I shared this qoute as a proxy of sharing a progressive christian standpoint as the opprotunity to rebuke fundamentalism.
This comic in particular is what I use. See, we seen in his other comics that Ford is scriptually ignorant on matters of slavery, polygamy etc. But here we see why he fails as an evangelical.
See modern day fundamentalists refer to themselves as evangelicals but there is a notable differnce, between the two. Evangelicals by definition are supposed to "evangelize", meaning share and spread the message of Christ to bring people too him. This message does the opposite.
The problem is that Ford preaches to a specific choir. As we see in his comics, he strawmans not only non believers but progressive christians as well seemingly with a desire to convert them. The problem with that is Ford, while supposedly a satirical writer, tries to pass his comic off as sincerly educational especially with theological matters such as this. Ford's way of evangelizing however pushes people away from Christ, especially if they are non believers, or younger impressionable Christians who may lean to a progressive branch. Especially if it has a message that isolates and strawmans them.
So now that we establish Ford's method of evangelicalism is not evangelicalism at all, what does that mean ? What does that matter ? It doesn't, at least not to Ford. See, Ford is a calvinist, which means he believes God only saved or will only save a select few. And in other comics, one I hope to share, in Ford's eyes, those who have a liberal or progressive view of scripture are not real Christians, and no part of the elect social club. He even refuses to call them Christians in his comics. In other words, Ford doesn't care that his evangelicalism is not evangelicalism or that he is chasing people away from Christ by attacking them, because he has nothing to loose. He's part of the elect.
Now what do I as a Progrsssive Christian say about his message. I'm gonna share a qoute from another Progressive Christian I shared a couple of Ford's comics with.
"Christians disagree with each other (a lot). I'm not going to say the deeply unpleasant views of this "Adam4d" aren't "Christian", but they certainly aren't all Christian views and I would say they are out of step with the bulk of Christian thought historically. They definitely aren't mine.
Starting with the second cartoon, as this is easier: this is Calvinist "limited election", boosted by selective quotation from the Bible. The "quote" from 1 John 11-12 is a classic example: the distorts the text and slips in an "only" which isn't there.
This relies on the idea that the principle thing we need saving from is punishment by God himself. The older traditional view is that God is saving us from the consequences of sin: we are made to be in an ever closer relationship with God, and whenever we depart from this we begin to die. Jesus saves us from this death through sin by bringing us back to God. The Bible repeatedly says that God wants to and works to save everyone, and it is Jesus who is his means of doing so. To be a "child" of God in its fullest sense is to be in this close relationship: the traditional Christian understanding is that we are all children of God in the looser sense that God wants that relationship with all of us.
The difficulty raised by the first cartoon is a valid one: there are "difficult" (to put it mildly) passages in the OT that appear to contradict Jesus' portrayal of God, and the character of God embodied in Jesus. This was recognised by the Church from its inception. The traditional approach has been to reinterpret these passages (often allegorically, or as exaggerations or partial understandings) so as to be compatible with Christ's teachings. The cartoonist takes the opposite approach of using the OT passages to refute or ignore Jesus's own teaching about God: most Christians would not do this. This is open to the charge of reinterpreting the Bible to match the conclusions wanted, but Christians are above all followers of Jesus, who was perfectly familiar with the same passages and nevertheless happy that these if understood correctly pointed to the God he preached, so I consider this a perfectly legitimate way to read them."
