I appreciated what the author was trying to do. I was distracted right out of the gate because I didn't agree with her definition of progressive Christian, which was a thread throughout. I appelreciated her story and could relate on many levels, but felt many theological topics weren't expanded on enough. In particular, biblical canon and theology. It's my hope books like this can be discussed across a wide spectrum of Christians, not just celebrated by one group.

This is definitely a contender for one of my top books of 2020!
In it, Alisa Childers shares her story of how, despite being a life-long Christian and member of the Christian band Zoegirl, her faith was challenged on encountering a progressive Christian pastor with very different ideas about God, Jesus and the Bible.
The book describes her journey in wrestling with these questions and how God helped her rebuild her faith. It also explores some of the common ideas of progressive Christianity, which she believes are also taking hold more widely in the church, and she looks at how these compare with the Bible.
Personally I found this book incredibly helpful. The book covers a lot of complex ideas, but it does so in an easy-to-read and accessible way. Alisa Childers is very open about her own journey of faith, and her passion for truth, and for holding true to the Gospel, shines through in every page. I'd highly recommend this book!

A lifelong Christian, Alisa Childers found herself facing tough questions that threatened to undermine her assurance in Christ, casting seeds of doubt. In this book she shares her experience, and how it sent her on a quest for concrete answers to feed her faith, and find answers to help others stand firm in Biblical truth amid the wave of Progressive Christianity.

I've read other books on this topic, but of all of them this is my favorite, and most compelling. I liked how the author honestly shares the confusion and doubts that she was facing, thoroughly explaining the breakdowns in progressive /emergent theology and resoundingly answering with biblical truth, complete with references. Though written for the current climate, this book has a timelessness that comes with its affirmation of absolute truth.

Overall, this is probably my non-fiction Christian must-read of the year, I completed this book and immediately started raving about how well done it was, and how relatable it is. The things that she talks about aren't foreign, in fact I have often myself struggled with how to respond to these more progressive claims that sound OK, but something just isn't quite right about it. I love how this book is firmly addresses what is in the Bible and the things that we know for sure as absolute truth about God, our feelings don't trump truth. We don't have to settle for hopeful agnosticism, but we can know for sure through God's Word. A must read for every Christian!

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I found this book to be a comprehensive examination of the facts of the scripture written not by a theologian but someone like me. As a Christian raised in the church who searches for the truth of the gospel I found the author's questions and research to be authentic and complete.
The author encounters progressive and universalism thought and proceeds to examine them with tenacity, always in search of the real truth of the scriptures.
I would recommend this book to anyone with questions or those who encounter those who would have them believe things that don't quite jive with the Bible.
I was given this to read by Net Galley but the opinions are entirely my own.

This is an amazing find. Alisa Childers writes about her personal experiences with coming into contact with progressive Christianity in today’s churches in a way that is both approachable and relatable. I found myself saying “yes! I’ve had those thoughts too!”

Readers will find her chapters not only just an account of what she has experienced but to my delight has references at the end of each chapter. I’m finding myself researching on my own and Childers offers transparency by including where she is coming from by giving readers access to her own personal research and information. The references books used are highly credible and give her own book credibility for a reader such as I who is looking and searching for truth.

Childers gives light to several reasons why people would welcome progressive Christianity and so quickly abandon their faith. I think that these points offer insights to what one may see in today’s church—and I love that she can quickly touch on each one without droning on. She challenges us to have a faith based on evidence.

I would recommend this book highly.

Crisis of faith - you never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. CS Lewis

I have listened to Alisa Childers' podcast for several years now. She tackles controversy of Progressive Christianity but she remains true to the gospel. The importance of creation, the fall, redemption and restoration. Progressive Christianity and their teachers put a different spin on these issues. What became a crisis of faith for Alisa was her invitation to a bible study led by progressive teacher. Asking her questions that she struggled with but always believed. The Progressive camp foundation is not necessarily on solid theology and the only way to God is Jesus but community, friendship, justice and unity (unity without truth). All good things but digging deeper do they deal with the individual relation to God. Meaning do I struggle with who God is. His holiness, the blood that covers sin, sacrifice, and heaven and hell.

Childer's crisis led her to dig deeper into faith and to how historical Christianity can lead to the answers she seeks. I liked how her book was always moving forward. How she grew up in a Christian home, her family served the community and the church and then when she was challenged with what she really believed. The bible makes plain that truth will be hard to digest in the end times. I believe we are there. I encourage Christians to read Alisa's account, listen to her blog, and be reminded the importance of good theology.

A Special thank you to Tyndale House Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review

This story is a helpful guide for the Christian struggling with questions about the foundations of their faith. Alisa shares her journey of faith, as she struggled to defend what she truly believed, in the face of progressive Christianity. As she tells her story, she teaches us with grace and humility, the reasons and evidence that point to a historic Christianity.

I think this book is really valuable for us as cultural Christianity challenges the foundations of faith and equips is in our study of apologetics and theology.

Wow. This book is awesome.

First of all if you are interested in church history but don’t want to read a book that will overwhelm you this is a book that explains so many things very clearly. Like how to we know the Word of God really is the Word of God. Now I want to read the more challenging books.

The things the author talked about are scary. The fact that some pastors are teaching the things Alisa shared should scare all of us who desire truth. I have not encountered this teaching personally but I can definitely see the Church could be lead astray through this teaching.

Essentially the progressive gospel is Jesus plus anything else. This is not truth. It’s just Jesus. That is all we need. Not Jesus plus new knowledge, that is not Biblical.

A few other things she made clear was what a Gnostic is: “Gnostics, therefore, believed that Jesus came not to save us from sin but to impart special knowledge that would essentially lead us to participate in the divine pleroma. To find this knowledge was to find salvation.” Yikes, this is not truth but I think I believed this for years. That if I could just get new knowledge, new revelation I could be even more “spiritual”.

She also talked about universalism. Which I am discovering many pastors I once followed believe. She says about universal reconciliation, “…..holds that while Jesus is the only way to salvation, all humans will eventually be reconciled to God through Jesus.” Again, not truth, not Biblical.

Alisa stated things so clearly, things I had been hearing and wondering about. If you are hearing these lies I highly recommend this book as a way to start learning how to defend your faith.


A copy of this book was given to me through Netgalley.com. All opinions are my own.

I discovered Alisa Childers through the excellent documentary American Gospel: Christ Crucified. In the documentary, Childers speaks about her experience attending a progressive church and how it made her doubt her faith. She shares her story in greater detail in her book, Another Gospel: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity.

Childers was born and raised in a Christian family. She accepted Jesus in her heart when she was five, read the whole Bible in her youth, and as an adult, she wrote and performed music for the Christian band ZOEgirl. At first glance, Childers seemed a devout Christian with firm beliefs. But the illusion broke when she sat under the teachings of a progressive pastor.

Instead of building her faith, her pastor increased her doubts; instead of solidifying her stand on the solid rock, he shook the ground beneath her. Her progressive pastor led her to deconstruct her faith, which is a process of “systematically dissecting and often rejecting the beliefs you grew up with.”

Childers was filled with doubts but refused to let them fester. She went on an intellectual quest to find answers to her questions and separate truth from lies. She shares this journey in Another Gospel, which is an account of the reconstruction of her faith as well as the deconstruction of progressive Christianity.

The book features teachings Childers received from her progressive pastor, her crisis of faith when she realized she couldn’t dispute his claims, and her research to learn the truth. The claims she examines include the inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility of the Bible, the authority and credibility of Scriptures, the doctrines of penal substitutionary atonement, total depravity, the humanity of Christ and hell.

She concludes the book with a chapter titled reconstruction, where she identifies the essential building blocks of historic Christianity as established in the Holy Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-5).

Childers wrote this book because progressive Christianity has gained a large presence in the church. Many believers sit under progressive pastors and follow progressive bloggers and authors without realizing it. And she wants Christians to be watchful against this destructive heresy.

She says, “Like wheat and tares, true ideas and false ideas have grown together throughout church history, and it’s up to faithful Christians to be watchful and diligent to compare every idea with the Word of God and see if it lines up.”

Childers accomplishes her goal with excellence. She provides a thorough examination of progressive Christianity and shows where it deviates from historical Christianity. She deftly dismantled each claim using Holy Scriptures and the witness of the saints throughout Church history. And the conclusion is undeniable; progressive Christianity differs from biblical and historic Christianity. It’s another gospel and must be marked and avoided.

I enjoyed learning more about progressive Christianity, as I was not familiar with it. Childers gives many insights that helped me understand this movement and confront its adherent. She also did a superb job of providing facts that will help us defend the gospel. It was mostly basic not in-depth facts. Readers of other apologetic books like The Case for Christ will be familiar with them.

But Childers shared an excellent list of additional resources to further our education and dig deeper into apologetics.

I highly recommend reading Another Gospel if you are an honest skeptic, struggling with doubts, or just want to learn more about progressive Christianity and apologetics. Childers provides a robust biblical defense of the true gospel that will edify, encourage, and strengthen you in the faith.

I also recommend reading other apologetic books and growing in that area because all Christians must contend for the faith. As Voddie Baucham said, we must know what we believe, why we believe it, and communicate it in a winsome and effective way.

*The publisher graciously gave me an Advanced Reader’s Copy in exchange for an honest review.*

The Year of Our Lord 2020 has proven to be a year of anxiety and fear. The pandemic has dampened our collective spirits, and where we would normally be willing to give the benefit of the doubt we find ourselves thinking the worst about others. It was a summer of racial injustice and unrest, with some evangelicals distraught upon finding that rot in our own home and wondering how far it goes. Others in turn were anxious that such a newfound "wokeness" among their brothers and sisters would lead down a slippery slope to a progressive Christianity that denied the historic faith in favor of a socially acceptable modern substitute. So what is progressive Christianity, and is it something we should be worried about or is it just the yin to the theologically conservative yang?

This is question Alisa Childers seeks to explore in her new book, Another Gospel? The Journey of a Lifelong Christian Seeking the Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity. The journey in the subtitle refers to her experience going to a progressive church and attending a faith deconstruction class and then finding her way back to a more theologically orthodox faith after wrestling through various questions. The structure of the book traces this journey through theologically progressive territory, addressing the questions people are asking while ultimately answering with orthodoxy.

It's a relatively short, concise book aimed at anyone who is concerned with or is in a progressive church:

"Maybe you’re a Christian who feels alone in your beliefs. Maybe you’re a believer who has drifted into progressive Christianity without realizing it—or who is concerned that a friend or loved one is on that path. Maybe you feel frustrated when your social media news feed is flooded with articles, blogs, and videos that send red flags flying, but you can’t articulate why. Maybe there’s a pebble in your shoe because you’ve witnessed hypocrisy in your church or been a victim of spiritual abuse. Maybe you’re tempted to let the wave take you under and give up on your faith altogether."

To be clear, she is not saying something as simplistic as "orthodox church good, progressive church bad." No church is above the need for repentance or correction, but her aim is to show that whatever the faults of more theologically orthodox churches, the answer is not to jettison everything we believe.

The book largely succeeds at this goal. She writes in a warm, accessible tone that does not shy away from big theological words or apologetic challenges, walking through her progressive story and showing along the way how doctrines held up to scrutiny rather than crumbling. One of the single best parts about the book is how she winsomely invites the reader into daunting vocabulary (penal substitutionary atonement? phew!) rather than simply speaking over people's heads or dumbing the content down. Further, she shows herself to be well-acquainted with the issues at stake and is not writing from a detached academic perspective.

On the other hand, the book is not without blemish. She sometimes gives off the impression that if we just affirm orthodox doctrines and disavow progressivism, nothing could possibly go wrong; in other words, she sometimes makes it seem like the life and the praxis of the church is reducible to holding the right ideas. Her definition of orthodoxy can sometimes be overly restrictive to the point that other theologically orthodox Christians who differ from her on secondary concerns would nevertheless find themselves alienated by some of her stances in the book. To her credit, she does clearly articulate what she believes to be the dealbreakers for orthodoxy, as enumerated by Norm Geisler:

1. Human depravity (I am a sinner.)
2. God’s unity (There is one God.)
3. The necessity of grace (I am saved by grace.)
4. Christ’s deity (Christ is God.)
5. Christ’s humanity (Christ is man.)
6. Christ’s atoning death (Christ died for my sins.)
7. Christ’s bodily resurrection (Christ rose from the dead.)
8. The necessity of faith (I must believe.)

Also to her credit, she explicitly points out that this means non-essential doctrines regarding gender, creation, or spiritual gifts are not dealbreakers. I had to wonder how much she functionally meant this, though, given that in chapter 5 (for example) she portrays those who believe in evolution as just as heterodox as those who deny the virgin birth. It is of course possible to use evolution as a means toward the end of dismantling the credibility of scripture, but it's disingenuous at best to suggest that all believers who hold to the theory do so with that motive.

She similarly dismisses Critical Theory out of hand, framing it from the start as a worldview in opposition to a biblical worldview, at which point a Christian has no choice but to reject it. Yet it really does not need to be framed this way, and the stubborn impulse of the conservative Christian to insist upon it being a worldview is frankly frustrating and counterproductive. It is a tool for examining power and oppression in our world. Christians believe that both power and oppression are real and must be given careful consideration. When examining power and oppression in our world and in our own lives, it behooves us to pick up a tool custom built for the task. The fact that others who live entirely within the immanent frame condense the whole world down to a dichotomy of power and oppression in no way necessitates that we do, but we can heartily affirm that for this piece of the picture Critical Theory can prove to be a helpful lens.

She goes on to argue, "But when someone accepts the ideas of critical theory, it can begin to erode their Christian worldview by taking their eyes off the fundamental truths of who God is and how he works in the world. It excuses a person from upholding biblical morality and even considers the historic Christian sexual ethic to be oppressive." That first sentence is fair enough, but that's actually true of many other things that we cannot afford to dismiss. Science can begin to erode one's Christian worldview, but it in no way requires this. To baldly state without qualification that Critical Theory "excuses a person from upholding biblical morality" is a gravely reductionistic error, and even beyond that it's simply a non sequitur. Listening to the intersectional transgender lesbian tell stories of lived oppression is not an excuse to dismiss biblical morality, but an opportunity to weep with those who weep. Without affirming everything that is proclaimed under the banner of Critical Theory, we can nevertheless thank God for this small island of common ground in a sea of division instead of turning it into a wedge between us and those to whom we are called to be ambassadors.

These criticisms are not insignificant, but they do not affect my overall approbation of Childers' new book. I think she's wrong about these non-essentials, but I think she's absolutely right about the essentials: we have been given a deposit of faith, and we have been entrusted to guard it for God's glory and our good. The questions she asks are real, and she shows that the orthodox Christian tradition actually does have meaningful answers if we take the time to learn and do our homework. I commend it to any and all who have written off Christian orthodoxy or are tempted to do so; she is a gifted, concise writer and well worth your attention.

DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of a fair, unbiased review.

Over the last couple of years, I have become more aware of progressive Christianity because of several people I know who talked about the deconstruction of their faith but didn’t entirely know what they meant. In this book, Alisa Childers goes through her experience with a progressive Christian pastor questioning everything Childers had ever believed about Christianity before. This was one of the apologetics books that I really enjoyed. I like how she entwined her crisis of faith and her desire to know the truth with digging deeper into what Christianity really is. It is an apologetics book that contrasts progressive Christianity which is very popular in today’s society with biblical, historical, and theological truths. It made me question my faith or rather why I believe what I believe and gave me historical resources and biblical resources to support what I believe.

Childers, Alisa. Another Gospel?. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2020. $16.99

Alisa Childers writes Another Gospel? with the average Christian in mind. This book is not meant only for Christians. Those who have left Christianity because of doubts and questions under the influence of the various forms of Progressive Christianity would benefit from Another Gospel. Childers also seeks to build up the Christian to be able to stand up against mounting pressure and questions. Many Christians are not prepared to respond to questions related to the authority of Scripture, Scripture’s historical accuracy and trustworthiness, and how to understand the God who both ordered the killing of people in the Old Testament.

Childers provides an approachable defense of orthodox Christianity. She provides references to more academic works (many of which I wholeheartedly recommend) and Church Fathers. Yet, the tone is welcoming and sets an example of how to create a defense on a popular level. It is also encouraging to see God using attempts at deconstructing a believer’s faith to drive them back to his Word. Childers engages with the popular arguments leveled against historical Christianity by the likes of McLaren, Enns, Bell, and Ehrman.

I would be glad to put this book in the hands of the average Christian to begin engaging with the arguments of Progressive Christianity.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review purposes. My comments are independent and my own.

I first discovered Alisa Childers on The American Gospel: Christ Crucified and was excited to get approved for this book. Alisa shares her own story of encountering progressive "Christianity" and how she worked through the doubts that they raised in her life regarding her faith. I really enjoyed how she wrote about the early church fathers and what they believed. Alisa's book is a must read for the church and an eye-opener to the dangers of the progressive movement. It is not Christian and more than ever we need to study our church history and study apologetics and teach these things to the upcoming generation.