Progressive Christians as Neo-Literalists: The drive for “intellectual integrity” in contemporary Christianity

Abstract

Contemporary religious discourses have inherited from modern secularised scientific debates a literalistic worldview in which statements and events are judged to be either true or false and religion is defined as the holding of counterintuitive beliefs. This Master’s paper examines Progressive Christianity in Canada as a movement which has altered its approach to scripture as a direct result of the modern attempt to bring religious activity in line with scientific “truths”. I show that the changing consciousness in modern religiosity in combination with the scholarly search for the historical Jesus has created a movement which promotes the idea of intellectual integrity and a new liberal, literalistic reading of scripture, which I call neo-literalism.