Abraham Piper Invites Mannschreck to ‘Keep Progressing’
In Piper’s TikTok response to Mannschreck, he said, “Basically, [Mannschreck] says, ‘I’m liberal about everything, except that I’m not affirming about gay people, so I’m being treated like a conservative.’ And he doesn’t like that.”
Piper then explained that didn’t want to harshly censure Mannschreck, saying, “He’s being excoriated on Twitter, which is good to see, but I want to take a different strategy. Not by agreeing with him, obviously, but by showing him that he doesn’t agree with himself.”
“[Mannschreck] doesn’t say it directly but you can read between the lines that he thinks he’s a progressive. And progressive is not a set of beliefs. It’s a state of mind. It’s an excitement about changing,” Piper said. “And so I’d say to this guy, and to the millions of evangelicals who believe the same thing but are quiet about it, there’s a reason you’re low key embarrassed about the things you believe. And there’s a reason why you’d prefer to be called a progressive than a fundamentalist.”
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“Go with your gut on this one! If you’re progressive, that means that you don’t want to stay where you are. You want to change. Do it,” Piper continued.
Piper then turned his attention back to Mannschreck.
“The writer of that tweet was a homophobe. But I say ‘was,’ because that was yesterday. Today’s brand new. He doesn’t have to be homophobic anymore,” Piper said. “Listen, I know personally that if you’re coming from fundamentalism, you will have to go through ugly, muddled middle points like where this guy is right now. And that’s fine. That’s literally all any of us are ever doing.”
Piper concluded his video by saying, “But don’t stop. Don’t plant your flag halfway along the journey. Keep going. If you’re progressive, progress.”
Piper’s video has been viewed on TikTok almost 20,000 times.
JJ Mannschreck Responds
In a statement to ChurchLeaders, Mannschreck said, “I appreciated Abraham’s description of the faith journey, and how we are all muddling through in-between spaces as we live and learn, but I was disheartened to hear him say that it was ‘good to see’ me get excoriated on twitter. Cheering for hatred doesn’t fit very well with the rest of his message.”
