Even the progressive preachers who enjoy teaching through a Post-modern lens, such as Rubel Shelly, are not Post-modernists in the sense of denying objective truth or the ability to interpret writings. In fact, they teach against such views.

Shelly sees Post-modernism as a useful means of contradicting the flawed notion that we will all reach the identical conclusions on all points if we just have truly open minds. But this was understood by Paul 2,000 years ago. You don't need Post-modern thought to get you there.

By the way, for those with a scholarly interest, D. A. Carson's The Gagging of God does the most thorough, scholarly debunking of Post-modern theories I've seen. Very well written, although quite a long book.

Jay, are you familiar with this book? Pretty good stuff against postmodernism, but the church where is preaches is very "progressive" for lack of a better term. The Northwest Church is a merger between a CoC and a Christian Church in Seattle. Thought you might be interested.

Thanks for the citation. Larry James' article is indeed very troubling.

Larry James is the CEO of Central Dallas Ministries, a nonprofit organization that began as a work of the Preston Road Church of Christ. The organization has the reputation for doing extraordinarily good work among the poor of that city.

James was a Church of Christ minister before taking his position. However, in his blog, he says that he's no longer a part of the Churches of Christ, and that certainly appears to be the case.

Moreover, CDM is no longer affiliated with the Churches of Christ but instead receives support from outside the Churches as well as from the Churches. However, many of our congregations still support its work.

Sadly, this example serves all too well to make my point. James' post is ramble through a host of platitudes masquerading as spiritual insights, is logically incoherent, and is often simply wrong. But this is what happens when we fail to clearly and plainly articulate what we believe and instead allow ourselves to drift into whatever is fashionable among the book sellers.

It's a common problem: we rightly rebel against one error only to, as Campbell once wrote, in our haste to leave Babylon go past Jerusalem all the way to Rome!

The theological error James has drifted into is partly the error N. T. Wright seeks to correct in Surprised by Hope — the false understandings of Christianity that force us to choose between caring for the needy and being evangelistic. In fact, true Christianity calls us to both — as a single, united, uniting enterprise — but we so badly misunderstand that we tend to do one or the other.

The most conservative denominations, such as the Churches of Christ, emphasize missions to the near exclusion of benevolence, while the more liberal denominations go the opposite way. A truer understanding leads to vigorous support for both.

I understand your reaction: "To tell you the truth, this is the major reason why the mainstream does not give much thoughts to your theology, because there is none. How can we reconsider things by deconstructive criticism without reconstructive instruction?"

However, it's not a fair characterization of the progressive churches. There is actually some pretty solid theology being done. But we do a poor job of articulating our views — so much so that we are very easily misunderstood.

I'd urge you to spend some more time on the blog. A good place to start would be the Amazing Grace lesson series http://oneinjesus.info/index-under-construction/a…. I try to lay out in broad strokes the Biblical basis for a progressive theology.

And, by the way, like you, I detest deconstructionism and such. I think the whole conversation about Enlightenment vs. Postmodernism is helpful in terms of evangelism — understanding those we are called to convert — but pointless and counter-productive in theology.

I've yet to meet a scriptural argument well made by talking about the "insights of Post-modernism." Oh, please, the same conclusions were reached centuries ago by good men who just read their Bibles.

We need to spend more time learning First Century (and earlier) Judaism and less time worrying about such pretentiousness.

Are you saying that a Church of Christ minister teaches "not to evangelize, not to believe that anything close to absolute truth exists or can be known if it exists, and not to believe that the Bible is any more important than any other “holy book” of any other religion"?

That is certainly not the teaching of any Church of Christ I know of, progressive or otherwise. Can you share the URL of the blog? I'd really like to know who is publishing such heresy.