by Steve | Mar 7, 1991 | Archive - 1991
My Friend, the Liberal
By Riley B. Case
My pastor friend Harry, down the road, is a liberal. Harry does not identify himself as a liberal. To Harry, labels like “liberal” or “evangelical” are divisive. “Why can’t we all just be Christians?” Harry asks, not aware, evidently, that such. talk, where distinctions are blurred in the name of inclusiveness, is the talk of liberals.
If he must live by a label, Harry prefers “middle-of-the-road.” Harry votes with the majority at his United Methodist annual conference and on the general boards of which he is a member. He does not understand why anyone would criticize the denominational Sunday school materials, or want to attend something other than a United Methodist seminary, or be upset with the Board of Global Ministries. He is not sure, at the present time, that the church is ready for the ordination of practicing homosexuals, but, as he argues, he is “open,” and bis mind could be easily changed.
In short Harry is “middle-of-the-road” because his point of reference is the limited, liberal, mainline world He is quite oblivious to the greater part of Christianity – fundamentalist, evangelical, Pentecostal – which exists quite unrelated to Harry’s training and denominational experience.
Harry is suspicious of hard edges. Talk about Original Sin and Substitutionary Atonement and Hell sounds harsh to him. His sermons are essays about God-in-general, faith-in-general, and doing better. The exception is when Harry comes home from a preacher’s conference. Then he gets prophetic and talks on saving the whales or American foreign policy.
Consistent with his desire to be always relevant, Harry experiments with whatever is in style at the moment, whether it be spiritual formation, or liturgical dance, or defense of the environment, or intinction. He works hard to make sure his language is always “inclusive.”
On the Board of Ordained Ministry, Harry is more concerned about whether ordinands know how to think than in what they believe. Faithfulness to Harry means loyalty to the denomination rather than to the God of the historic creeds and the doctrinal standards. When he rails it is not against unbelief but against rigidity and intolerance, as in the view that the Bible is the written Word of God and that salvation is only in Jesus Christ. If his congregation is sometimes disappointed in him it is because of their undue conservativism and their lack of enlightenment.
Harry is a typical United Methodist pastor, trained in a United Methodist seminary, and buying the official United Methodist approach to Christianity. Harry is a liberal.
Riley Case is pastor of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Kokomo, lndiana and former district superintendent in the North lndiana Conference.
by Steve | Mar 7, 1991 | Archive - 1991
The Liberal Majority
By Martin Marty
March/April 1991
8.7 percent of Americans prefer to be seen as “liberal Protestants,” against 15.8 percent “conservative Protestants.” Most liberals are partly conservative, and many conservatives are partly liberal. Both types attract allegiances from the 58.3 percent who prefer to “Catholics,” “Moderate Protestants,” “Black Protestants.” With lines blurred, it is useful to inquire not about shadings, but about the liberal pole.
Just as fundamentalists, evangelicals, Pentecostals, and conservatives differ wildly with each other over fundamentals, such as baptism, The Lord’s Supper, human will, and eschatology; so liberals differ wildly with each other over the content of the faith, specific dogmas.
How liberals color their belief is therefore the only useful topic. Though they are critical liberal heirs of the Enlightenment, they display more suspicion of reason, science, individualist freedom, and progress, than did their grandparents. But being Christians they continue to see God active in the realms of the first three of these elements. Because they are liberal Christians, they believe in a transcendent and immanent God. But they are more ready than were their grandparents to address transcendence.
They believe in the divine incarnation and whole-making activity of Christ, but are more ready to stress the “fully human” elements in orthodoxy than are some of their traditionalist counterparts, while often finding less sure rationales to support the witness to the “fully divine.” They believe in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church (more than do many conservatives, such as premillennial fundamentalists who have trouble finding it at all), but are more likely than conservatives to see its borders open, not closed. They thus find it more porous to the possibility of integrity in other faiths than are those versions of Christianity which enjoy thick barriers against others and great distances between them.
In Paul Ricocur’s terms, they are aware of “criticism” or “interpretation,” but for liberal Christians, this awareness did not lead them to lose faith. Nor did it inspire them to join those hardliners who believe “in spite of interpretation!” Instead, they believe “through interpretation.” This mode leads them to such commitment to openness, relativity, ambiguity, and paradox, that some of them match Robert Frost’s depiction: A liberal is someone who will not take his own side in an argument
At their best, those near the liberal pole combine commitment with openness and express a humility about their belief, which has as much biblical grounding as do the commitments of their more arrogating and self-assured “conservative” counterparts – many of whom are apostate liberals who keep fighting their own pasts and caricaturing the hard-held faith of those in whose company they formerly found themselves.
Martin Marty is a professor at the University of Chicago and senior editor of The Christian Century.
by Steve | Mar 7, 1991 | Archive - 1991
The Truth of Liberalism
By Richard John Neuhaus
March/April 1991
The term “liberalism” cloaks a multitude of sins, and a few virtues. Liberalism, also in our churches, is usually defined politically. It is theological liberalism, however, that should be our chief concern. Liberal theology is commonly dated from Friedrich Schleirmacher (d. 1834). His work, in many ways impressive, was given a radical turn by Ludwig Fuerbach (d 1872) who argued that all religious statements are “projections” of human experience, longings, and fantasies. The essential conflict between orthodox Christianity and this brand of liberalism is over the question of truth.
Although they may never have heard of Feuerbach, many liberals in our churches are thoroughgoing Feuerbachiam.. That is, they operate with the subjectivist assumption that truth means what is true for you. They are utilitarians in their belief that truth is what works. The end toward which such truth is supposed to “work” is the maximizing of the expression of the autonomous self. Truth, in this view, is a human construct. Truth is, quite precisely, a fabrication in the sense that is manufactured by us.
The autonomous self accepting only the truth that is useful to the self cannot abide the idea of authoritative truth external to the self. Put differently, such liberalism cannot make the distinction between the authoritative and the authoritarian. Every appeal to authoritative truth – God’s self-revelation, Scripture, creed – is by definition authoritarian because it threatens to cramp and limit the expressive self. In the name of open-mindedness, all authoritative truth claims must be relativized or debunked in order to permit each person to hold and teach “his or her truth.” This approach is often, and falsely, described in terms of “pluralism” and “inclusiveness.”
False pluralism is pretending that our deepest differences make no difference. Genuine pluralism is the serious engagement of our different understandings of the truth. The “inclusiveness” of this liberal approach is radically exclusive, since it excludes the normative truth of orthodox Christianity. The basic premise of Christianity is that the community and the self are to be subordinated in obedience to truth that is not of our manufacture, notably to the Truth who is Jesus the Christ.
The liberalism in question is parasitic; it is the unbelief that lives off belief. When triumphant, such liberalism is self-liquidating, for it dissolves the faith on which it feeds. Liberalism in its several forms, however, is also sustained by-varieties of ·”conservatism” that are self-opinionated, bigoted, unloving, imperious, and anti-intellectual. Such conservatisms make liberalism look good and help keep it going. The root meaning of “liberal” is generosity. Generosity of spirit is a virtue to be cultivated by all Christians. Given the history and present use of the term, however, we will be misunderstood if we call that virtue liberalism. Better to call it “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15).
Richard John Neuhaus is editor-in-chief of First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
by Steve | Mar 7, 1991 | Archive - 1991
A Liberal Manifesto
By W. Paul Jones
Conservatives and liberals need each other in order for each group to be sure what they don’t believe. Such labels point loosely toward two sides of the spectrum, each being an umbrella for a wide assortment of positions – thus capable of being characterized only by general points. Let me venture some principles around which the liberal perspective might find agreement.
- Theological Method. The Wesleyan “quadrilateral” (of Scripture, tradition, experience, and reason) tends to be used in balanced fashion, with Scripture regarded as primary only if it is seen as itself richly reflective of reason, experience, and tradition. “The Bible says” carries no automatic authority, for revelation, of necessity, is received by humans as active recipients within the historical context in which the interpreter stands.
- Ongoing Revelation. Jesus as the Christ is not the only revelation, but the norm for God’s ongoing disclosures. Miracles are not interruptions of natural law, but the religious name for events illuminated by their divine meaning.
- Christology. The liberal stress is on Jesus’ humanity – as model, example, symbol, forerunner, or representative. Divinity tends to be a name for the sacred in each of us, which in Jesus attained preeminent fulfillment. Jesus’ uniqueness a matter of degree, then, more than of kind.
- Salvation. Rather than speaking of being “saved from,” liberals speak of salvation as “rendering healthy and whole.” The stress is positive rather than negative, concerned for acceptance more than judgment, celebration more than confession, Easter more than Lent – with a spirituality of creation more than. of redemption. liberals are uneasy about talk of “election,” inclined instead to emphasize freedom and choice.
- God. Stress is placed on God’s incomprehensibility, so that our words and concepts point toward, rather than describe definitively, the nature of God. Thus liberals are more open to the use of nonsexist language.
- Church/World. The church is the manifest expression of what the world is called to become – “thy Kingdom come on earth …” The inclination is toward “universalism,” in the sense that the good news is intended for all. Social change is not restricted lo changing individuals, but includes systemic change as well, with particular emphasis on ministry to society’s “losers.”
While the danger of liberalism is its possible assimilation into modern scientific and humanistic thinking, some of the dangers it recognizes in conservativism are these: idolatry to past interpretations of Christianity; judgmental exclusivity: undue individualism; dualism of spirit and body; and blindness to an identification of Christianity with conservative American economic and political values.
W. Paul Jones is a professor at Saint Paul School of Theology, Kansas City, Missouri
by Steve | Mar 7, 1991 | Archive - 1991
Liberalism: A Faith of Freedom
By John B .Cobb Jr.
March/April 1991
“For freedom Christ has set us free, stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:13). Freedom is the heart of liberal Christianity. But Christian freedom is not license. “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Gal 5:13). For liberal Christianity this text is as important as the first.
From what are Christians free? Paul’s emphasis is on the law. The specifics of the Jewish law of his day concerned him most. But we are not freed from that law in order to be placed under another one. Yet again and again in Christian history, being a Christian has been defined as obeying certain moral rules and believing certain doubtful assertions on someone else’s authority. Paul asks, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal 3:3).
For what are Christians free? We are free to love one another and in love to serve one another. We are free to be members one of another in the Body of Christ. We are free to witness to others of the freedom we have been given in Christ Jesus and of the love we now experience for the least of those for whom and in whom Christ has suffered. We are free to invite others to join in the fellowship of freedom.
But what about the Bible from which, and from which alone, we learn the good news of Christ Jesus? Must we not take it as the final authority, obeying all the laws we find there and believing all it says? No! Does the rejection of an authoriatarian view of the Bible entail that we put our private human reason above it, treating that as absolute authority? No, that would be even worse I The only final or absolute authority is God, present to us in the Holy Spirit. Nothing creaturely – whether writing, human being, or institution, congeals the living, ever-creative and ever-redemptive, work of God.
Christian freedom is expressed in disciplined living and disciplined thinking. The problem does not arise from strong commitments and wholehearted convictions. The problem arises when the commitments, obedience, and convictions that arise as authentic expressions of Christian freedom are imposed on others as bondage. Against this, “liberal Christians” protest in the name of Christian freedom.
John B .Cobb Jr. is emeritus professor at the School of Theology at Claremont and professor at Claremont Graduate School.
