As a Christian theologian, I don’t think you can undo conservative Christian supremacy in the United States with progressive Christian supremacy.
The conservatism is not the root of the problem. Christian supremacy itself is the root. If, for example, you are countering conservative Christian supremacists’ claims of following “the real Jesus” by arguing that “the real Jesus” was actually progressive and liberatory, you are not dismantling Christian supremacy. The idea that there’s a “real Jesus” who is on your side and not the other side because he is good and never bad—and so is your side—is itself a supremacist idea.
Talking about a “real Jesus” means you are still interested in propping up Jesus as the supreme path to follow. You are still whitewashing his life and legacy, both of which contain troubling and traumatic elements—such as promoting purity culture (Matthew 5), ignoring and comparing a Canaanite woman to a dog (Matthew 15), and telling a woman who was almost stoned to death to “sin no more” (John 8). You are still invested in saving Jesus—something he didn’t ask for anywhere in the Scriptures. In fact, when Jesus most needed saving, he told his disciples to put away their swords (Matthew 26).
Progressives don’t need to save Jesus from conservatives. Jesus needs neither salvation nor redemption. Jesus doesn’t even need worship. Jesus came “to tell good news to the poor,” “to tell prisoners that they are free,” “to tell the blind that they can see again,” and “to free those who have been treated badly.” (Luke 4). If you want that to be his legacy, you gotta stop with the supremacy and focus more on making the world a better place. That involves humanizing and partnering with people outside your faith communities—who are just as committed to justice and a better world as progressive Christians are.
It’s like when survivor advocates argue Jesus is the answer to trauma. No, he’s not that in any way—and you can heal from trauma just fine without Jesus. Many people have. We can similarly make a better world without Jesus. Many people do. (And that’s kind of the whole point of the Kingdom of God!) Jesus is not always the answer and that is okay. That shouldn’t feel threatening to acknowledge. Sometimes, Jesus is not the answer. Sometimes, he’s a bad or cruel or abusive answer.
But the good news (heh) is that Jesus and Christians are not alone. There are Muslims who believe deeply in justice and liberation. There are Buddhists who believe deeply in justice and liberation. There are Hindus who believe deeply in justice and liberation. There are atheists and agnostics and apatheists who believe deeply in justice and liberation. Sometimes, they have better answers. Supremacist arguments disregard and disrespect these facts.
So, give up “real Jesus.” You don’t need to surrender Jesus to conservatives but you do need to stop pretending there’s a platonic Jesus form floating out there in the ether that you access better than conservatives. Many authoritarian imaginations claim such a Jesus exists, but rejecting that Jesus’s control over your life is the first step to undoing Christian supremacy.
Jesus was once a Christian supremacist, too. In fact, the story of his calling the Canaanite woman a dog is the story of Jesus realizing supremacy cannot co-exist with mutual liberation.