What Is Theological Liberalism?

The blog posting I made on January 25 was titled “Still Seeing the Limits of Liberalism.” It was based on the Preface of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am updating and slightly revising this year. This posting is based on the book’s first chapter, “What is Liberalism?”  

A Movement Attempting Adaption

The first subdivision of Chapter One is “A Sincere Movement to Adapt Christianity to the Modern Worldview.” Regardless of what negative views one might have about liberalism—and some of you have views much more negative than mine—it must be recognized that liberal theologians and pastors were well-intentioned.

To a large extent, liberals in the 19th and 20th centuries actively sought ways to affirm both a modern, scientific worldview and the Christian faith. They attempted to reinterpret Christianity in order to keep many intelligent, educated people of the contemporary world from rejecting the faith.

Early in the 20th century, one of the leaders of modernism, as it was generally termed then, was the eminent preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, whose 1924 book The Modern Use of the Bible was highly influential.

In his autobiography, For the Living of These Days (1956), Fosdick (1878~1969) asserted that the central aim of liberal theology was to make it possible for people “to be both an intelligent modern and a serious Christian.” That is what he admirably sought to do in his numerous books and in his preaching.

In a 1968 book that I have highly evaluated through the decades, William E. Hordern wrote,

Although the fundamentalists saw the liberals as subversives of the faith, liberals saw themselves as the saviors of the essence of Christianity. For the liberal, it was the fundamentalist who was destroying Christianity by forcing it into the molds of the past and making it impossible for any intelligent man to hold it (Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology, p. 73).

A Threatening “Militant” Movement

Partly to parallel this chapter with the first chapter of my Fed Up with Fundamentalism, I refer here to “militant” liberals, although because of the nature of liberalism none were as militant as some of the fundamentalists.

Nevertheless, there were liberals who sought not just to adapt Christianity to the modern world but to change decisively the content of the historic Christian faith. Two examples of this more radical form of liberalism are Unitarianism and Transcendentalism.

Even though disavowal of the Trinity is one tenet of Unitarianism, that is by no means its main emphasis. The Unitarianism that developed in the 19^th century is now a part of the Unitarian Universalist Association, which “affirms and promotes seven Principles grounded in the humanistic teachings of the world's religions.” 

I have no problem with an organization being based on the humanistic teachings of the world’s religions. But I do object to the claim that it is a valid expression of (liberal) Christianity.

The current Unitarians are perhaps farther removed from historic Christianity than those of the past, but the Unitarian tendency from the beginning to radically change Christianity from traditional doctrines is why I have referred to them as “militant,” even though they largely acted in a benign manner.

The Transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, were men of high moral quality. But their beliefs moved farther away from traditional Christianity than even the Unitarians and became a full-fledged humanism.

The Road Ahead

Most of what I treat in the rest of The Limits of Liberalism is related to those who sought, and those who are now seeking, to adapt Christianity. Next month I plan to post an article based on Chapter Two, which focuses on the development of liberalism in the last part of the 20^th century and the first decade of this century.