FYI: Randal Rauser has never been a research focus of mine, so while I have read his primary book and am working on another, in addition to debating him and watching many of his videos, my research on him is relatively scant, all things considered. That may change, depending on Veritas' response and whether others are willing to hold him accountable.

Randal Rauser: ethical investigation or dishonest instigator?

_{*note: this is a work in progress.}

Progressive Christians Love Jesus Too, published 2022

• "In Progressive Christians Love Jesus Too, professor and theologian Randal Rauser provides a careful, point-by-point rebuttal to Childers’ incendiary claims." [sales copy on Amazon]
• The first claim he "addresses", in chapter 1, is Alisa's autobiographical accounts of her lived experience with the Progressive Christian pastor, such as:
  

  • "In this chapter and the next, I want to seek a further understanding for why Childers automatically retreats to such a stark and uncharitable account. Why assume the pastor was a malevolent deceiver? Why assume the fellow students didn’t really care about the truth? Why assume progressive Christians are opposed to Christianity? ...

    We will then consider how this predisposes her to be defensive, to interpret the pastor’s intentions as malicious, and to take his statements in a consistently negative manner when charitable interpretations are readily available. I will conclude with some words on education and the process of deconstruction and how that can lead to blowback from those who are unable to process the experience."

  • However, Randal fails to provide any evidence that Alisa misrepresented or was uncharitable to the pastor.

  • In fact, Randal's dismissal of Alisa's lived experience, and all of her research, matches almost exactly the definition of mansplaining:
    • "to explain something to a woman in a condescending way that assumes she has no knowledge about the topic"
    • https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mansplain
  • Randal even admits that he doesn't know who the pastor is: [emphasis mine]
    
    • “Although we may not have access to the pastor, what we can do is consider Childers’ summary of some of his claims and ask a very simple question: is there a charitable interpretation of what the pastor was trying to accomplish, one that does not involve imputing evil motives to him? Might one even find a theological insight in his challenging words?”
• Randal also attempts to disprove Alisa's comments about Marcionism in Progressive Christianity. However:
  • According to Randal Rauser (~35:30-36:30), we shouldn't use the wrong genre to judge a text. Yet he treats Alisa's comments about Marcionism according to strict academic definitions, when her text is written in lay-level spiritual memoir.
  • When Alisa first introduces Marcionism in Another Gospel, she cites Brian McLaren from A New Kind of Christianity. Yet this is one of Brian's books that Randal never mentions, cites, or references in his own "careful, point-by-point rebuttal." The only McLaren books that Randal references are "A Generous Orthodoxy," "A New Kind of Christianity," "The Church on the Other Side," and "The Secret Message of Jesus."
  • Randal also makes no mention of this article, published by a Progressive Christian 2 years before Alisa published her book: [emphasis original]
    • "I’m coming to realize that the actual sinister impulse at the heart of Marcionism really could pose a threat to progressive Christianity: anti-Semitism."

Criticizing others while using the same standard

• In this video, Randal criticizes Cameron Bertuzzi with the following [emphasis mine]
  • [~11:49] “I said that I was going to reference two Cameron [Bertuzzi] videos. So the other one was from the day before where he described Alex O'Connor's recent debate performance as “embarrassing”… That's pretty insulting. I mean, it would be one thing to say… “O'Connor’s questionable performance or imperfect performance or subpar performance.” But to say “embarrassing performance” is pretty condescending.”
• And yet he turns around and, in the same video, says the following about Alisa Childers: [emphasis mine]
  • [~14:23] “Alisa Childers, a few years ago, she published her book Another Gospel, where she argues that what she calls Progressive Christianity is another religion. … Now that has to be one of the stupidest and most offensive claims that has been publicly defended by any apologist in recent years and that is saying something. … That is such a nutso thing to say with no supporting evidence for that, and her book is riddled with errors. I wrote an entire book critiquing it called Progressive Christians Love Jesus Too… I've spoken with Brian Zahnd about this, and we both reached out to Sean McDowell and asked him to respond to the lies and the disinformation and misinformation that Childers is spreading … they just ignore us, they refuse even to engage. And I think that is all evidence of the pressure to tribalize the corrupting influence of promoting dubious, questionable ideas, falsehoods, false binaries, misrepresentations, strawmen that proliferate within the Evangelical subculture…” 

Not knowing who Progressive Christians are

• In this video, Randal claims the following:
  • [~3:00] "For example, [Alisa]'s called Brian Zahnd a Progressive Christian. Brian Zahnd has never called himself a Progressive Christian and he's a fully Orthodox Christian."
• Meanwhile, Brian McLaren, 2019:
  • "You can share books or other recommendations. Most Evangelicals won’t be ready for Jack Spong or even Marcus Borg, but they might listen to Rachel Held Evans or Pete Enns or Brian Zahnd, or perhaps even some of my books. There are some tremendous podcasts out there to recommend too, geared especially for questioning Evangelicals. Pete Enns’ “The Bible for Normal People” and Tripp Fuller’s “Homebrewed Christianity” and Jen Hatmaker’s “For the Love” are among my favorites."

Spreading his own misinformation

• This video is arguably one of his most notorious.
  • [~3:40] "Well, then, she's done bad research, because this is not what all the people I just mentioned teach."
• Randal's bad research:
  • [~2:15] "this is a website that was started and maintained by Bishop John Shelby Spong."
    
    • The website he has up at this point in the video is the info page for the Progressing Spirit newsletter, not the history page for Progressive Christianity, the website he is actually on.
    • Progressive Christianity dot Org identifies Jim Adams as the founder, in 1994. Spong is listed as an adviser for the ministry.
  • [~2:19] "Bishop John Shelby Spong was a very liberal Episcopalian Mainline Bishop and his views are actually radically different from leading Progressive Christians such as Peter Enns or Rachel Held Evans or Brian McLaren or Rob Bell or Richard Rohr or Brian Zahnd."
    • The website Randal shows mentions John Shelby Spong's "endorsed successors". Those endorsed successors include:
    • Matthew Fox, Jacqueline Lewis, Caleb Lines, Brian McLaren, Robin Meyers, Brandon Robertson, Gretta Vosper (an atheist), and Roger Wolsey.
    • Additionally, see Brian McLaren's comments above regarding the relationship between almost every person Randal mentioned and Brian's own assessment of who's a Progressive Christian and what they believe.
  • [~3:50] "What she is doing here is essentially reasoning from 'well, this is the URL progressivechristianity.org so I guess this represents what progressive Christians generally believe.'"
    • Randal presents no evidence that she actually thinks, believes, or did that, which begs the question of whether he is being charitable in his assessment of her.
    • Alisa's book, which Randal had already published his response to before publishing this video, provides [name (number of references)] for at least the following: John Pavlovitz (1), Rob Bell (6), Brian McLaren (12), Peter Enns (6), Brian Zahnd (8), William P Young (5), Richard Rohr (8), Rachel Held Evans (4), Nadia Bolz-Weber (6), Jen Hatmaker (1), Sarah Bessey (1). Progressive Christianity dot Org isn't even in the book.
    • In my own independent research, Progressive Christianity dot Org has proven to be the largest single Progressive Christianity ministry available, with the most number of contributors (30+ individual authors, speakers, and ministry leaders), hundreds of identified churches in their network, support from both Wild Goose Festival and Westar Institute, etc.

If you'd like to add anything, or have corrections or recommendations, just reach out.