The Bay Area is home to congregations that radically reinterpret historic doctrine on gender, atonement, and Scripture while still calling themselves Christian. At what point, if any, does theological revision cross a line that matters?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentI actually think the more interesting theological question isn't gender or sexuality — it's atonement. I know several SF clergy who flatly deny that Christ's death had anything to do with satisfying divine justice. That's not a progressive reading of penal substitution, that's a rejection of substitutionary atonement entirely. And I would argue — and I say this as someone with an MDiv from SFTS — that without SOME theology of atonement where Christ's death accomplishes something objective for sinners, you no longer have Christianity in any historically recognizable sense. You have inspirational ethics named after Jesus.
Grew up in the Richmond, left the church at 19, came back at 38 after some genuinely hard years, and the congregation that took me in was one of these progressive mainline churches everyone here is arguing about. They preached grace to me when I needed it. They didn't have all the answers. Maybe they got some doctrine wrong. But they pointed me back toward Jesus and I am grateful. I'll let God sort out the theology. That's above my pay grade and probably above most of yours too.
Born and raised in the Sunset District, baptized at a mainline church on Noriega, and I'll say this plainly: when a congregation formally rejects the bodily resurrection as literal history and still puts a cross on the building, they've crossed a line. Not a line I drew — a line the church drew in 325 AD at Nicaea. You don't get to keep the brand and torch the product.
Moved here from Tulsa three years ago for work and honestly the first time I visited one of these SF mainline churches I thought I wandered into a Ted Talk with candles. Guest preacher spent 40 minutes on 'decolonizing the Eucharist' and we never once talked about sin, forgiveness, or Jesus doing anything supernatural. I'm not saying those folks aren't nice people. I'm saying I drove to a Baptist church in Daly City the next week and felt like I was back in actual Christianity.
My grandmother went to Glide Memorial her whole adult life back when Cecil Williams was in his prime and that place changed LIVES. fed people. housed people. loved addicts back to health. you gonna tell me that wasnt Christian because it wasnt Reformed enough? get out of here with that.
I attend a progressive Episcopal congregation in the Mission and I want to push back hard on the framing here. We affirm the Apostles' Creed every single Sunday. We take communion. We preach Christ crucified. The fact that we also affirm LGBTQ dignity and question penal substitution doesn't make us a 'different religion.' It makes us people who read the same Bible more carefully than our grandparents did on certain questions.
Here's my challenge to other SF locals in this thread: name one progressive mainline congregation in this city that (1) affirms the physical resurrection, (2) affirms that Jesus is the unique and necessary mediator between God and humanity, and (3) still gets called 'progressive.' Because in my experience those three things together are what get you quietly disinvited from the cool clergy brunches in this town.
lol at the people acting like the Southern Baptist Convention is the baseline for 'real Christianity.' those folks have their own enormous doctrinal problems and a pretty ugly recent history. glass houses, friends.
with all due respect that 'Spirit keeps moving' argument has been used to justify literally everything in church history including things everyone now agrees were horrifying. it cannot be the only criterion. at some point a tradition that shares nothing with its own past except the vocabulary is just cosplay.
The real answer is Chesterton already solved this. Christianity has always self-corrected by going BACK to its roots, not forward into cultural accommodation. Every so-called 'reformation' that actually survived did so by claiming ancient authority, not contemporary relevance. San Francisco churches that are essentially doing therapy with hymns are not reforming. They are dissolving.
Glide is actually a perfect example for this debate though — Cecil Williams himself eventually stopped using the word 'Christian' to describe Glide because he felt it was too exclusive. So the congregation that everyone holds up as the gold standard of progressive SF Christianity literally self-identified OUT of Christianity at one point. That's not me being snarky, that's documented. Look it up.
St. Gregory of Nyssa on De Silva would probably meet two of your three criteria and they're about as SF progressive as it gets liturgically. Though 'unique and necessary mediator' is where it gets complicated with their theology. Beautiful church though. The icons alone are worth the trip even if you disagree with everything they teach.
ok but can we define 'orthodox' before we start throwing it around like a frisbee in Dolores Park? because if orthodox means 5th century Augustine or 16th century Calvin or 19th century Moody those are three very different things. the goalposts have always moved. always.
I think people forget that 'orthodoxy' was never a snapshot in time — it was always a PROCESS of the church discerning together. And the fact that a bunch of straight men in council chambers in the 4th century drew a line doesn't mean that line is the eternal boundary of God's self-disclosure. I'm not saying throw everything out. I'm saying the Spirit keeps moving and SF Christians are engaged in genuine Spirit-led discernment, not apostasy.
Should Christians pray to saints — or is asking Mary and the dead for help straight-up idolatry?
56 comments
Did Christianity give birth to modern science — or did the church spend centuries trying to strangle it in the cradle?
56 comments
Does God choose who gets saved, or do you choose God — and is Calvinism secretly making God into a monster?
55 comments
Do humans have an immortal soul — or did the church steal that idea from Plato and dress it up as Scripture?
55 comments