Apostasy is nothing new. False teachers have been rising up among God’s people and leading their followers astray for millennia. False teachings today are typically ancient heresies dressed up with new names that sound hip and relevant. Enter Progressive Christianity. What is Progressive Christianity? To summarize it in a sentence: it is a movement characterized by social justice, care for the environment, a rejection of absolute truth, the glorification of doubt, the uniting of all religions, and the acceptance of queer theory. Advocates of this movement question essential doctrines of the faith such as, the inerrancy of Scripture, the atonement, the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, and His bodily resurrection. In fact Progressive Christianity implies that those who accept these doctrines as true are unenlightened, blinded by mere tradition. But what causes people to join this movement? Many people become progressive through a process called deconstruction. To deconstruct is to systematically dissect the beliefs you grew up with while rejecting the Bible as your authority. Obviously this means you will end up rejecting your previously held beliefs (assuming they were founded in Scripture). Not all who deconstruct their faith turn to Progressive Christianity but for many it is a better way of thinking about God and a new way of seeing the world. While Christian is in its name the movement is clearly not Christian; it proclaims a different gospel (cf. Galatians 1:6). Paul told the churches of Galatia in the strongest terms possible, “…if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:8) Even if an angelic being appeared to you and preached a different gospel than the one found in Scripture, you are to let him be accursed (i.e. condemned to Hell)! What forceful language! The Apostle knew this was nothing to take lightly. So what is to be our response to false teachings? The Bible has much to say in response to this question, but the words of Jude 3 may be a good summary: “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Brothers and sisters, we must contend for the faith which means we must know what we believe and why we believe it!