The Commodification of Progressive Christianity
Apparently Christ only hates capitalism when it comes from conservative evangelicals?
This is a callout post. No, not any actual callouts by names — I’m a coward and plus, that seems mean-spirited and unnecessary. I’m not into it. But this is a callout of exvangelicals and the Internet-famous progressive Christian darlings who have taken their experiences with the church and turned it into cold, hard cash, and, who are, to me, indistinguishable from the conservative evangelicals who do the same exact thing on TBN.
I think my brain broke the most when I saw one such figure tell their abortion story — sincere, sad, heartbreaking, and likely even more painful and complex as someone who probably grew up in an anti-abortion conservative household — and segue this into a sponsored post and a platform to sell a pair of spandex shorts. To be quite direct and crass: Fuck. That.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be heard and make money doing something you love. This Substack is free — but only because I have a corporate full-time writing job and don’t need the income. I had the privilege to be able to make it free, and I doubted very much that people would want to shell out money for what I have to say, as I’m not super famous or anything.
I would love to write a book, be in a documentary, be in a successful podcast, and help raise the profile of things that are important to me, like polyamory and progressive Christianity and Christian communism. I can imagine making enough money to pay off my student loan debts and buy a house for my family, and that sounds great to me. Sure, I may be a leftist, but I understand wanting to be paid to do something you love. I live under capitalism too. And honestly, I even really like attention. Would I like raising my OWN profile a little bit? Of course. It feels validating. I’m not too cool to pretend otherwise, though I do realize that cannot be my end goal, either.
But there’s something a little bit, well, fucked up when you’re selling people “networks” of friends as part of a community, which MANY progressive exvangelicals are doing on their Patreons or websites or whatever. We shouldn’t have to pay for community or friendships or relationships. I have a million suggestions of free groups to send people to on many social media sites if you’re looking for community. Why is some individual progressive Christian influencer so special that they could provide that for money? If friendship isn’t even free, how could “salvation” ever be?
Healing from religious trauma is real, and we often need support to get there from a community of people who have been through it. But many of these progressives have zero spiritual training, much less professional training in therapy. I wrote an entire article about why religious counseling is almost always a harmful scam. Well, guess what? That applies to ex-religious gurus trying to help you “heal” from religious trauma for money, too. They’re not magical. Don’t fall for this shit. Credentials matter.
I fell in love with this era of liberation theology and progressive Christianity with the help of public figures. Rachel Held Evans (memory eternal) and Jeff Hood and Jack Shelby Spong and Nadia Bolz-Weber all really changed my life in the mid 2010s. I wouldn’t have heard of them if they hadn’t been well-known and had extensive followings. But the real work in building a community of people who left evangelicalism comes from the ideas of mutual aid, sharing resources, and being there for each other as human beings. It certainly doesn’t come from idolizing specific figures. I recommend you not idolize anyone, past or present, and that includes me. I am a flawed person, and so is every single person out there, even the good ones.
The progressive Christian merchandise these people hawk might make you feel better and piss off your conservative family, which is a noble goal and one that I share, but it also helps contributes to a world where everything can be commodified, even our exvangelical and religious traumas. Buy it, of course! I have a few stickers, a few art pieces around the house that reflect these values. I shop at Walmart and Amazon to save money and for added convenience. I’m not here to preach to you about holier-than-thou shit. I’m no more of an ethical consumer than the average American.
But I’m asking you to remember the things we criticized about evangelicalism. Didn’t it seem like all they ever cared about was maintaining systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism? Didn’t they gloss over the Bible verses where Jesus called out rich people? Didn’t they preach bootstrap theology while driving to church in expensive cars and wearing expensive suits? Didn’t we hear the prosperity gospel sermons trick poor people into giving up what little they had, supposedly for the good of the church but really for the good of the church leadership?
If you’re in the midst of reforming your theology, I beg you to reconsider what that theology is going to look like and who it will include. I love that progressive Christianity is warm and welcoming to the same people that white evangelicalism rejected. I love my queer community of people who also still kinda like Jesus. I love the radical politics that accompany the radical Christ of radical churches. I’m exceedingly loyal to a particular denomination: the United Church of Christ. But I sincerely fear that progressive Christianity via exvangelicalism is en route to a similar fate as other religious institutions: doing it for the money.
When we see a community of broken people who need help recovering from the spiritual abuse they’ve received, our first response should not be to try to figure out how we can sell made-up services to those people for a monthly fee to put money in our own pockets. We need to lift each other up and build communities that focus on serving others, not ourselves. We need to remember that the message of progressive Christianity is more important than the progressive Christian themselves. It’s so, so hard to break out of an individualist mindset and break into a communal one, but it is my opinion that is exactly what Jesus wanted us to do and what we should be doing. And frankly, if we can afford to do so, we should put in time and effort to volunteer as part of those communities for free.
I agree that we do need spiritual leaders, and that people deserve to be paid money for their labor and their art. If I write a book, I won’t be nobly giving it away for free or anything like that. But what I don’t agree with is that we need fucking influencers flaunting their wealth and talking about how they finally broke free of purity culture by offering a $2000 glamping weekend for rich progressive Christians with some spiritual leader who is going to just say some shit like “Jesus hung out with sex workers” while doing yoga and laying out crystals, which are also for sale if you need any!!!! Is that ANY different than Jim Bakker selling “the Silver Solution” to help prevent diseases while you pray and trust in God? It’s just different religious beliefs, different “cures,” and different leaders more palatable to you, personally.
I don’t have any advice in how to balance this — I just really, really don’t want to see the commodification of progressive Christianity, but I’m afraid as more and more people label themselves exvangelicals, more and more people will look to exploit that group for profit. It’s Pride Month, and I’m sure you’re surrounded by the rainbow icons of evil corporations who remember once a year that oh, LGBTQ+ people spend money too, so let’s shamelessly pander to them while sucking the world dry and contributing to horrors and poverty of many through a corrupt system that favors corporations over human beings! And many people recognize the inherent hypocrisy in it, and call it out, rightfully so. I’m calling it out in MY corners of the world, too.
Exvangelical, post-exvangelical, progressive Christianity — whatever it is, it’s a movement that means a lot to me. If you feel like you’re part of that movement too, liberate yourselves from the same brand of capitalism that evangelicals embrace. It’s that same capitalism that the transphobic, homophobic, racist, sexist beliefs are there to help protect. Reject it ALL.