Liberal Christianity
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- For liberal political views within Christianity, see Christian left. For Christian theological modernism in the Roman Catholic Church, see Modernism (Roman Catholicism).
Liberal Christianity, within a modern Christian context, is a movement within Christianity that is sometimes known as progressive or modernist, and is often characterized by the following features:
- internal diversity of doctrine that may or may not include those of the Nicene Creed or other traditional formulations
- an embracing of higher criticism of the Bible with a corresponding willingness to doubt supernatural elements of biblical stories (e.g., the virgin birth)
- the rejection of biblical literalism and the inerrancy of the Bible
- differing views of God that may include Unitarian beliefs.
- differing views on salvation that may include universalistic beliefs
- a willingness to consider and adopt viewpoints which have their roots outside of Christianity (e.g., other faith/philosophical traditions)
- a willingness to re-evaluate and modify beliefs in the light of modern scientific theories
- an emphasis on inclusive fellowship and community, often applied in recent years to racial minorities and LGBT people, and to the ministry of women alongside men in the church.
[edit] Difficulties in definition
Diversity of opinion is a central characteristic of liberal Christianity, and one which makes it difficult to define with precision. Because of its relations to progressive thinking, liberal Christianity is often described as Progressive Christianity. In truth, there may be a continuum of views from conservative to moderate to liberal. Thus among theological liberals, some would be more liberal than others, and among conservatives evangelicals may be "more liberal" than fundamentalists. It is quite possible for someone to identify as liberal or progressive in their politics and be strongly orthodox or conservative in their theological view.
Ultimately, the word liberal connotes a more progressive attitude towards Christianity based on individualism, in its emphasis on individual subjective experience, and liberalism, in its respect for the freedom of the individual to hold and express views which fall outside the boundaries of conservative orthodoxy and tradition. Disagreements between conservative and liberal Christians arise most frequently when the latter perceive that the former are exhibiting a lack of compassion, mercy, love and inclusiveness, and when the former perceive the latter to be abandoning essential Christian doctrines.
[edit] History
Certain of these principles have always formed a major tradition carrying through the early church, the monastic movement, the ministry of healing, the Catholic and Protestant churches, to the Progressive Movement in the 19th-century United States and the Social Gospel—the basis for FDR's New Deal; and the Civil Rights Movement for racial justice in the American South, and Liberation Theology for justice to the poor in South America.
Since the 1900s Progressive Christianity has influenced a major portion of Americans' traditions for what constitutes the values by which a good society is run. Christian Progressives were among the first to advocate equal treatment of Jews and Catholics from within the Protestant establishment, basing their understanding of human rights on a faith in the worth of other human beings derived from the gospel. Progressives formed the Progressive Era and were pivotal in the Temperance movement. Progressive Christianity stresses fairness, justice, responsibility, and compassion, and condemns the forms of governance that wage wanton war, rely on corruption for continued power, deprive the poor of facilities, or exclude particular racial or sexual groups from fair participation in national liberties.
Progressive Christians have continued to be active in the peace movement, anti-racism, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, various denominational committees on relief, Habitat for Humanity, and a wide variety of other outreach programs.
[edit] Characteristics of liberal Christianity
Different and varied views are encouraged in liberal Christianity as part of the goal of experiencing Christianity on a personal level. Self-avowed Liberal Christians may even over-define conservatives as taking a "hard-line" approach towards doctrine in order to distinguish themselves as having "unorthodox," "fresh," or "unique" ways of approaching God and talking about Christianity. With this sense of personal freedom and emphasis on individual experience, dogmatic statements and claims of absolute truth on fine doctrinal points are not part of liberal Christian discourse. Liberal Christians can, and not infrequently do, hold to conservative positions; the contrast between liberal and conservative Christianity that appeals to history, tradition, or authority carries substantially less weight among liberal Christians. The search for truth is an ongoing task rather than something that has been completed.
A non-literal view of Scripture is common among liberal Christians. Many view the Bible as a book written by people who were inspired by God, rather than endorsing an inerrant view of the Bible as a book written by people who were directly guided by God. Historical contexts and scholarly criticism of the Bible play an important part in how liberal Christians relate their faith and beliefs to the modern world.
The freedom to construct one's personal view of God is another hallmark of liberal Christianity. Each person comes to their own understanding of the who, what, how, and why questions relating to the nature and purpose of God. Each person has their own perception of how God moves and works in their life.
Liberal Christianity tends to have a wider scope in its views on salvation (including universalism). This inclusiveness characteristically extends to those outside of mainstream Christianity who do not declare themselves as "Christians" in the orthodox sense of the word. Right action generally takes precedence over right belief: integrity and love are regarded as more important than assent to a particular set of theological propositions.
Many nontraditional views on heaven and hell are prevalent among liberal Christians. These range from ideas about separation from God or temporal punishment to the belief that there is no hell. Views on heaven are similarly diverse.
There is an emphasis on inclusive fellowship and community amongst liberal Christians. With their more inclusive views on God, anthropology, salvation, women, homosexuality, Scripture, and creation, emphasis is placed on community-based life centered around values of compassion, mercy, and affirmation of human dignity; this is seen in contrast to the focus on sinfulness and moral rectitude one is more likely to find in conservative Christian thought.
[edit] Liberal theology
Liberal theology is a branch of religious thinking which emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in the wake of The Enlightenment. Like political liberalism that was emerging at the same time, liberal theology stresses the value and importance of the individual's freedom of thought and expression. Liberal theology became dominant in the mainline churches in the 20th century. Although Fundamentalist Christianity has been rejected by the mainline churches, liberalism's dominance was waning by the late 20th century with the rise of the more moderate alternatives, such as Neo-orthodoxy, Paleo-orthodoxy and Postmodern Christianity, and more conservative movements such as Neo-evangelicalism and the Confessing movement.
[edit] The tenets of liberal Christianity
'Tenets' might be a misnomer. Instead ask, "What does liberal Christian theology allow for?" What follows should nevertheless serve as a rough outline of the confines of liberal Christianity. [citation needed]
- Liberal theology is individualistic, and as such values personal and subjective religious experience above doctrines, Church authority or the literal word of scripture.
- It claims that a religion is a community of individuals united by common intuitions and experiences, and therefore the value of the Church is in providing a supportive framework in which new conceptions of God can be explored, not in issuing decrees, upholding rigid dogmas or in exercising power over the religious community.
- It maintains that, while God remains immutable, the theist's relationship and understanding of God change through history, and therefore no theological truths are necessarily fixed, as each person's experience can reveal a novel aspect of God.
- Some liberals do not maintain that God is immutable, but instead assert that God changes alongside creation. The rationale being that an immutable God in a changing universe would eventually result in a gulf separating creator from creation. For more on this see Process Theology and Alfred North Whitehead.
[edit] Liberal theology and religious language
Liberal theologians view religious language (i.e., descriptions of God, or of religious experience) as inevitably limited. Our language belongs to the world of phenomena, whereas religious experiences exist in the realm of noumena, so no matter how hard we try, our language can never describe God factually, but only in metaphors and analogies, symbols and myths, etc.
These myths, analogies, etc. are important in forming religious communities and traditions, and can be a useful way of expressing a particular thought or feeling about God, but we cannot hope for them to sum up God's nature (God is non-reducible, non-naturalizable, and essentially ineffable).
One of the original liberal theologians, Friedrich Schleiermacher, argued that theology's place was to describe internal feelings rather than external truths or facts.
[edit] Liberal hermeneutics
Liberal theologians have been among the most prominent in biblical criticism in the 19th and 20th centuries. The interpretation of the Bible (hermeneutics) within liberal theology is non-propositional, which means that the Bible is not considered an inventory of factual statements such as "God divided the light from the darkness," but instead documents the human authors' beliefs and feelings about God at the time of its writing, within a historical and cultural context.
Therefore, religious models and concepts must be updated to reflect the class, gender, social and political, etc. context from which they emerge, so that they will appear relevant and interesting. Liberal theologians would not make the claim that any particular apostle's account of his religious experiences could be any more true, or more relevant to an individual, than the experience of the individual him/herself.
[edit] Criticisms of liberal Christianity
Watchman Fellowship's 2001 Index of Cults and Religions defines liberal Christianity as "A movement that seeks to retain religious and spiritual values of Christianity while discounting the infallible authority of the Bible." (In their own words, "Watchman Fellowship endorses a biblically based, conservative, evangelical position," and takes an inerrantist approach to the Bible). The origins of liberal Christianity lie in the German Enlightenment[citation needed], notably in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the religious views of Friedrich Schleiermacher. It does bear mention, however, that some earlier theologians are used to support liberal ideas, Arius, Meister Eckhart, and Peter Abelard for example. Liberal Christians may believe that the Bible is divine revelation, but that passages in the Bible often describe events which occurred therein in symbolic rather than literal terms. This is why most liberal Christians see no conflict between the scientific theory of evolution, and the Story of Adam and Eve. In the United States, for example, Roman Catholic schools deal with the confusion by teaching the theory of evolution in science classes, while dealing with theological implications in religion classes. Also, some conservative groups of Christians have stated that liberal Christians deny or reinterpret in mythical terms such doctrines of orthodox Christianity as the virgin birth, atoning death, and even the resurrection of Jesus. Conservative Christian J. Gresham Machen argued in his book Christianity and Liberalism that thoroughgoing liberalism is an entirely different religion than the historic Christian faith, and so should not be called a form of Christianity.
Karl Barth reacted against Protestant liberalism during the First World War, and in 1934 as the Protestant Church attempted to come to terms with the Third Reich, Barth was largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen declaration which rejected the influence of Nazism on German Christianity. He developed neo-orthodoxy in response to what he perceived as liberal Christianity's embrace of cultural forces which, in his estimation, should have as little to do with religion as possible. Barth nevertheless did not always find favor with conservatives, evangelicals and fundamentalists.
In more recent times, Charles Colson on his Breakpoint radio program, has equated liberal Christianity with a modern form of Gnosticism, an ancient heretical belief system that placed God in a pantheistic/idealistic setting where spiritual truths were separate from the sinful world of the flesh. Colson points out the common liberal position that miracles and other divine interventions as recorded by biblical authors are figurative, which bears similarities to the Gnostic belief of an idealized and ambiguous truth devoid of physical manifestations. Gnosticism conflicts with the traditional Christian view of sacrament, the meeting of the spiritual and the material.
[edit] Liberal Christian theologians and authors
[edit] Protestant
- Adrian Alker, parish vicar of St Mark's, Broomhill (Sheffield, UK) and leader of the Centre for Radical Christianity (CRC)
- Marcus Borg, New Testament scholar and Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University
- Charles Augustus Briggs (1841–1913), Hebrew scholar
- Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), Biblical scholar
- Peter Carnley, Anglican Primate of Australia
- William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), pioneering liberal theologian in the USA, who criticized the doctrine of the Trinity and the strength of scriptural authority, in favor of more rationalistic and historical-critical beliefs
- John B. Cobb, author of many texts on process theology. Considered to be (along with philosopher, David Ray Griffin) a founder of process theology.
- William Sloane Coffin, cold war CIA veteran turned peace activist and Yale University chaplin, was pastor of Riverside Church in New York City from 1977 until 1987.
- Harvey Cox, Harvard theologian and author of The Secular City
- Tommy Douglas, Baptist minister influenced by the social gospel movement who went on to lead North America's first ever socialist government, as CCF Premier of Saskatchewan
- Charles Fillmore (1854–1948), and Myrtle Fillmore (1845–1941), founders of the Unity Church in 1889. Advocated metaphysical interpretation of the Bible and equality of women.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969), Baptist founding pastor of New York's Riverside Church in 1922
- Matthew Fox, Episcopal priest dismissed from the Dominican Order of the Catholic church, and author of Creation Spirituality
- Karl Heinrich Graf (1815–1869), Old Testament scholar
- Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), a German theologian who sought to return Christianity's focus to the teachings of Jesus, away from complex structures of thought about Jesus and faith
- Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922), Reformed German theologian, author of The Communion of the Christian God
- John Hick, Presbyterian Clergyman, Philosopher of Religion, and seminary professor
- Andrew Hutchison, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), African-American Baptist minister of the Social Gospel, Gandhian non-violence, and personalism; leading activist and most prominent icon of the American Civil Rights Movement
- George Newlands Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow
- Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), critic of industrialized state who related faith to modern life
- Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), German religious positivist
- John A.T. Robinson (1919–1983), Bishop of Woolwich, author of Honest to God
- E.P. Sanders a pioneer in form criticism and author of Jesus and Judaism
- Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834), often called the "father of liberal theology," he claimed that religious experience was introspective, and that the truest understanding of God consisted of "a sense of absolute dependence"
- Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), missionary and New Testament scholar
- John Shelby Spong, heterodox bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America
- Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, process theologian, author of God, Christ, Church, and professor emerita at Claremont School of Theology
- Paul Tillich (1886–1965), synthesized Protestant Christian theology with existential philosophy
- Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976), English preacher, and author of The Will of God and The Christian Agnostic
- Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), Biblical scholar
[edit] Catholic
- Leonardo Boff, Brazilian, ex-Franciscan, ex-priest, cofounder of Liberation theology
- Yves Congar (1904–1995), French Dominican ecumenical theologian.
- Joan Chittister, OSB, a lecturer and social psychologist, a noted expert on early Christian spirituality.
- John Dominic Crossan, ex-priest, New Testament scholar, co-founder of the Jesus Seminar.
- Hans Küng, Swiss theologian. Barred from teaching Catholic dogma in 1979 because of his rejection of the doctrine of papal infallibility.
- Edward Schillebeeckx, Belgian Dominican theologian.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), a French Jesuit, also trained as a paleontologist; works condemned by the Holy Office in 1962, condemnation reaffirmed in 1981.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
[edit] Pro
- Liberal Christian Research Pages
- Liberalism By M. James Sawyer , Th.M., Ph.D.
- Would Jesus Love a liberal? You bet!
- The Center for Progressive Christianity
- Liberals Like Christ
- Unitarian Christianity: A Very Short Introduction
- Christian Alliance for Progress
- Sojourners
- CrossLeft
- I Am A Christian Too
- American Unitarian Christianity: History, Sermons, Journals
- Sex and the Liberal Christian
- LiberalGrace blog: liberal Christianity and politics
- The Likeness of God's Image: Jesus Is Being Sculpted As A Warmonger
[edit] Con
- Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)
- Newman Against Liberalism by Father John Henry Newman, 1879
- Evangelical Definition of Liberalism
- Jewish Christian Definition of Liberal Christianity
- The "Changing" God of the New Theologies
- Glossary of Liberal Theological Terms
- Apostasy in the Christian church
- A Critiquede:Liberale Theologie
fr:Protestantisme libéral ko:자유주의 신학 nl:Vrijzinnig-protestantisme pl:Chrześcijaństwo liberalne fi:Liberaaliteologia sv:Liberalteologi
