Episode 127: Am I A Progressive? with Amar Peterman

Can Christians in the United States break out of the left-right binary?

In the late summer of 2022, a young Christian public theologian penned a document where he asked the question: Am I Progressive? That young man was theologian Amar Peterman who wrote this essay where he shared why he didn’t consider himself a progressive Christian. “The conservative-progressive spectrum, I believe, is a false binary used to categorize and make assumptions about those around us,” he wrote in that essay. “Both “conservative” and “progressive” are handcuffs that align us with an in-group and ultimately distract us from thinking and acting with charity, nuance, and love. When we take on these identities as our own, we allow them to form our imagination of faith, our world, and the ideological “other.” We also place ourselves within the social commitments that these labels hold which limit our ability to speak truth in love.”

In this episode, Amar shares what it means to be a Christian in such a politically polarized era and how the Christian faith must break out of the false binary. Lest you think he is advocating a mushy middle, Amar is aiming for a faith that is not captured by the political definitions of our day while speaking prophetically to the challenges our society faces today.

Show Notes:

Am I Progressive? by Amar Peterman

How My Conservative Christian College Made Me A Leftist by Josiah Daniels (the article Amar is responding to in his essay)

Why I Changed My Mind About Law and Marriage Again by David French

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