LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE, The Religious Divide.

 

In the 1920’s Western Christianity suffered theological division, wherein, denominations split into the so called “Liberal’ and “Conservative” exactly the same labels we see embedded in the politics of our times. In this division, each group went their separate ways. The evangelical wing of the Christian Church focused on theological concepts as essential which are personal salvation, scriptural inerrancy, heaven and hell, sin, human depravity. The liberal Church chose to minister to social needs. Both are concerned about the individual. For the Conservative, the concern is personal salvation. For the Liberal the emphasis is social  upliftment  of the individual, where the emphasis is a social gospel. The Liberal Church viewed the emphasis of the Conservatives on, sin, hell, depravity of man, personal salvation and inerrancy of Scripture, (which by the way were the issues, which led to the Protestant Reformation), as negative, stern, rigid, narrow, even dehumanizing. The Liberals believe in the gospel which focuses on the development of human potential and social action. Holding out the social gospel of achieving the full potential of the human being through knowledge and science they try to offer workable solutions to man’s problem. This segment of the church moved farther away from Biblical Theology and turned more to sociology, social science, psychology and political activism as a means of ministering to the needs of the society.

On the other hand the Evangelical conservative wing, of the church became more committed to the authority of Scripture and renewed its emphasis on personal salvation through the redemptive work of Christ. This hard line stance drove them to disassociate from many areas of political and social concern in which the Liberals were immersed, although they do a great deal of social outreach through caring, feeding, and medical missions.

A friend, a young Medical Doctor  who comes from a family of Doctors who are deeply religious conservatives, tells me that the Evangelical Denomination where our home church belongs, is sadly influenced by Liberal Theology and had allied herself with Ecumenism, which explains her deafening silence in some controversial social, moral, or political issues, the most recent of which is the Pope’s pronouncement on same sex civil union. Issues which might contradict Scripture, basic tenet we hold on to and cannot be compromised. Another friend who is a Minister of the Gospel shares the same view. And personally I am labeled as a Conservative, maybe it comes with the territory when you grow old.

So the question is this : Is our Lord Jesus Christ a Conservative or a Liberal ?

I think, judging from the complex, enigmatic, paradoxical and divine yet human character of the Lord, as revealed in Scripture, he is neither, yet He may be both.

Paul O’ Callaghan in his Article, “Is the Christian Believer Conservative or Liberal” wrote this incisive observation:

“But here we are considering the following question: is true Christianity conservative or liberal? Or perhaps the correct question should be: are Christians meant to be conservative or liberal? After all, Christianity refers to every single aspect of the human being and society (O’Callaghan 2016, 1–7). In other words, Christian anthropology is essentially integrative, as is Christian life and spirituality for that matter. The only thing Christians reject and exclude out of hand in humans is sin, which separates them from God, from others and from themselves, destroying their lives in the widest sense of the word. They do not deny the effect of sin but do not see it as a defining element of the human composite. Besides, Christians believe sin has been revealed and overcome through the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who in reconciling us with the Father by faith, has brought us back into communion not only with God but also with our fellow men and women and with ourselves. This is not an instantaneous or magical process of course, for the power of salvation is applied to humanity in a gradual, progressive way,  that respects the natural cadence of time, culture and human life. In the meantime, we may not always be in a position to distinguish between what is truly human and what is actually sinful.

Still, since Christianity excludes nothing substantial from the human composite – neither body nor spirit, neither freedom nor determination, neither sociality nor individuality, neither the temporal nor the eternal, neither female nor male – it would seem that both ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ aspects of individual humans and of society as a whole should be held on to simultaneously, if possible in an affirmative synthesis. That is to say, a Christian may be temperamentally conservative or liberal, but their true Christian identity should be both conservative and liberal. As the (liberal) Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton recently said: ‘When people ask me “Are you conservative or liberal?”’ My response is always the same, ‘Yes.’ ‘But which?’ ‘Both!’ Without a liberal spirit we become graceless and stuck. Without a conserving spirit, we are unanchored and drift’ .”

Having said this, I squirm when some say, “You square, conservative Christians are  close minded idiots”. It would take a lot of liberal open-mindedness to forgive this statement.