A problem with knowing what that means is that there is no historical-theological tradition of "progressive Christianity" as there is of "liberal Christianity." Liberal Christianity has been studied and written about much including by liberal theologian Gary Dorrien whose three volume history of liberal religion in America is exhaustive and magisterial. Others besides Dorrien and earlier have written histories of liberal-modernist theology including Kenneth Cauthen and William Hutchison.

Historically, the first woman to be ordained an Anglican priest was supposedly done out of wartime necessity to meet the sacramental needs of Anglicans in occupied Hong Kong following the Japanese invasion of China.

The empty tomb yields in its remaining contents the evidence of the resurrection, if closely considered. The strips of linen and the burial cloth are not simply discarded items of no significance. They have great bearing on the divine action that took place "early in the morning" in great power and evident calm. "Then Simon Peter ... arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head.

Stendahl based his then-novel interpretation on the theory that Paul wrote in a patriarchal society, which makes it necessary (in his view) to reevaluate and reinterpret Galatians to make it applicable to "modern, enlightened" times; he differentiates between continually applicable biblical commands and nonbinding, adiaphoric passages, subjectively making one's worldview the determinative factor.