Whatever Became of Sin?

Chapter Eight of my book The Limits of Liberalism is titled “The Limits of Liberals’ Views about Sin,” and this blog post is based on that chapter, which I have updated and slightly revised this month. In it, I make reference to psychiatrist Karl Menninger’s 1973 book published under the same title as this blog article. 

Defective Conservative Views of Sin

As is true with other matters that I have previously discussed in my book, the liberal ideas that I have often found defective are reactions to defective ideas that are prevalent in fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism.

For example, in the popular mind, sin is basically thought of as bad deeds, and sinners are thought to be bad people. That popular idea reflects the religiosity of the Puritans, whose ideas were rooted in Calvinism. They identified many “sins” they thought faithful Christians should shun.

In addition to the obvious sins of breaking the Ten Commandments, until the middle of the twentieth century, and even later, evangelical Christianity that was based on Puritanism commonly condemned “sins” such as drinking alcoholic beverages, smoking, social dancing, playing cards, going to the movies, and the like.

That trivialization and narrowness of sin among conservative evangelicals led progressive Christians to cease talking about sin. Several years ago, I heard a long-time professor at William Jewell College publicly state that he rejected the use of the word sin, saying that it no longer signified anything meaningful.

Defective Liberal Views of Sin

On the other side of the theological spectrum, some liberals began to talk about human goodness and potentiality and to neglect ideas about human sinfulness.

Many liberal Christians of the past and present regard(ed) sin primarily as imperfection, ignorance, maladjustment, and immaturity.

What was popularly called sin was, they thought/think, largely a vestige of the animal nature of human beings that could be, and is being, overcome by Christian education, moral instruction, and spiritual striving. Some “sins” were, perhaps, problematic, but they could be overcome by human endeavor.

That is why Menninger (1893~1990) contended in his book that sin “was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. . . . But the word went away. It has almost disappeared—the word, along with the notion” (p. 14).

Chris Hedges is the author of a book titled I Don’t Believe in Atheists (2008). A sub-theme of that hard-hitting book is the pervasiveness of sin and flawed human nature. Here is one of his most striking statements in this regard:

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest (p. 13).

Between the Extremes

As I emphasize in the tenth and final chapter of my book, in Christianity there badly needs to be a broad and heavily populated position between the extremes of conservative evangelicalism and liberalism. Fortunately, there are now some indications of that sort of position with regard to sin.

For decades, progressive evangelicals have been emphasizing the importance of combatting social sins, not just personal sins as is prevalent in conservative evangelicalism.

For example, back in 1992 Jim Wallis and a colleague published "America’s original sin: A study guide on white racism." That publication has been updated and expanded several times and was last published in 2015 as America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America (with Wallis listed as the sole author).

There is also, significantly, at least some recognition of the reality of social sin by those who are not evangelicals. Recently, there have been references in the “liberal” media to America’s “original sin,” and mentions of “the sin of racism.”

Speaking in Kenosha, Wisconsin, earlier this month, Joe Biden declared that “we’re going to address the original sin in this country . . . slavery, and all the vestiges of it.”

So now, perhaps, sin is being more widely recognized than it was 50 years ago when Menninger was working on his book. I hope so.