As the season of Party Conferences is upon us, one wonders whether the Christian party will join in or whether their gathering will be featured on the News. I was recently given some publicity advertising ‘A Call to the Nation’ published in partnership with this party. The report is based on a survey conducted several years ago which set out to explore why churchgoing is in decline and was based on 14,000 responses. I’ve been unable to ‘google’ any information about the way in which the survey was conducted or what kind of questions were asked – and to some extent this is old news – but the tone of the report is still worth considering because the blame is focused directly on liberal views which, it is claimed, have eroded faith and ignored people’s plea for ‘proper Biblical teaching on matters of belief and morality.’ The clergy are it seems failing to stand up for moral values and treasured beliefs. Excessive liberalism and lack of conviction are driving worshippers form the pews. ‘A Call to the Nation’ is apparently the resource people have been waiting for, to help in their struggle against liberalism.
So how are Christians who might – albeit with some hesitation – want to identify themselves with a liberal agendum, going to respond to this criticism? Of course the very word ‘liberal’ has been used in such a wide variety of contexts that it is hard to know what it means – it can stand for a great variety of agenda – not all of them compatible. The word enters theology about two centuries ago and one of its principle endeavors was to study the historical Jesus in such a way that his humanity became more apparent and accessible to the modern mind. In the process the language of Jesus’ divinity, of the miraculous and supernatural either faded into the background or was expressly dismissed. At the same time Christians felt the need to base their faith on new ways of reading Scripture which would take into account all the advances of science and human self understanding which might seem to disprove or discredit the Bible. And so the debate began to take shape between liberals and conservatives about the relationship of the church to the world. Was a distinct Christian identity being eroded by a dangerous conformity to an increasingly secularized society? This question emerges particularly in the context of moral issues, where Scripture apparently disagrees with an ethical outlook which seems to take a more ‘humane’ view of divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and gender relationships, or where new issues to do with the environment, war, bioethics or social organization emerge on which the Bible is either silent or unclear.
In such a context Conservatism expresses itself either in a focus on the authority of the church in its responsibility to remain true to tradition and to evolve very slowly and with a primary concern for the preservation of unity; or else it results in gathered churches whose express aim is to preserve Biblical authority as that is understood by an often charismatic leadership which appeals especially to people living with the uncertainty that comes with the disintegration of familiar ways of life. Liberalism on the other hand tends to prosper in peaceful, stable societies with some economic growth and an optimistic emphasis on progress.
In this context therefore what is to be said by liberal Christians sensitive both to the challenges that are almost daily leveled against them by Conservatives, and to the mission of the church that is required by God in modern Western society. What follows is inevitably an oversimplified summary of complex and challenging issues.
1. The First World War began seriously to undermine a liberal Christian belief in progress and the subsequent violence and inhumanity of the 20th century force us to look again at our understanding of the human condition. If human salvation is at the heart of the gospel then we have to be prepared to look honestly at what we are to be saved from – the corruption, failure and tragedy inherent in all human societies and in us as individuals. We have to think seriously about what we mean by divine judgment avoiding the lure of ‘cheap grace’. And we need the discipline of self knowledge and self examination set alongside an ever vigilant suspicion and discernment of our social and political order. At the same time, however, we have to trust in the power of divine mercy which always accompanies us in our search for the truth about ourselves and our society. We are always and only required to speak the truth in love; and we are never to assume that God judges as we judge. Our judgments are only ever penultimate.
2. And the reason why we should try to live with such a delicate balance lies in our understanding of God as both transcendent and unknowable on the one hand, and incarnate in Christ and therefore historically revealed on the other. Accepting the transcendence of God should keep us in a position of spiritual and intellectual humility and penultimacy of judgment. Believing that the story of Jesus Christ enacts the narrative of God’s being in historical focus, challenges us to look for God in the interaction of our own experiences and our attentive reading of Scripture. We do not seek to translate Scripture into contemporary categories but rather to hold those categories up to the searchlight of Scripture. At the same time we do not simply impose Scriptural teaching on any and every culture, but develop a conversation with Scripture, uncovering at the same time the conversations about God that go on within Scripture. And in this process historical research into the context in which the Scriptural narrative evolved and spiritual meditation based on the direct personal address of Scripture are equally important.
3. And if this reading, praying and living of Scripture is to be possible we need a strong sense of the Christian community, the nature of its boundaries and the contribution of its different members. Our Christian living is not possible without an always developing relationship with our fellow Christians. And such relationships are not possible unless we worship, and study and pray together, providing as a community a place of sanctuary, hospitality, counsel and mutual support. The boundaries of this community are established by baptism and Eucharist; those who belong are those who have been admitted by baptism and who share in bread and wine. The boundaries are porous because the desire for inclusivity will leave considerable space for people to grow into membership in the distinctive way God is calling them. The boundaries are thin because the church will always want to work alongside people of good will who may nevertheless be uncertain about what they believe. The boundaries will, however, be clear in relation to peoples of other faiths, so that we can engage in a humble dialogue but not pretend that the boundaries and differences do not exist or are unimportant.
It’s often pointed out that one of the meanings of the word ‘liberal’ is ‘open-handed, generous, not sparing.’ For liberal Christians that ought not to mean the kind of wooly mindedness, excessive tolerance, or moral and doctrinal ambiguity that we are so often accused of. Instead it should mean a constant readiness to give of our intellectual, spiritual and pastoral best to those in need of understanding, forgiveness, and inspiration. In the process we do not spare ourselves but we also rely on the openhandedness of others and the liberality of God’s grace which will always go before us into the hardest and darkest and most challenging places in ourselves and in our world. If God in that sense is truly liberal then so should we be also.
With my love and prayers Father Stephen