Is progressive Christian edgelordery a thing, and if so what are examples of it?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Something I was thinking about recently...we're all very familiar with atheist edgelords and what they are like, and of course conservative Christian edgelords are also very common (jmfcst is actually a pretty textbook example of one come to think of it)...so what would a progressive Christian edgelord be like? Because it seems most edgelord behavior from progressives or conservative Christians would contradict progressive Christianity in some way.

[Kingpoleon]

If only there were an exemplary user to cite.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'd argue that there's an at least mildly edgelordly cast to some of the more crypto-Marcionite kinds of progressive Christian rhetoric about the Old Testament, although that sort of thing was fortunately more common ten or fifteen years ago than it is now.

[afleitch]

If only there were an exemplary user to cite.

Nice of you to nominate yourself

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'd argue that there's an at least mildly edgelordly cast to some of the more crypto-Marcionite kinds of progressive Christian rhetoric about the Old Testament, although that sort of thing was fortunately more common ten or fifteen years ago than it is now.

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 spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The symbology of most Democratic-aligned protest movements, even when they are secular or explicitly non-Christian, tends to have this quality.

The images of the BLM foot-washing ritual from last summer are the first to come to mind, although, to be clear, I'm not sure that this particular excess took place on more than one occasion. The prayer candles dedicated to everyone from RBG to Stacey Abrams are another example.

Come to think of it, religious "edgelordery" always borders on idolatry, whether we are talking about the types that Nathan recently described as "Crusader-LARPer lunatics" or Nancy Pelosi thanking George Floyd for "sacrificing his life" as if he had literally died to save American from its sins.

To pick another of my least favorite examples, the use of Original Sin as a metaphor has this idolatrous quality of treating non-religious political or aesthetic sensibilities as if they were equally significant. Part of the problem is that it's not clear to me that people understand it as a metaphor. Much as with the much-abused war metaphor - as in the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Coronavirus, etc. - there is a tendency for the general understanding to drift toward something more literal.

Actually you reminded me of this that would totally qualify and sent conservatives online in a tizzy for a couple days. From a devotional book compiled by Rachel Held Evans friend Sarah Bessey and written by theology professor Chanequa Walker-Barnes:



Now as is usually the case with this sort of thing after reading the full prayer with the full context this isn't as bad as it initially sounds with these little snippets but isn't exactly entirely clean either...and I think most Christians of all ideologies would agree that prayer is not the place for this sort of performative shocking language, even if publicly published in a book.

(I'd post the full thing for context but despite being widely available on Twitter and other places it would definitely be a copyright violation. The summary is that she eventually pares down "white people" to just mean white people who engage in the sort of casual but open racism that Trump brought plenty of into the spotlight, and is using "hate" with a sort of different meaning to actually mean more like being apathetic towards and unaffected by their words and actions.)

[John Dule]

Dear God, please help me hate black people. SIKE haha when I say "hate" i mean "love" and when i say "black" i mean "ice" and when i say "people" i mean "cream"

[libertpaulian]

Diana Butler Bass.

[RFayette]

Nadia Bolz-Weber seems to fit the bill here. 

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The symbology of most Democratic-aligned protest movements, even when they are secular or explicitly non-Christian, tends to have this quality.

The images of the BLM foot-washing ritual from last summer are the first to come to mind, although, to be clear, I'm not sure that this particular excess took place on more than one occasion. The prayer candles dedicated to everyone from RBG to Stacey Abrams are another example.

Come to think of it, religious "edgelordery" always borders on idolatry, whether we are talking about the types that Nathan recently described as "Crusader-LARPer lunatics" or Nancy Pelosi thanking George Floyd for "sacrificing his life" as if he had literally died to save American from its sins.

To pick another of my least favorite examples, the use of Original Sin as a metaphor has this idolatrous quality of treating non-religious political or aesthetic sensibilities as if they were equally significant. Part of the problem is that it's not clear to me that people understand it as a metaphor. Much as with the much-abused war metaphor - as in the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Coronavirus, etc. - there is a tendency for the general understanding to drift toward something more literal.

Actually you reminded me of this that would totally qualify and sent conservatives online in a tizzy for a couple days. From a devotional book compiled by Rachel Held Evans friend Sarah Bessey and written by theology professor Chanequa Walker-Barnes:



Now as is usually the case with this sort of thing after reading the full prayer with the full context this isn't as bad as it initially sounds with these little snippets but isn't exactly entirely clean either...and I think most Christians of all ideologies would agree that prayer is not the place for this sort of performative shocking language, even if publicly published in a book.

(I'd post the full thing for context but despite being widely available on Twitter and other places it would definitely be a copyright violation. The summary is that she eventually pares down "white people" to just mean white people who engage in the sort of casual but open racism that Trump brought plenty of into the spotlight, and is using "hate" with a sort of different meaning to actually mean more like being apathetic towards and unaffected by their words and actions.)

This is just straight hate speech. I would read any additional context provided to me, but I can't understand how something as stark as this can be characterized as anything else.

To start with the first sentence would probably read more accurately if there was a "some" between "hate" and "white."

Like I said I won't post the whole thing directly because of copyright but I guess I can post this:

https://twitter.com/RyanTMcAllister/status/1379056359015071748?s=19

[Statilius the Epicurean]

That "I Met God, She's Black" t-shirt counts, I think.

[Kingpoleon]

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.

[Big Abraham]

"Amen and awomen"?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

"Amen and awomen"?

That's apparently a fairly common joke (if "joke" is the right word) in the black church so I don't think it counts.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is a great example, though, and I stay that as someone who's met her and liked her on a personal level.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Well now I feel a bit guilty bashing Spong just a few days before his death.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/OnlineXtians/status/1438377104782069764?s=20

[Georg Ebner]

When ERWIN von STEINFELD informed St.BERNHARD on the teachings of the urban sects (Milleniarists, Joachimites, Pataria and especially the new Cathars), the saint replied, that, if those ideas prevailed, they would result in the animalization of mankind. And indeed the aim of all progressists has obviously been to infect the whole mankind with bourgeois "ideals" (=greed&hypocrisy). Now, that nearly all are "freed" (women or gays are mostly done, primitives are underway, the "liberation" of animals will clearly come next), left "nonconformism" is nowadays nothing else than a total(itarian) ... conformism.

[PSOL]

Progressive Christianity seems to be based on virtue signaling.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Progressive Christianity seems to be based on virtue signaling.

The question then becomes whether virtue signaling can be edgy. I think it can.

[John Dule]

https://twitter.com/OnlineXtians/status/1438377104782069764?s=20

I wish I believed in hell, because if such a place exists this person is surely going there.

[Kingpoleon]

I'd argue that there's an at least mildly edgelordly cast to some of the more crypto-Marcionite kinds of progressive Christian rhetoric about the Old Testament, although that sort of thing was fortunately more common ten or fifteen years ago than it is now.

I was only vaguely familiar with this when you posted it, and since then I got a book by Andy Stanley that I found to be possibly the worst popular theology ever. The Gospel Coalition has a decent article on it here. One of a handful of awkward moments where I found myself defending TGC.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'd argue that there's an at least mildly edgelordly cast to some of the more crypto-Marcionite kinds of progressive Christian rhetoric about the Old Testament, although that sort of thing was fortunately more common ten or fifteen years ago than it is now.

I was only vaguely familiar with this when you posted it, and since then I got a book by Andy Stanley that I found to be possibly the worst popular theology ever. The Gospel Coalition has a decent article on it here. One of a handful of awkward moments where I found myself defending TGC.

Wait, this guy thinks rejecting the Old Testament as teh ev0l is a LESS antisemitic position on it than the orthodox one? lmao what a chump.

[Kingpoleon]

Wait, this guy thinks rejecting the Old Testament as teh ev0l is a LESS antisemitic position on it than the orthodox one? lmao what a chump.

Stanley is, for the record, among the country’s most prominent “pastors”. I think even pop Calvinists like Piper, MacArthur, and Keller have smaller followings.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Wait, this guy thinks rejecting the Old Testament as teh ev0l is a LESS antisemitic position on it than the orthodox one? lmao what a chump.

Stanley is, for the record, among the country’s most prominent “pastors”. I think even pop Calvinists like Piper, MacArthur, and Keller have smaller followings.

I looked him up. He's MTG's pastor. That's genuinely hilarious.