‘Christians’ can roughly be put into about ten _theological_ categories.
They are (from left to right): ‘radical liberal’ (eg. Cupitt), ‘liberal’
(Tillich, Robinson, Kung, Spong), ‘neo-orthodox’ (Barth), ‘liberal
evangelical’ (Fosdick), ‘radical evangelical’ (Wallis), progressive/
Lausanne evangelical’ (Stott), ‘conservative evangelical’ (Packer),
‘fundamentalist’ (Bob Jones III), ‘sectarian’ (the JW’s), and ‘cultish’
(Koresh).

Now it’s common to call everyone to the _left_ of one’s theological
position ‘liberal’. But I’m ahead of myself. Let’s define our terms.

Political liberalism (Latin ‘liberalis’, ‘of a free person’) is about
liberty, equality, tolerance. Philosophers like John Stuart Mill
believed that democracy, individualism, and the rule of law could be
reconciled. Today political liberals argue about how a liberal society
should accommodate illiberals – like fundamentalist Moslems, for
example. (See e.g., John Rawls, ‘Political Liberalism’, Columbia
University Press, 1994).

Theological liberalism is, broadly, the attempt to adapt religious ideas
to modern culture and ways of thinking. These ‘Modernists’ say
Christianity has always adapted itself to various cultural situations.
(It is possible, by the way, for a person to be politically liberal but
theologically conservative, and vice versa).

>From this it’s a short step to rejecting religious beliefs which are
based on authorities other than reason. Liberals say that because the
Bible was authored by people limited by their ignorance it can’t be our
sole authority for faith and conduct. The _scientific_ ignorance of the
ancients, for example, caused them to believe in miracles: today we have
other explanations for many of these events. (A distinguishing feature
of most liberals is their doubt about the physical resurrection of
Jesus). Higher criticism has questioned many assumptions about the Bible
– like the authorship and dating of many of its books, the ‘accuracy’ of
the biographical details of Jesus’ life etc.

Liberals also tend to be somewhat humanistic and optimistic (though two
world wars put a dent in that!). They accommodate easily to scientific
‘advances’ (like Darwinian evolution).

Christian liberalism varies from place to place and time to time. In the
U.S. the Unitarians have been the most liberal major denomination.
Recently it’s the United Church of Christ (whose recent hymnbook
de-genders Jesus!). Some Southern Baptists prefer to call themselves
‘moderates’.

Theologically, twentieth century liberalism has tended to believe that
corrupt society corrupts people (rather than the other way around) so
the Church ought to major on saving society rather than saving ‘souls’
(Rauschenbusch). ‘Sin’ is a product of apathy and/or ignorance. And the
radical liberals believe that the traditional God is dead in this
secular age (Paul van Buren, Harvey Cox. Bishop Robinson’s ‘Honest to
God’ edged the New English Bible into second place among religious
best-sellers in 1963). Today’s ‘Christian atheists’, like Don Cupitt, do
not deem it necessary to believe in the objective existence of God to
account for the phenomena of Christianity.

As the conservative IVP Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral
Theology points out, liberalism has been a healthy corrective in some
areas. Yes, humans are ‘made in the image of God’. Yes, the church ought
to be ‘an ethical – and not a solely spiritual – community’ [1995:
553]. And I would add that it’s also a corrective to a naive biblical
literalism
and fundamentalist privatism. Jesus was truly human. We must emphasise
again the prophetic notion of social justice. And we ought to take the
idea of ‘natural (or general) revelation’ more seriously.

But there are grave dangers in theological liberalism. The New Zealand
Presbyterian Professor Lloyd Geering confessed back in the 1960s that
‘many of the things I have said and believe are at variance with the
Westminster Confession.’ ‘We can no longer draw a clear line between
what is orthodox and what is not.’ Today Bishop Spong is similarly
contemptuous of the term ‘orthodox’.

Liberals are more at home asking questions than providing answers. But
authentic Christianity is about truth, not just opinions. Sin is more
than alienation from oneself and others: it’s rebellion against God. In
ethics our aim is not simply to do what is good but what is right. And
although I would encourage scholars to study the Bible ‘critically’ we
must never forget that (a) our stance is primarily to be ‘under’ rather
than ‘over’ the Word, and (b) we do not have a mandate to destroy the
faith of the less theologically-literate.

Liberal preachers have tended to use Biblical texts as ornaments –
attached to already arrived-at conclusions and convictions; a ‘resource’
rather than a ‘source’. As an atheist put it: ‘You hear what the
psychologist says, what the historian says, what the New York Times
editorial writer says, and then the sermon concludes with, “And perhaps
Jesus said it best…”‘ [Martin Copenhaver, ‘The Making of a
Postliberal’, Christian Century, Oct. 14, 1998, 937].

Liberals have little idea what Jesus and Paul meant by humanity’s
lostness. Evangelism and conversion are alien to their thinking: they
tend not to get excited about Billy Graham. But people need good news
rather than simply good advice. And liberals can’t seem to understand
why Elijah would mock the priests of Baal, Isaiah deride Bel, or Paul
argue with the pagans of Lystra.

The story of salvation is not simply an extension of human wisdom or an
expression of common sense.

This all came home to me when I met a 50-ish man who’d been to a
mainline church all his life, but had always been uneasy talking about
his faith. Then he got ‘converted’, and attended an evangelical church.
They sent him with some others on an evangelistic tour to Indonesia.
There he had to give his testimony. ‘It changed my life. Now Jesus is a
reality to me rather than an ancient nice man. I now want to share my
faith. The Bible is alive for me. God speaks to me every day…’

Today liberalism has lost its appeal to laypeople – I don’t know any
liberal preacher today who gets the crowds Fosdick used to draw – but
it’s still alive in mainline seminaries (note, eg. the work of the Jesus
Seminar). Folks today want the preacher to be certain about core
Christian beliefs and values. Liberalism is just too sophisticated, too
nice, essentially a _university_ brand of Christianity. It is humanism
in religious garb.

‘Christ has set us free,’ writes Paul to the Galatians (5:1). ‘Stand
firm therefore…’ Followers of Jesus are called to be ‘both liberal and
conservative at the same time,’ the Reformed Churches radio preacher Dr.
Peter Eldersveld used to say. ‘We are instructed to conserve our
liberty… You might say that the whole Protestant Reformation was truly
liberal, in the true meaning of that term. But in order to be liberal it
had to be truly conservative – that is, it [called us] back to the
historic [Christian] faith. In fact its “liberalism” [was in] its
commitment to the gospel of liberty in Christ.’ [‘Liberal and
Cnservative’, Back to God Hour, date unknown].

The last word is from an excellent article in the British ‘Expository
Times’: ‘The tragedy of liberal theology [is that] it has become all too
skilled at telling us what is _not_ the case, what it is that we can no
longer believe; but it shows little sign of being able to replace these
negatives with convincing and intelligible positives. “Conservative”
Christianity, at its best, combines a faithfulness to the founding
traditions of the Christian faith, a proper graciousness, humility and
teachability, an awareness of and an engagement with the intellectual
and scientific issues of the day, and a confident message which
people… can understand and rejoice in. In a word, while it may yet be
far from perfect, it is the closest approximation on the market to the
phenomenon of which we read in the New Testament – a phenomenon which
changed the world.’ [Colin Sedgwick, ‘Where Liberal Theology Falls
Short’, Expository Times, October 1992, p.3].

Rowland Croucher
June 1999