions point of Christianity is something like: Love Thy Neighbor.
\nThey believe there are a few key meta-truths to the Bible and that the other<\/em> stuff is subject to interpretation. They tend to believe the Bible is inspired by God rather than the literal word.<\/a> They often read the Nicene and Apostles Creeds as being human creations that capture some of the basic truth of Christianity, but miss others and elevate certain concepts to a literalness that Jesus probably wouldn’t have wanted.
\nBy the way, this was also the view of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Washington (probably), George W. Bush<\/a> (implicitly) and most modern American Christians.<\/a>
\nHaving said that, I would love to hear from some progressive Christians on why John 3:16 doesn’t<\/em> make the short list of Christian fundamentals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our beloved Crunchy was on the right track when he tried to get at the truly interesting part of the debate about Obama’s Christianity: what it says about the relevance of orthodoxy. But I’m not wild about the typology he creates for Christians. He believes that most Progressive Christianity amounts to “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”: Progressives…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nCrunchy's Flawed Typology of Christianity - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Crunchy's Flawed Typology of Christianity - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our beloved Crunchy was on the right track when he tried to get at the truly interesting part of the debate about Obama’s Christianity: what it says about the relevance of orthodoxy. But I’m not wild about the typology he creates for Christians. He believes that most Progressive Christianity amounts to “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”: Progressives…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-18T17:42:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Crunchy's Flawed Typology of Christianity - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Crunchy's Flawed Typology of Christianity - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Our beloved Crunchy was on the right track when he tried to get at the truly interesting part of the debate about Obama’s Christianity: what it says about the relevance of orthodoxy. But I’m not wild about the typology he creates for Christians. He believes that most Progressive Christianity amounts to “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”: Progressives…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2008-11-18T17:42:09+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html","name":"Crunchy's Flawed Typology of Christianity - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-11-18T17:42:09+00:00","dateModified":"2008-11-18T17:42:09+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/11\/crunchys-flawed-typology-of-ch.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Crunchy’s Flawed Typology of Christianity"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}