Liberal and evangelical: a neglected path

One of the more ironic failures of the church today is that so many liberal and conservative Christians equally confuse authentic Christian witness with one or other polarising position in the wider so-called culture wars over moral and social issues.

Meanwhile, a significant majority of Christians suffer between those noisy — and too often careless — extremes.

These Christians in the majority are moderates, with both liberal and evangelical instincts. They know how radical, how challenging, how joyful the Christian gospel really is, but their needs and insights have lately been ignored in favour of extremes.

So it excites hope to read two books, Lost in the Middle? and Found in the Middle! (Alban Institute, US$18) that take significant steps to reverse the neglect.

They are written by Wesley Wildman, Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at Boston University (ordained in the Uniting Church in Australia) and Stephen Chapin Garner, the senior pastor of the United Church of Christ in Norwell, Massachusetts.

The subtitle of Lost in the Middle? is Claiming an Inclusive Faith for Christians Who Are Both Liberal and Evangelical. As this suggests, the aim of the book is to help liberal-evangelical Christians recognise the lively roots of their own “moderate” position.

Part I discusses five questions — about religious pluralism, the centrality of Jesus Christ, the human ability to invent religious experiences, the challenges of science, and the difficulty of discerning a Christian position on many social issues — that can haunt moderate Christians.

The typical answers to these questions given by liberal and evangelical extremes are unhelpful to moderates, and yet those answers do reflect genuine disagreements between liberal and evangelical views on reality, authority, history, morality, and the church that are not easily bridged.

What moderates sense is that such disagreements over worldview and doctrine should not confound our response to Jesus’ commandment to love one another: they long to answer his call as liberal-evangelical communities of Christ-centred, radically inclusive faith.

Might this vision of liberal-evangelical identity be just a figment of the authors’ imagination? A variety of data, discussed in Part II (the data track American churches, but I suspect similar results would show up in the Australian context) point to just how many Christians do not fit a liberal caricature of evangelicals or an evangelical caricature of liberals.

They sense value in the views of people with whom they disagree, even while they feel the importance of their own positions. The trick, then, is to work out how to come together.

Parts III, IV, and V present information about political life, the sociology of religious groups, and church history that can help in recognising and avoiding obstacles. Importantly, these discussions explain how the extreme wings of the conservative movement “hijacked” evangelical Christianity.

Of course liberals and conservatives have disagreements, but an evangelical, as the authors say, is someone who “announces God’s story of good news in Jesus Christ”. Nothing about being liberal rules out being evangelical in this sense.

Surely, liberal and conservative moderates have their work cut out for them if they want to come together — but a good start is to recognise the distortions of extreme conservatives (and extreme liberals) for what they are.

A humble theology

The subtitle of Found in the Middle! is Theology and Ethics for Christians Who Are Both Liberal and Evangelical.

A great value of this book is that the authors do not downplay the difficulty of forging liberal-evangelical faith and community. However, they offer real and encouraging guidance to “a humble theology, an intelligible gospel message, a compelling view of church unity, and radical ethics”.

A humble theology begins and grows with the recognition that we are in the grip of a God beyond our grasp. “The most radical faith,” the authors write, “is not the noisiest or the flashiest but the truest, the one that transforms most deeply, and the one that inspires faithful action most consistently”. We need not be shy of saying what can be said of God, but we must also realise that all our ideas of God fall short.

Doctrinal conservatives have a point in resisting changes to the broad evangelical narrative of salvation, but there are also good reasons why changes nevertheless seem necessary to many Christians.

Thankfully, a compelling Christ-centred gospel of reconciliation does not depend on purging the church of doctrinal diversity. Even basic questions about how God was in Christ reconciling the world receive a plurality of answers in the New Testament, let alone in later Christian theology!

Does God reconcile only in Christ, or may God be in others, too, reconciling the world? Either way, reconciliation with God in Christ is real, and moderate Christians can proclaim this good news together however they answer such subsequent questions.

If liberal-evangelicals allow doctrinal and ethical diversity, they find unity in striving to fulfil Christ’s commandment to love one another. Their calling demands perseverance, humility, empathy. It affects worship, education, service, and practically every other dimension of life.

Not all Christians want such a radical discipleship, of course, but it is an undeniably authentic Christian way: “[A]t the extremes of religious polarisation, it is easier to be fashionable and controversial than to be truly radical. It is discerning moderate Christians who can best sense and respond to the radical calling of the Christian way. Their location in the middle might make them feel lost at times but it is a blessing in disguise.”

I think the authors are right. The radical moderation of liberal-evangelicals is a blessing. Perhaps it’s time to lose the disguise?

Andrew Irvine isn’t sure he can call himself a liberal-evangelical, but he feels sure the church needs more of them.

http://insights.uca.org.au/reflections/2009/09september09.htm

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