Review: Another Gospel?

I recently commended to you the podcast and blog of Alisa Childers on Progressive Christianity. She's got a new book out, Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth. In it she tells the story of how she, a faithful Christian who had been raised in a theologically sound home and church, stumbled into Progressive Christianity and what she has learned since.

I had been looking forward to the book, but once it was actually released, I was a bit put off by the description and table of contents on Amazon. I don't really enjoy "spiritual biography" type books, and this was sounding like one of those. However, I wanted to buy her book because I enjoy her other work, so I gave it a shot and was relieved to find I had misunderstood.

Don't get me wrong, this book is definitely biographical. But her story, the issues she encountered at that church, is the framework to discuss the theological and apologetic issues that arise with progressives in general.

So what is the book? It's mostly an introductory level apologetics book like The Case for Christ or Know What You Believe. But the issues coming from progressive circles sometimes have a slightly different flavor than they do with general skeptics. What does it cover? The table of contents does not make it clear, so I will clarify it:

1: Introduction
2: How she ended up at a progressive church
3: The search for earliest Christianity
4: 5 things that can drive people to progressivism
5: What do Progressive Christians believe?
6: "Same wrapper, different candy" — How progressives cloak old heresies in familiar terms
7: Trusting the Bible — Textual criticism
8: Trusting the Bible — The gospels as eye witness accounts
9: The progressive view of bible (a low view)
10: The progressive view of salvation (univeralism)
11: The progressive view of the atonement (cosmic child abuse)
12: Reconstructing her faith — What are the essential Christian beliefs?

Framed around her narrative, the book really moves. It's compelling reading, and even if you've read other apologetics books, you'll probably learn some things about progressives you weren't aware of. I took "same wrapper, different candy" from the book. She talks about how progressives (like other heretics) take familiar Christian terms like salvation or inspiration and give them new meaning without telling you what they're doing. It turned out her progressive pastor thought the Bible is inspired ... in the same way Mozart was inspired. And speaking of other heretics, she shows how a lot of their teachings are heresies the church answered long, long ago, but since so few of us know anything about church history, we can fall into their traps.

Twice now I've said "other heretics." I do that seriously. Almost a hundred years ago J Gresham Machen wrote in Christianity and Liberalism that "Liberal Christianity" is not Christian at all. The names change, but the teachings really don't, and Childers shows that progressives, like the "liberals" and "modernists" before them, remove everything that make Christianity Christian and try to sell it as the same religion. And that's why you ought to read this book, to arm yourself and your kids so they cannot fool you.