Progressive Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church

“After this election, I am suspicious of anyone I don’t know well. I will suspect you are a closet Trumper, which means you are not a safe person for me to be around aside from when I am required to be until established otherwise. You may not know I am wary of you because being outwardly cordial and faking a smile is easy. My personal life needs to be a safe zone, and that means no Trumpers.”

At first glance, that statement might be mistaken for the words of an unhinged Instagram influencer or a disgruntled co-worker unhappy with November’s general election results. Sadly, these are the words of the pastor of the progressive Presbyterian church I had been a member of since May of 2023 after a lifetime as a practicing Catholic. I entrusted the Reverend to guide me on the difficult journey of maintaining my religious faith. I believed his goal was to heal a divided America, but I was mistaken. Although the quotation appeared on his personal Facebook page immediately after the election, he mostly kept politics out of his weekly messages until November. Had he made his political views known early on, I would not have remained there for three years. Subsequent post-election Facebook posts by the Reverend urged his followers to resist the incoming Trump Administration in every way possible, thus impeding America’s (and possibly God’s) mandate for President Trump to take decisive action. Before the election, perhaps sensing a decisive Kamala Harris victory, he stressed that the most important matters were out of our control, and we should trust God and hope that “love will prevail.” His comments after the election revealed this pastor’s true nature. He inferred that the individuals responsible for Donald Trump’s victory would be judged unfavorably by God and the world as he rolled out the tired “wrong side of history” pejorative. He could not adhere to all the wonderful things he advised his congregation to do for the past three years. My former pastor revealed himself to be a hypocritical and duplicitous charlatan. He typically referenced secular, self-styled New Age-inspired individuals in his sermons but was utterly oblivious to the wisdom of the late R.C. Sproul, one of the most significant figures in reformed theology, when I asked him if he had heard of him. In the words of philosopher T. Z Lavine (although hers were reserved for philosopher Richard Rorty), I now consider the Reverend the “enemy of all that is good and true, a philosophical anti-Christ here to bring our civilization to an apocalypse.”

As someone who voted for President Trump, I did all I could to remain in my seat or lose my temper and respond to the pastor in front of the congregation. As I was leaving, I noticed a woman I had met a week prior. She was a pediatrician who gave a TED Talk on weight bias, which fascinated me, not only because my niece is a registered dietitian who shares the doctor’s philosophy but also because I gave a TED Talk about finding education later in life. We had a lengthy and fascinating conversation a week prior that focused on why I left the Catholic Church, my conservative political views, as well as my stance on abortion, which contrasted with her progressive political inclinations. For the record, I support a woman’s right to choose, but I aspire towards a world with fewer, and not more, abortions. Although the pediatrician and I disagreed on many issues, she noted that we had much common ground in other matters.

I am unsure if she supported Donald Trump but did not judge me for doing so and was eager to understand why I did via respectful dialogue. I asked her if I should leave the church. She told me that if I did, I would be justified, but she hoped I would remain and perhaps have a lengthy discussion with the Reverend in a month when he is less emotional, and I planned to do just that. Fortunately, I found the Reverend’s Facebook page, and after reading it, I knew that I must leave his church, never to return. His level of hatred towards Trump supporters and the breadth of his anti-Trump delirium was staggering. It explained why he never responded to my emails regarding his sermons and my desire to extend our conversation about his sermon messages. In short, I left the Catholic Church after feeling betrayed by the sex abuse scandal, so I joined a new progressive church I felt would fill the void. Unfortunately, I was betrayed by the hatefulness of another supposed man of God and his brand of progressive Christianity. I am ashamed to say that I was not only oblivious to my progressive church’s melding of the Christian worldview with a godless social justice movement, but I financially contributed to it. It must be said that many Presbyterian churches are just as conservative as their Catholic counterparts and oppose abortion and homosexuality. These conservative denominations belong to the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which split from the Presbyterian Church in the USA PC(USA) in 1973. My church belonged to the latter.

Leaving Catholicism for the hopefully greener pastures of Protestantism was not an easy decision or something I took lightly. My family and I took on the responsibility of raising my niece in 1993 when my late sister could not raise her for reasons I would rather not elaborate on. This was more than a secular humanistic gesture. It reflected our Catholic faith, which many respected me for upholding, in particular, my friend and first philosophy professor Ray Torres. Professor Torres was my introduction to the magnificence of Greek Philosophy. I believe Plato’s Idea of the Good and the possibility of an absolute source of truth and goodness not subject to moral relativism paved the way for the Christian God. In Professor Torres’ class, we discussed Plato’s account of the trial and death of Socrates and the martyrdom of Socrates as the secular counterpart to the martyrdom of Christ, both scenarios depicting truth, ethics, and morality as fixed, eternal, and absolute. I wondered what Professor Torres would think about my conversion to Protestantism and desire to join a progressive church, so I consulted with him before doing so. 

In a non-patronizing way, he told me I was making a mistake and sent me some links and assorted websites to help me decide. He asked for reasons other than the sex scandal that made me want to leave the Catholic Church. I responded that, like Martin Luther, I disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church’s past policy on indulgences, as well as the idea that only Catholic priests were allowed to read, teach, and interpret the Bible, as well as the Pope’s infallibility. Luther’s Reformation grievances against the Roman Catholic Church notwithstanding, as someone in an interracial marriage and someone who marched at the Pride Parade in New York City representing Columbia University, I told him I thought the Catholic Church might benefit by rethinking some of its intransigent stances to be in step with a changing, modern world. I didn’t listen to my venerable professor, but many years later, I admit he was right. I have returned to the Church of the Epiphany, where I made my communion and confirmation and where my father’s spirit was returned to God. It feels good to be back under the spiritual tutelage of the Rev. Boniface Anusiem, the beloved Fr. Bonnie. Like all radicals who have learned the power of rewriting history to support revolutionary goals, the pastor of my former progressive church eschews centuries-old Roman Catholic interpretations of the word of God in favor of “intellectually honest” scripture analysis oriented towards social justice. If Critical Theory is the academic foundation of modern-day secular social justice movements, progressive Christianity offers the Bible as a justification and explanation for a secular human rights agenda with Jesus and the prophets Foucault and Adorno as their spokesmen.

Progressive Christianity seeks to align with secular movements like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS). However, I would argue that the love these progressive Christians express towards these secular human rights movements is unrequited, and there are no shared ideological roots. It is an ideology where activist pastors consort with leftist academics, college professors, and jihadists, one where Donald Trump and Israel are hostis humani generis and the root of all evil. It is a type of Christianity where the right of women to have abortions on demand supersedes the rights of the unborn from being murdered in the womb. Because of this, the Reverend at my former progressive church was unmoved when I told him at our first encounter how my family and I dedicated our lives to raising my niece rather than pursuing an abortion. My niece Alexandra has been the primary focus of my life. She is the daughter I never had, and now a successful thirty-two-year-old woman with a great career and a marriage scheduled for September 2026.

The day I left my church, I contacted Professor Torres to let him know that he was correct and that I should never have strayed from Catholicism. I expected a patronizing lecture, but none was forthcoming. He said, “No, I told you so’s from me, just a smile and a welcome back,” and that “there is no substitute for Jesus. He continued, “Protestants can’t see his real presence unless Christ himself opens their eyes on the road to Emmaus.” While those words are the start of a healthy debate, one that Professor Torres would welcome but progressive Christians would never agree to, one thing is sure: in these times of moral and ethical relativism, the Roman Catholic Church is a bulwark against efforts to undermine God’s propositional truth.