Still Seeing the Limits of Liberalism

The updated and slightly revised edition of Fed Up with Fundamentalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Fundamentalism is finally finished and is now ready for purchase at Amazon.com. This article is about the sequel to that book, which I have begun updating and (slightly) revising this month. 

The Search for Balance

For thirty-six years I was a full-time faculty member at Seinan Gakuin University (SGU) in Fukuoka City, Japan. For the last twenty-four of those years, I was a professor in SGU’s Department of Theology, which serves as the theological seminary for the Japan Baptist Convention.

During those twenty-four years I taught the required introductory theology course, and one of my constant themes was theological balance. In Japanese, seat and sheet are pronounced exactly the same, so some of the seminary students nicknamed me Balance Seat, a pun on the economic term balance sheet. 

From before the time I started writing Fed Up . . ., I planned to write a sequel as part of my quest to find, and to forward, a balanced theological position—and I was able to publish that sequel in 2010.

Largely because of having written Fed Up with Fundamentalism, a book clearly critical of the excesses of conservative evangelical theology and practices, I felt the need to balance that emphasis with a book critical of the excesses of liberal theology.

Now after ten years, there are some updates needed and some minor revisions and corrections of keyboarding errors that also need to be made.

An Important Clarification

So that there will be no confusion later, let me make it clear at this point that in this book I am writing only about Christian theological liberalism, not about economic, social, or political liberalism. The words liberal and liberalism are often used in these latter arenas, but that is outside the scope of this book.

Since in recent years so many Christians who have been conservative theologically have also been social conservatives and so many Christians who have been liberal theologically have been social liberals, it is hard to avoid confusing the categories.

Thus, calling Christians progressive or liberal now can, and perhaps most often does, refer to Christians who are social progressives or liberals rather than those who are theologically progressive or liberal.

In Fed Up with Fundamentalism, I was often critical of the stance of fundamentalists and/or conservative evangelicals on social and political issues. That was because their theological positions often led to what seemed to be unbiblical or un-Christian stances on important social justice concerns.

But I find little problem with most theological liberals’ position on social issues. Thus, this book deals almost exclusively with theological matters and not with the ethical issues that were extensively treated in Fed Up . . . .

The Intended Tone

This book, as its prequel, is not meant to be polemical as such. As a historical, theological, and personal appraisal, the intention is to be completely fair. Thus, the tone of this book is decidedly different from books harshly critical of liberal Christianity.

As in the previous book, my intention is not just to criticize. Rather than being a polemical attack on theological positions with which I disagree, I will point out the weaknesses or the limits/limitations of theological liberalism in order that a better position can be grasped, one that is truer to the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible as a whole. 

There are ten chapters in Limits of Liberalism. Over the next ten months, I plan to post a blog article each month based on those ten chapters. I would be honored to have you read, think about, and respond to those upcoming postings.