Progressives, Nationalists, and the Christological Heart Failure of the Church
Escaping the failure of justice without Christ, power without the cross, and therapy without transformation.
Watch a progressive Christian and a Christian nationalist argue, and it feels like they live on different planets. Their language, values, and priorities couldn’t be further apart. Progressives talk about justice, inclusion, diversity, and care for the environment. Nationalists talk about order, authority, family, and preserving the nation’s moral and religious fabric. Both are convinced the other side represents everything wrong with Christianity today.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: they have more in common than either would want to admit.
They are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.
By progressive, I mean Christians who put their energy into inclusion, social justice, and liberation from oppression. These are real gospel concerns, echoing the prophets and Jesus himself. But when justice becomes the whole message, Christ is often pushed to the margins or completely and functionally expunged.
By nationalist, I mean Christians who tie faith closely to the identity of a people, culture, or nation. They want to preserve moral order and defend tradition. Again, not without its own biblical resonances. Yet here too, Christ gets eclipsed — the gospel shrinks into protecting “our way of life.”
So while they appear to be enemies of each other, progressives and nationalists actually mirror one another. They are two faces of the same coin — united by the same underlying problem: a Christianity that has lost its grounding in Christ himself.
They both suffer from what I call Christological heart failure.
Before going further, a caveat. This is not a sociological study of “progressive” or “nationalist” Christians. I’m well aware these are wide and varied groupings, with many exceptions, and that real people rarely fit neatly into such labels.
But I am using the terms progressive and nationalist quite deliberately, because they are the words most often used in the culture wars — the shorthand we use about each other, often with a good deal of suspicion or contempt. My point is not to caricature either camp, but to ask what happens when Christianity itself gets reduced to these labels, and Christ is left behind.
What follows is not a taxonomy of political tribes. It is a theological reflection on what happens when our faith loses its grounding in Christ.
And the real difficulty here is not simply politics or culture. It goes deeper than that. It is ontological.
Displacing Christ: Moral, Existential and Ontological Levels
Ontology is simply a way of talking about being, what it means to exist. What makes us human. What grounds our identity, our belonging, and our destiny. This is not abstract philosophy for the classroom. Ontology asks the most basic questions: What does it mean to exist? What makes me who I am? What grounds my life? It is the soil in which our lives grow.
For Christians, ontology is not an idea but a person. Our being is in Christ. He is the one who takes up our humanity, shares our life, suffers our death, and raises us into God’s life. The early church grasped this instinctively: to be human was to be in Christ. Their worship, their ethics, their courage, and their hope all flowed from this reality. Everything else — justice, holiness, compassion, truth — was downstream from this ontological centre.
I’ll say that again:
Everything else — justice, holiness, compassion, truth — was downstream from this ontological centre.
So, although they seem to be polar opposites, progressives and nationalists share the same kind of Christological heart failure. Both reduce Christianity to moral projects and existential anxieties. Both displace Christ from the centre. And once ontology is gone, ideology rushes in to fill the space and take people captive.
Richard Beck offers us a helpful framework for making sense of these dynamics. He describes three layers of religious and Christian life.
The moral layer concerns itself with rules, boundaries, and purity. It is where we ask who is right and who is wrong, who belongs and who does not.
The existential layer is about meaning, belonging, and identity. It is the space where we seek reassurance and security — the sense that our lives matter and are held together.
The ontological layer goes deepest of all. It is about being itself. Here, salvation is not moral improvement or existential comfort. It is the transformation of our very humanity in Christ — being healed, transfigured, and drawn into the life of God.
Beck is right to observe that much of modern Christianity rarely ventures beyond the first two layers. We fixate on moral disputes or existential anxieties. Yet if the ontological centre is neglected, something else will always scuttle in to take its place: causes, nations, lifestyle therapies.
Of course, Beck’s framework has its limits. It is just that — a framework. It cannot account for every nuance of theology or history. Yet it is a helpful tool because it names what many of us can see but struggle to articulate: when faith is cut off from Christian ontology, it becomes brittle, anxious, and endlessly reactive.
And this is precisely what shows up in progressive and nationalist Christianity.
For the progressive, ontology gets relocated into the psychological self. Who I am is who I declare myself to be. Salvation is reduced to inclusion and affirmation. Justice becomes the main language, but often at the cost of naming Christ crucified and risen.
For the nationalist, ontology gets relocated into tribe and territory. Who I am is who my people and nation say I am. Salvation is reduced to cultural belonging and victory. The language of providence and order takes the place where the story of the cross and resurrection should be proclaimed.
So while they appear to be bitter enemies, progressives and nationalists can often mirror one another. Both often operate at the moral and existential levels only. Both displace Christ. And once ontology is lost, ideology steps in to take its place.
Diagnostic Symptoms of Losing Ontology
When faith is unmoored from ontology — when Christ is no longer the ground of our being — the damage shows quickly. You can hear it - diagnose it - in how people worship, in the testimonies they tell, and in what communities gather around. It’s easy to spot the symptoms.
Progressives: Worship Around Causes
Progressive Christians often find it hard to worship unless everything is framed around justice, inclusion, or ecology. Or they find it impossible to gather at all with others for worship around Christ. In progressive services:
Christ’s death and resurrection are rarely proclaimed.
Christocentric worship and prayer fade into the background.
Gatherings become rallies for causes, and testimonies sound more like political statements or personal affirmations.
This produces communities passionate for activism but thin in discipleship. People readily become “dones” or “nones,” leaving church life behind once the energy of the cause burns out.
Nationalists: Worship Around Power
Nationalist Christians keep Jesus in their language, but their worship often tells a different story.
Prayers are addressed to “God” in generic terms, blessing nation and tribe, but rarely naming Christ crucified and risen.
Testimonies revolve around providence, protection, and success.
Worship services retell national myths of dominance and chosenness instead of rehearsing the Christ event - the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
This produces a brittle faith, one that is unable to sustain people when suffering comes. When the myth of triumph all too often collapses under the weight of real life, many quietly walk away.
The Edge of the Coin: Consumer Christianity
Then we have Consumer Christianity, which isn’t another “face” of the coin. It’s the edge — the part that touches both sides and keeps the whole thing spinning. It seeps into progressive and nationalist churches alike, shaping them through a therapeutic lens.
Consumer Christianity primarily exists at the existential level. It is about meaning, fulfilment, and lifestyle management. It rarely asks who God is - unless wondering why God has not provided - or what it means to participate in Christ’s life. Instead, it treats faith as a tool for living a better life. We can map consumer faith this way:
Ontology evacuated: Being is defined by self-fulfilment. The question is not “Who am I in Christ?” but “How is God helping me become the best version of me?”
Symptom in worship: Services become inspirational talks and spiritual life hacks. The Christ crucified and risen is muted; God is cast as a kind of life coach or problem solver.
Symptom in testimony: Stories focus on how “church has helped me” — to feel better, cope, succeed, or belong. What’s absent is talk of repentance, surrender, transformation, or being raised to new life in Christ.
Effect: Faith becomes shallow and consumer-driven. When the church no longer “delivers,” people shop around or drift away.
And here’s the overlap:
For progressives, consumer Christianity reframes justice and inclusion as therapeutic — church as a safe, affirming lifestyle choice.
For nationalists, consumer Christianity reframes providence and triumph also as therapeutic — the church as provider of stability, family values, and personal success.
The edge holds both faces together. As I already mentioned, progressives and nationalists appear opposed, but both are carried along by consumer dynamics that reduce faith to what it does for me.
The New Coin: Participation in Christ
The alternative to progressive, nationalist, and consumer distortions is not another ideology. It is participation in the ontology of Christ.
Christian ontology is Christ himself. In him, our humanity is taken up, healed, and transfigured. He assumes our flesh, shares our suffering, bears our death, and raises us into the life of God. To be Christian is to participate in this reality: to live in Christ, to die in Christ, to rise in Christ.
This is what the early church referred to as recapitulation. Irenaeus saw Christ as re-living the whole human story — from birth to death — in order to heal it.1 Athanasius declared: “He became what we are, that we might become what He is.”2 Maximus the Confessor showed how Christ reconciles the fractures of existence — God and creation, heaven and earth, soul and body — in himself.3
Recapitulation is not an idea. It is the lived access point into the ontology of Jesus:
Through baptism, we die and rise with him.
Through eucharist, worship, and word, we feed on his life, and our humanity is joined to his.
Through discipleship, we learn to live into his story of suffering, love, and resurrection hope.
This is the coin the church is meant to carry — not justice as ideology, not nation as ideology, not therapy as ideology, but Christ himself as the ground of our being.
Reconciling Antinomies
Participation in Christ heals the splits that progressives and nationalists embody.
To progressives, recapitulation affirms the hunger for justice and inclusion, but anchors it in Christ’s embodied humanity. It says: dignity is real, but it is received, not constructed. Christ takes up the excluded and the broken, heals their humanity, and includes them in his body.
To nationalists, recapitulation affirms the concern for holiness and belonging, but transfigures it. It says: identity is real, but it is not bound by blood, soil, or tribe. In Christ, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female are reconciled. True belonging is found only in him.
To consumers, recapitulation affirms the longing for fulfilment, but redirects it. It says: life is real, but it cannot be secured by therapy or success. It is given through surrender to Christ, who calls us through death into resurrection.
In Christ, these antinomies are reconciled. Justice is not abandoned; holiness is not diluted; fulfilment is not denied. All are taken up and healed in the life of Christ.
Ignatian Spirituality: Practising Recapitulation
Recapitulation is not an abstract doctrine. It is the reality of our being joined to Christ’s being — our humanity healed and remade in his. Christian ontology means we no longer define ourselves by causes, nations, or self-fulfilment, but by Christ himself.
The question is: how do we actually enter into that?
Ignatian spirituality, and especially the Spiritual Exercises, is one of the practical ways the church has been given to do this. Ignatius does not ask us to admire Jesus from a safe distance. He asks us to step into his story until it becomes our story. Through imaginative and sensory prayer, we walk with Christ, listen to him, and speak with him. The Exercises train us to live inside the Gospel, where Christ’s life becomes the measure of our own:
In the Incarnation meditations, we are invited to wonder at the God who steps into our flesh. Our humanity is taken up into his, and his story of becoming human becomes the truest story of what it means for us to be human.
In the Passion meditations, we remain with Christ in his suffering. There, our own wounds are drawn into his, and his surrender shows us how to meet pain, loss, and death with trust in God’s love.
In the Resurrection contemplations, we are caught up in his joy and hope. His new life becomes the horizon of our imagination — a future already breaking into the present, reshaping how we live today.
In this way, the Exercises give us more than information, cognitive beliefs, piety or discipline. They give us participation. Christ’s story becomes our story. His imagination becomes our imagination. His life becomes the measure of our lives.
His ontology becomes our ontology.
Ignatian spirituality is therefore a kind of school of recapitulation. It positions us for an encounter with Christ directly, so that our being is steadily reshaped into his. It is one way the church learns to live the truth: not cause-driven, not nation-driven, not consumer-driven, but Christ-driven.
Conclusion: Choosing Your Grounding
In the end, the question is unavoidable: where will you ground your being - your identity and reality? You may choose justice, nation, or lifestyle. Each has its appeal, but each will eventually fade. Or you may want to choose Christ.
And here lies the scandal of Christianity. Christ is not a means to some other end — not a tool for a preferred politics, an ideology, or a lifestyle.
He is the end. He is the way of life itself.
To follow him is not to secure something else we already desire, but to be drawn into his life, his death, and his resurrection, until they become ours.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies (Adversus Haereses), V.14.1; see also V. Preface.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, §54 (De Incarnatione, 54:3).
Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 7 and 41, in Nicholas Constas (trans.), On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Brilliant Perspective - cuts through the noise and confusion. Thank you, Jason!
This is refreshing and very true. Thank you, Jason.