Progressive Christianity moves people out of church.

The Importance of Church in the Secular Age (and my obsession with Andrew Root)

Progressive Christian theologies tend to move people out of church.

In a recent Substack, pastor and author Brandan Robertson wondered about the reason why Progressive Christian churches struggle to gain traction and consistent attendance. Robertson surmised that it was the result of a lack of ultimate truth claims and shared preeminent values; people need to share dogmatic beliefs to share in communal worship. Having been wanting to write something on this very topic for some time, I was spurred to action. In this post I will argue that it is not a lack of cohesive theology and beliefs that holds Progressive churches together, utilizing the work of Andrew Root I will present that it is indeed Progressive theology(ies) that inherently teaches the unimportance of church, the gathered community of believers in worship.

Where this thinking Began.

If you’ve been following this Substack of late,¹ my social media, and my brain in general, you’ve seen me engaging QUITE a bit with the work of Andrew Root. Funny enough, I stumbled upon his work last year when I was saw his book The Church after Innovation. Being unfamiliar with his work or the Ministry in a Secular Age (MSA) series, I sure get did get a surprise, expecting something more pro-innovation in the church.²

But, now having read seven of his books, including five of the MSA, I’ve come to realize why I resonate with his thinking so much. Root, at least as it seems to me, is a passionate advocate of the church; not the institution, not a particular denomination, but of the gathered community of believers. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this may be the subplot of the entire MSA series—that church not only matters, but is essential.

Root's Advocacy for the Church

In his first book in the series, Faith Formation in a Secular Age, Root declares boldly in the introduction, “Christian faith is impossible outside the church.”³ In his last book, Church in the Age of Secular Mysticism he writes, “The whole of my project (MSA), and this work as well, is to make the case for the possibility of being a Beyonder, to call Protestantism back to the beyond.”⁴ To be clear, Root isn’t simply suggesting we should individually find spirituality on our own (this is the entire point of that book), rather I think he’s calling Protestantism—especially liberal Protestantism—back into finding the beyond (God) in church.

My Awareness of the Church's Failings

For reasons I can’t fully understand or extrapolate, church has always been incredibly important to me. The day after the last gathering of the new church start I led, devastated and heartbroken, I got up Sunday morning (we gathered on a Saturday evening) and went to church. A few weeks ago, having resigned from my church position and feeling incredibly lost in life, I went to church the next Sunday. Even in the deep darkness of deconstruction in my twenties I was desperately searching for a church that made sense.

That being said, I also want to be abundantly clear that I’m not wearing rose colored glasses when it comes to church. I’m aware of the multitude of ways churches have harmed women, minorities, LGBTQ, and more.⁵ I’m aware of the many ways churches have hurt me. When I was a kid, my family moved 2,000 miles away to Colorado because we lived in the church parsonage, but our church had merged with another. My first full-time ministry job, working as a youth director at a Baptist church out of college, the pastor asked me to take a 66% pay cut due to a budget crisis. I resigned. Another church I served put a stop payment on my last check. Finally, after leading that new church start for three and a half years—and right in the thick of Covid—I was given one month severance when folks above me decided it was time to end things.

I also want to be clear that I am not simply loyal to an institution or denomination. I walked away from the fundamental Baptist networks of my youth and early adulthood. I’ve worked in ministry for five different Christian traditions. I’ve said again and again that my blood does not run the color⁶ of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) red, but the gospel of Jesus. My lack of institutional loyalty has likely harmed my career. So I am fully aware of all the ways that church institutions have harmed others—and myself.

Impact of Progressive Theology on Church Attendance

Yet, what I’ve seen again and again in progressive Christianity over the last decade is this increasing assertion that church doesn’t really matter, not the institution, not the gathered community, none of it. There’s this idea I’ve heard again and again that the church is dying and God is finding a new way to work in the world. I find this to be a self-fulfilling prophecy and the end result of elements of Progressive Christian theology. First, it’s often pastors and leaders of declining and dying churches who are saying church doesn’t really matter. Funny, I don’t hear Evangelical leaders saying anything remotely similar.⁷ Second, I think Progressive Christian theology, at its logical end, effectively says that we are fine on our own, we don’t need the church.

As a case study; about 13 years ago, I was attending a “progressive” Christian church and attending seminary. I was leading a young adult small group and there was another twenty-something couple who had recently begun attending who were clearly going through some amount of deconstruction themselves. Having been raised in a very conservative framework like myself, they found much freedom and acceptance in this church. After a few years, I went off the pastor another church, therefore losing my relationship with this other couple.

A few years later, I met with the pastor of that first church and asked about that couple. “Oh, they don’t attend much at all anymore. But (one spouse) comes and does yoga in our fellowship hall once a week.”⁸ Essentially, this young couple had deconstructed their way out of church, much like many of those who followed The Liturgists pathway. To me, this was and is a tragedy.

Root's Perspective on the Church and Theology

Back to my point that the end result of Progressive Christian theology is that church doesn’t really matter—we’re fine on our own. In Churches and the Crisis of Decline, Root writes that “modern theologies that concede to the immanent frame’s planting of God in religion tend toward a theology without the church.”⁹ This is a bold claim to be sure, and I’m not nearly smart enough (nor bold enough) to suggest which theologies do such (and to be fair—there is no one unique “Progressive” Christian theology).

But to go back to Root’s last book in the MSA series, Church in the Age of Secular Mysticism, “the mysticism of (Exclusive Humanists)…(and the Protestant forms that follow them) can be so easily without God because their center of attention is on the self’s thoughts and actions.”¹⁰ I recently came across a song from what would certainly be described as a progressive music group which lyrics read in part, “You are enough, I am enough, Breathe in the love, We are enough.”¹¹ Again, I am aware that institutional churches have harmed (and continues to harm) people. I understand that other theologies such as Penal Substitutionary Atonement present humans as worthless scum. Yet, if I am enough, I have no need for God, let alone church.

There is something special about Church

Maybe all of this is simply unprocessed grief, as I navigate (as alluded to earlier) the first time in 15+ years I am not either working in ministry or working towards it (seminary). Maybe this is some sort of Stockholm Syndrome as I’ve taken on feelings for my abuser. Maybe I have simply read too much of Andrew Root. Maybe I am wrong; I very well may be.

Or, maybe there really is something special indeed about church—that gathered community of Jesus followers. And, there is a resonance that can be found only in such spaces when we gather together.¹² I strongly believe the Christian life is meant to be done in community. And, together, those gathered become more than just a group of people, they become the church. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” Matthew 18:20.

Church cannot simply be about epistemological frameworks or shared beliefs. It should be about communities of believers together seeking to encounter God through worship, prayer, and service. God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6), and when people know they can find and experience God together in community, it won’t matter the shared beliefs or lack thereof, they’ll want to come together to encounter the living God.

1. You’ve also noticed I’m still trying to figure out how much effort I want to put into endnotes/footnotes.

2. And, to be fair, Root isn’t anti-innovation, he’s against the assumption that innovation itself will save churches.

3. Root, Faith Formation in a Secular Age.

4. Root, Church in the Age of Secular Mysticism, 92.

5. I changed the wording of this sentence because I realized I still have much to learn from my siblings in Christ about the ways churches have harmed them—and likely much to do myself to advocate for them.

6. I am speaking here of the color of the denominational logo, the red chalice.

7. Root also references this distinction in a footnote in Churches and the Crisis of Decline, 72.

8. As if being in the building is really the point of this whole thing. I grind my teeth every time I hear a Mainline pastor talk about “all the people using the building during the week.” The church does not exist to be a community center for Boy Scouts and the like…

9. Root, Churches and the Crisis of Decline, 90.

10. Root, Church in the Age of Secular Mysticism, 215.

11. I’m choosing not to footnote the group because I don’t wish to shame or diminish their work. There music has been a great benefit for myself and many others. This song simply exemplifies Root’s Exclusive Humanist idea.

12. Root writes about resonance in Church and the Crisis of Decline.