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4.5
Yancey and Quosigk posit that America’s progressive and conservative Christians have become so different from each other that they no longer meaningfully count as belonging to the same religion. They build their case on a sociological model of each group’s social identities, which is determined by the beliefs and values in their respective cultural toolkits.Starting with data from the American National Election Survey, the authors find data on progressive Christians to be lacking. In a second phase of data collection, the authors sample blogs and articles by progressive and conservative Christians who dissent from their respective political allies. They do this to get a sense of the rhetorical blocks that build each group’s distinctive culture.In the third phase—to which the central chapters of the book are devoted—the authors interview over one hundred conservative and progressive Christians, largely from two different churches in the same American city. They capture conservatives’ and progressives’ opinions of each other by eliciting their attitudes toward a third group, Muslims. The book's novel findings come from this strategic choice. It’s by evoking conservative Christians’ negative opinions about Islamic theology, the Koran, and Mohammed that the authors are able to observe progressive Christians’ negative feelings toward their conservative coreligionists.The strong negative feelings progressives have for conservative Christians indicate that their cultural toolkit differs not just in degree, but in kind. Whereas conservative Christians value maintaining continuity with what the authors call “historical theology,” progressive Christians take a “humanistic ethic of social justice” to be the standard by which to define themselves and assess others. Because that ethic explicitly rejects traditional Christian theology at several points, negativity toward conservative Christians ensues. In terms of the authors’ model, this is a matter of progressives maintaining the boundaries of their group identity.One particular point by the authors drives this dynamic of rejection home. Part of their defining conservative Christians is the extent to which they carry on the beliefs of one of America’s earliest Christian exponents, the eighteenth-century preacher Jonathan Edwards. This early American Christian is most famous for his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which teaches Hell as an afterlife destination for punishing wrongdoers. That view, where God has a wrathful aspect and those outside of Christ are condemned, very sorely goes against progressive sensibilities, both inside and outside the Christian church.The authors also bring forward Edwards’ very negative views of Muhammad, the Koran, and Islam. He saw these not just as mistaken, but as used by the Devil to deceive and lead people astray. This too offends progressive sensibilities. Avoiding judging others and putting a premium on learning from previously marginalized groups are among the features of progressive Christians’ humanistic ethic that puts them at irreconcilable odds with conservative Christians.One Faith No Longer reflects its authors’ diligence. It draws copiously on recent research in the sociology of religion, and sociology more broadly. Without bias, they reference past works that situated conservatives in a negative light. As Yancey put it in promoting the book, he and Quosigk are “umpires” and not players in the dispute between progressive and conservative Christians.One last interesting thread of argument is the book’s likening the divide between progressive and conservative Christians to the millennia-old split between Hindus and Buddhists. In a comparison that will prompt fruitful discussion, they contend that like Hindus and Buddhists, progressive and conservative Christians share many of the same terms but meaning incompatible things by them.Beyond the scholarly audience that this university press book is aimed at, anyone driven by the conviction that distinctions matter will find it worth the read. Unflinchingly, it takes us through the heat of America’s culture wars and into the light it sheds on the substantive differences between two groups traditionally classed within American Christianity. If the authors prove successful in their aim, One Faith No Longer will come to be remembered not just for foreseeing a religious split, but for spurring a new paradigm on what it means for a group to be Christian.
