That reminds me that Spong might qualify but I kind of refuse to include him as "Christian", it's really a stretch to say that he even believes in God.
I’m always glad to hear progressive Christians blast people like him. I do think there’s a fairly serious divide between how progressive Christian laity largely affirm, say, the virgin birth and physical Resurrection and how mainline Christian academics and clergy are suspicious of such ideas. Spong is, of course, a fairly radical example, but even someone like John Haught seems to adopt a sort of deistic denial of miracles.
With regards to progressive Christian NT scholars, I can at least understand some sort of neutral evidentialism though I do find myself hostile to the idea that there 1) exists some objective viewpoint from which all of Christian doctrine could be shown to be true with no presuppositions and 2) that Christians should begin by being neutral about affirming Christian doctrine and use some sort of view of the world from “pure rationality” to reach the Christian tradition based upon the soundness of external evidence rather than internal logic.
