From: Ronald McKenzie < >

Subject: Re: CLM 891 Theological Liberalism - some interesting quotes

Dear Rowland -

As is the case from time to time, you move me to think about something in a different way. Before reading your article on Theological Liberalism I might have identified a Liberal as someone who does not believe as rigidly as myself...knowing full well that definition places me theologically liberal to someone else.

In American politics, especially among the Republicans, it is as if it a game to place oneself to the right of one's opponent and cast them into the spiritually liberal camp. No matter how conservative a candidate is they are branded a liberal by the more conservative. It is not a pretty spectacle, especially in a country founded to express different religious views and that proclaims religious freedom in it's constitution.

However, to the meat of the matter. I do think the picture you paint in this paragraph is incorrect:

Evangelicalism owes its successes partly to the failures and irresponsibility of the dominant liberal trends in Western Christianity since the Second World War... For example... liberalism has managed to gain control of most of the seminaries and bureaucracies of the mainline Protestant churches in North America.

Unless you have an over-broad definition of liberal (more so than used in your article), I don't see this cause and effect. What I do see is profound growth in Evangelical and Liberal based movements alike, with a wholesale movement away from the established center. The general reason I have heard for this odd polar movement is that the center lacks relevance and that the new generation of believers no longer are accepting their parents religion as satisfactory. This has echoed itself in the non-Christian believers as well....Jewish, Muslim, whatever.

I feel that this lack of relevance is core to the new directions, not a matter of liberal vs. conservative. As each old established religion, Catholic, Protestant, and non-Christian struggles to respond to this new believer's independence from past ties, some will go liberal and some will go more conservative. Movement in either direction will cause further loss in the established ranks of the denominations.

I can't think of a more conservative established denomination than the Southern Baptist within America. Over the last 10 years and more they have become so conservative that their beliefs are a distortion of much they stood for over the last century and before. Yet they continue to lose membership. The Unitarian church is just the opposite in their direction, yet their membership suffers as well.

Yet, all the while both poles of non-denominational movements grow. If, as I suggest, relevance is at the core, why then do the established denominations have the hardest time in answering that need? I suspect it may be because of the structure of the established denominations that separate the need from supply. The layers and layers of structure that make the established unable to move with the need as it moves.

There are good churches within the established order that are thriving. Thriving, not because of the structure, but in spite of it. Thriving because they feed the need and are relevant. Thriving because they are careful to not raise the red flags that their methods would once the hierarchy is clued in to their ways. The structure doesn't allow "bottom up" solutions, usually only "top down." Too many fine salaries at stake, too many feathered nests to risk.

So, the new movements with all to gain, and little to lose will risk, and needs will be met. It is my thought that some believers need to be fed from liberal streams and some Evangelical. Each has a thirst, and the waters must satisfy. The most liberal Christian is no less moral than the most conservative.

Both see the kingdom and enter through different gates to arrive at the same place and it's Grace that carries them. And when they meet in the kingdom, not one will be able to tell which entered through which gate.