The Radiant Center Challenged by Criticism of Centrists

As many of you know, I am an advocate of what I call “the radiant center.” The last part of the last chapter of my book The Limits of Liberalism (2010, 2020) is about seeking and advocating a radiant theological center between the extremes of fundamentalism and liberalism (see pp. 317~330).

Last month, though, a man I greatly respect published an online opinion piece criticizing centrists. Naturally, I had to think about whether that was also a criticism of my strong emphasis on seeking the radiant center. 

Mitch Randall has been CEO of Good Faith Media (GFM) since July 2020. GFM evolved from what once was the Southern Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission (CLC), which I highly evaluated and appreciated in the 1960s through the 1980s.*¹

Randall began his July 20 article by asserting, “The greatest enemy of freedom is not white Christian nationalists breaching the U.S. Capitol. It’s white moderate — now centrist — Christian males advocating for civility over justice.” He immediately moves to MLKing’s powerful writing 60 years ago.

On April 12, 1963, King’s “The Letter from the Birmingham Jail” was published. In that pointed letter, King wrote that “the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ ‘Councilor’ or the Ku Klux Klanner.”

No, that stumbling block is “the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

I fully agree with King’s emphasis on positive peace and the necessity of justice. But it seems quite clear to me that King was also a centrist in that he was firmly between the extremes of doing nothing and of acting violently. He did not engage in the extremism of Malcolm X or the Black Panthers.

There are some who say that it was the extremism of the violent Blacks that made it possible for King to be so effective, but it is hard to know whether that was so. What we do know is that King had the “strength to love” and used those words for the title of his influential book also published in 1963.

Since I oppose the extremes of doing nothing and violent action, I guess I could be called a White centrist Christian. But according to Randall, such centrists “have done more to thwart the progress of faith and freedom than any fascist or anarchist.”

Moreover, Randall charges that such centrists “decry those demanding justice for the isolated, marginalized and oppressed” and they brand people like him as extreme because he advocates “for inclusion, affirmation, and equality for all of God’s children.” 

But I want to remind Randall that the center is quite wide, and the radiant center I advocate for ethics as well as for theology includes those things he so strongly calls for.

There are some who want the justice, the inclusion, the affirmation, and the equality that Randall desires but who are willing to use violent action to seek those good ends. However, I haven’t seen Randall advocate such violence, so I would place him, just as I did MLK, in the radiant center.

Seeking the radiant center doesn’t mean embracing “bothsideism.” When the opposing extremes are vacuous inactivity and violent action, the radiant center calls for “neithersideism.”*²

I have often emphasized the importance of both/and thinking. But there are also times that the emphasis needs to be on neither/nor. The radiant center often stresses the latter. So, in considering the radiant center with reference to ethics as well as theology, these words still are applicable:

The radiant center radiates the heat (passion and compassion) and light of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the gospel about Jesus. The radiant center is engaged, for light does not stay in the bulb nor heat in the radiator. Radiance entails engagement.*³

Yes, being in the radiant center means actively engaging in efforts to produce peace and justice for all, which usually means moving to the far left side of that center—and I appreciate Mitch Randall for criticizing those centrists who are on the far right and are not radiant.  

____

*¹ When the CLC was significantly changed (and later renamed) as a part of the conservative takeover of the SBC, the Baptist Center for Ethics was formed in 1991 by former Southern Baptists who had established the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship the year before, and in 2017 Randall became the second director of that organization, which is now GFM.

*² I don’t remember ever seeing/hearing the word “neithersideism,” so I thought maybe I was coining a new word. But in searching the Internet, I soon found that journalist Matt Labash subtitled his 4/21/22 Substack article “The case for Neithersideism.”

*³ The Limits of Liberalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Liberalism (2020), p. 329.

Affirming the Social Gospel: In Appreciation of Walter Rauschenbusch

He was born 160 years ago on October 4, 1861, the first year of the Civil War, and died in 1918, a few months before the end of World War I, but Walter Rauschenbusch hated militarism and other societal problems that cause human suffering and the degradation of human life.

Acknowledgment of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

In all three of my “theological” books, I wrote about Rauschenbusch. In Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020) I wrote that the Social Gospel was “the third factor [after Darwinism and biblical criticism] which helped instigate the fundamentalist movement.”

And I explained, “The most significant leader of the Social Gospel was the prominent Baptist historian Walter Rauschenbusch” (p. 30).

In The Limits of Liberalism (2010, 2020), one sub-section is “The Liberalism of Rauschenbusch” (pp. 31~35), and later I wrote that for many “the main religious appeal of liberalism is found in its ethical stance, which has often been shaped by the emphasis of Walter Rauschenbusch and the Social Gospel” (p. 109).

Then in #5 of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018), I wrote about Rauschenbusch’s “strong emphasis on the idea that the kingdom of God is both here now and also coming in the future” (p. 36).

In his book Christianizing the Social Order (1912), Rauschenbusch used the phrase “the kingdom is always but coming,” and that became the title of the superb 2004 biography of Rauschenbusch by Christopher H. Evans.

Formation of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

Walter Rauschenbusch was the son of German parents who had immigrated to New York. After graduating from Rochester Theological Seminary, from 1886 to 1897 he served as the pastor of the Second German Baptist Church, located in the slum section of New York City known as Hell’s Kitchen.

That was at the apex of the Gilded Age when there was great and growing inequality between the upper and lower classes. For example, at the time when so many lived in crowded, vermin-infested tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, rich industrialists lived in luxury on 5^th Avenue and Madison Avenue.

John D. Rockefeller’s NYC home was less than a mile from Second German Baptist Church, and J.P. Morgan as well as William K. Vanderbilt and his flamboyant wife Alva lived only 1.2 miles from Rauschenbusch’s church. Here is a picture of the Vanderbilt mansion, completed in 1882. 

Rauschenbusch said that he went to his new pastorate “to save souls in the ordinarily accepted religious sense.” But in the area where his church was located, unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, disease, and crime were rampant.

He came to understand that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount spoke more about how to live in the present rather than how to prepare for life after death. Further, he came to realize that Jesus’ key teaching about the Kingdom of God was also for the here and now, not just about the “sweet by and by.”

Affirmation of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel

Even though I have remained critical of some aspects of Rauschenbusch’s “liberal” theology, such as his being overly optimistic about the possibility of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth by human effort, through the years I have increasingly come to affirm his basic theological ideas.

Here are some of the most important emphases in Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel.

    * Jesus’ core teachings are found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5~7) and in his parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46).

    * The basis of Jesus’ teachings was his understanding of the Kingdom of God, which Rauschenbusch rightly understood as “always but coming.”

    * In addition to the reality and seriousness of “personal” sins, the pervasiveness and destructiveness of social sin and sinful social structures must be recognized and adamantly opposed.

The crux of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel is still sorely needed now as it was in the 1890s and in 1917 when he published his last book, A Theology for the Social Gospel.

Can we and will we affirm, accept, and implement that Gospel? It is truly good news for the multitude of people who are suffering deprivation, discrimination, and destructive social structures right now.

Advocating the Radiant Center

On this day before the American Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful that I am in the last stage of publishing the updated and slightly revised edition of my book The Limits of Liberalism. This post is based on the concluding chapter of that book. 

What is the Radiant Center?

In The Limits of Liberalism, I repeatedly call for a position between the “extremes” of the liberal Christian left as well as the “extremes” of the conservative evangelical Christian right. I struggled, though, with what to call the envisioned theological position between the polar opposites.

One term I seriously considered was “radical center,” a term used by Adam Hamilton, the Methodist megachurch pastor in greater Kansas City. Hamilton wrote about that in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White (2008).

Hamilton used the words “radical center” as a term that is “able to hold together the best of the right and the left” (p. 232). It is the position that “seeks to build bridges rather than walls, and refuses to be the wedge in anyone’s theological or culture wars” (p. 235).

But because of the baggage born by the term “radical” and the general unattractiveness of the color gray, I decided to call the position Hamilton was promoting, and which I badly want, the radiant center.

The center between the extremes of black and white doesn’t have to be gray. Rather, it can be a brilliant blue, a gorgeous green, or a rousing red. Yes, a radiant center.

Who Is Included in the Radiant Center?

As I envision it, the radiant center is composed of both progressive evangelicals and conservative liberals as well as all those in between. Moreover, it has ever-widening boundaries, becoming more and more inclusive.

Not everyone, however, is included, or wants to be included, in the center. So, I am not advocating a radical center that includes everyone. I still want, though, to be open to dialogue with those who are not a part of the envisioned center, and I don’t want to exclude anyone from friendship.

While I certainly want to have “malice toward none and charity for all,” not everyone is included in the radiant center because, frankly, some don’t want to be grouped with people with whom they have serious theological disagreements.

The radiant center can’t include those who are not willing to accept and affirm those with quite different beliefs; that is, the radiant center can’t accept “fundamentalists” of the right or the left, that is, those who think that they, and only they, are right.

Advocating the Radiant Center

I close my book by strongly advocating the radiant center as I envision it.

The radiant center radiates the heat (passion and compassion) and light of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the gospel about Jesus.

The radiant center is generous, for it spreads out to warm and enlighten everyone within its reach. Its effects radiate out to all alike, to the right and the left and to those not even on the spectrum.

The radiant center is progressive. While it may not go to the extremes of some contemporary liberal Christianity, neither will it be constrained to the confines of much Christian conservative evangelicalism.

Here, then, is how I close Limits of Liberalism:

I pray that other Christians who are fed up with fundamentalism but who are also aware of the limits of liberalism will join me in searching for, affirming, and then helping to build a radiant center for contemporary Christian faith.

Will you join me in this endeavor?

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.

Should Jesus Be Demoted?

“We must begin by giving Jesus a demotion. He asked for it, he deserves it, we owe him no less.” These words by Robert W. Funk are cited at the head of Chapter Seven of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am currently updating and slightly revising. So, what about it? Should Jesus be demoted?

The Traditional/Orthodox Position

Jesus of Nazareth has been a problematic person to many ever since he walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee and was crucified outside the city walls of Jerusalem and, according to his followers, resurrected.

Jesus was a problem for the Jewish religious leaders who thought he was guilty of blasphemy. Jesus was a problem for the Roman political leaders who thought he was probably a dangerous insurrectionist.

Jesus soon became a problem for Christian thinkers as well. There were some who espoused Docetism, the view that Jesus was a divine being who only appeared to be human. That idea was explicitly branded as a heresy by Ignatius (A.D. c.35~107).

Then there was Arius (256~336), who propounded that Jesus was neither fully God nor fully human but rather a type of demigod. His view was labeled a heresy at the Council of Nicaea (325), which concluded that Jesus Christ was both “true” God and a “true” human being.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church  states clearly the orthodox view, which is also held by most traditional Protestants: “He [Jesus] became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man” (1994 ed., 464). 

The Liberal Position

The traditional view of Jesus has long been called into question by various Christian thinkers.

In contrast to the view of the Catholic Church as well as the Protestant Reformers and most of their followers through the centuries, according to which the primary message about Jesus is his death and resurrection which brings about the atonement of sinful humans, the liberal position emphasizes the life and work of Jesus before his death.

Liberal Christians follow Jesus not because he was “God incarnate,” but because he was and remains an exceptional and exemplary human being. And according to many liberal theologians, the human Jesus was “promoted” to divinity by the faith of the early church.

Robert W. Funk, cited at the beginning of this article, was the well-respected New Testament Scholar who founded the Jesus Seminar in 1985. Funk (1926~2005) made that striking proposal in “Jesus for a New Age,” the epilogue of his book Honest to Jesus (1996, p. 306).

Funk, and many other liberals, seem to think that a choice has to be made: either Jesus Christ must be acknowledged as an eternal divine being or as a “humble Galilean” sage who lived some 2,000 years ago.

But why does it have to be either/or?

The Paradoxical Position

Last week I happened to run across an article by Daniel P. Horan, a youngish (b. 1983) Catholic theologian. His fine piece is titled “The heresy of oversimplified Christianity.”

Horan says well what I have said and taught for decades—but maybe not so clearly. For example, he explains that heresy results from “mistaking part of the truth for the whole truth in a matter of faith or doctrine.”

He then asserts that this explanation “reveals what is so appealing about heresies and why so many Christians inevitably fall for them.” Heretical positions are usually oversimplified and reductionistic statements.

Thus, and these are my words, heresies are always appealing because they are easier to understand and to affirm than the traditional/orthodox position.

To quote Horan again, “The truth is that Christianity is not a religion for those who seek easy answers or black-and-white thinking.” He goes on to assert that “false Christianity promotes ‘either/or’ approaches to faith and morals” whereas “true Christianity has always been a ‘both/and’ tradition.

That is why in Chapter Seven I insist that we don’t have to take an either/or position with reference to Jesus Christ as Funk and many liberals do. As I say there, “Surely our minds can expand to the extent necessary to affirm and embrace a paradoxical view of Jesus Christ as both human and divine.”

The Domestication of God

The sixth chapter of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am currently revising, slightly, and updating for re-publication at the end of this year, is titled “Limits of Liberal Views of God.” This blog post is based on parts of that chapter. 

Is God’s Transcendence a Problem?

Among theological liberals, there has been rather strongly stated opposition to what some label as “supernatural theism.” For example, the noted British scholar Karen Armstrong has publicly rejected what she calls “the God of supernatural theism.”

This opposition is, in other words, a rejection of the transcendence of God, the idea/belief that God is “above” and “beyond” the natural world that we humans can know by science.

Since there is a tendency to think that all knowledge of the physical world (nature) can be obtained by modern scientific means, whatever is considered not a part of nature is, therefore, supernatural.

Consequently, belief in a “supernatural” Creator of heaven and earth, the concept of God who is somehow not completely an integral part of the natural world, is rejected.

For modern people, for whom liberal thinkers seek to speak, the transcendence or “otherness” of God—or the “infinite qualitative distinction” between God and human beings that Kierkegaard emphasized—is seen as a problem to be overcome by a newer, more enlightened, view of God.

Is God’s “Domestication” the Answer?

Over the last seventy years especially, many liberal theologians and philosophers have rejected the concept of God’s transcendence by emphasizing the complete immanence of God.

William C. Placher was a leading postliberal theologian in the United States. Back in 1996, he published a book titled The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong.

In his book, Placher (1948~2008) contended that the shift from a transcendental theism to an immanental pantheism led to what he calls (and titles his fifth chapter) “the domestication of God”—a pregnant phrase that indicates a significant aspect of the limits of liberal thinking about God.

That is part of the reason that Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre quipped in 1966, “Theists are offering atheists less and less in which to disbelieve.”

What about Experience of God?

In the fall of 1957, I began my final two years of college as a transfer student at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. One of my courses that fall was Philosophy of Religion.

Professor Murray Hunt chose Philosophy of Religion as our textbook. It was authored by the Quaker scholar D. Elton Trueblood, Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and published earlier that year.

Because of that course and Trueblood’s book, the philosophy of religion became my main academic interest, and it remained so for decades.

Part II, the heart of Trueblood’s book, is titled “Theistic Realism,” which, although he doesn’t use those words, is a rebuttal/rejection of the movement toward the domestication of God.

Trueblood begins “The Theistic Hypothesis,” the first chapter of Part II, with these words: “God, when carefully defined, either is or is not.” He then goes on to explain,

To say that God “is” means to give assent to the proposition that the idea of God is not merely an idea in the minds of men, but actually refers to what is objectively the case—something which was before we came to be aware of it and which now is, independent of our awareness or lack of awareness (p. 79).

Those who have sought to domesticate God have often spoken of the “God within” human beings. Thus, God is understood as a subjective experience of individual persons. This stands in contrast to the theistic realism Trueblood expounds, and his position, I believe, is far more coherent.

The last chapter of Part II is “The Evidence of Religious Experience.” I was studying philosophy of religion because I was preparing to become a Christian pastor—and I was preparing for that vocation (literally) because of what I firmly believed, and still believe, was a definite “call” by God.

My experience was not highly ecstatic or “otherworldly.” It was much more like the “still small voice” that the prophet Elijah heard (according to 1 Kings 19:12, KJV). But it was unquestionably real.

Those who wish to domesticate God would explain my, and Elijah’s, experience as only a subjective one. But I am convinced that making everything related to God subjective, or immanent, is one of the debilitating limits of liberalism.

The Limits of Liberal Views of the Bible

Over the last four months, I have posted four foundational articles related to my book The Limits of Liberalism (2010), which I am updating and slightly revising this year. This post is based on Chapter Five, the first specific issue discussed with an entire chapter—and the only one dealing with the same issue as my book on fundamentalism.  

Positive Aspects in Liberal Views

Before elucidating some problem areas in liberal views of the Bible, several positions must first be noted as being commendable.

First, the rejection of biblical inerrancy is an important emphasis of liberalism.

In his 2003 book The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg strikingly states that in the last half-century “more Christians have left the church because of the Bible than for any other single reason” (p. 43)—and that is largely because of the conservative evangelical emphasis on inerrancy. Thus, the liberals’ rejection of that is praiseworthy.

Also, as I write in Chapter Five, “As opposed to fundamentalism’s approach to the Bible, in the liberal paradigm there is freedom to revise interpretations and to reject previous views which are obviously no longer valid.” That, too, is commendable.

So, there are clearly some positive aspects in liberal views of the Bible. However, . . .

Negative Aspects in Liberal Views

The starting point of liberalism is one of the main problems, for it begins with reason, not God’s revelation as recorded in the Bible.

Traditional “orthodox” (Protestant) theologians thought we should start with the Bible and form our Christian beliefs and base our actions on it. But liberals tend to think that we should start with reason and accept only what we can rationally understand and accept of the Bible.

That problem was highlighted by Martin Luther in his disputation with the scholar Erasmus. Luther reportedly said, “The difference between you and me, Erasmus, is that you sit above Scripture and judge it, while I sit under Scripture and let it judge me!”

Further, one does not have to be a conservative evangelical to see that there are potential problems with the liberals’ “softness” in speaking clearly about the unique inspiration of the Bible or the authority of the Bible, which were strong traditional Christian emphases long before the rise of fundamentalism.

Questions about Liberal Views

In Chapter Five, I discuss five questions. The first two are, “human or divine?” and “factual or metaphorical?” In contrast to most conservatives’ emphasis on the Bible as divine and mostly factual, most liberals tend to see the Bible primarily as a human book and mostly metaphorical.

Both questions are probably answered best with a both/and position rather than an either/or one. The latter is easier to explain, but the truth is much more likely to be found in the both/and explanation.

The final question of the chapter is this: should Christians speak of the “Holy Bible” or of multiple “sacred scriptures”?

There is a proclivity in liberal theology toward the latter, which means relativizing the Bible. Thus, rather than holding to the Christian Bible as unique, as implied by the words “Holy Bible,” the sacred writings of other faith traditions are seen as more or less of equal value or validity.

In contrast to the contentious past in which Christians tended to vilify other religions and to denigrate their scriptures, liberals are prone to accept the scriptures of all major religions as being more or less of equal value.

Certainly, that irenic attitude of the liberals in this regard is preferable to the belligerent attitudes and actions of many Christians of the past. But it is not necessary to go from one extreme to the other.

Asserting one’s belief in and acceptance of the “Holy Bible” does not keep us from affirming the right of the adherents of other religions to believe in and accept the sacredness of their scriptures.

But affirmation of religious freedom does not mean relativism. It is simply a matter of respect for others with different traditions. Or, we might say, it is a matter of loving others as we are commanded to do by the Holy Bible.

*****

“The Bible Is Like a Rorschach Test” was the title of my 9/20/17 blog post, and it has received more than 350 pageviews; if you would like to read it (again), click here.

Problems of Theological Liberalism

Last month I posted an article about the appeal of theological liberalism, based on Chapter Three of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am updating and slightly revising this year. This post is about Chapter Four, which sets forth several of my misgivings about theological liberalism.

Preliminary Issues

Before looking at the more serious attitudinal and theological issues, first consider a couple of preliminary matters. The first is the difficulty of finding a position between the extremes.

In ancient Greek mythology, Scylla and Charybdis were the names of two sea monsters situated on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy. The fearful monsters were located close enough to each other that they posed an inescapable threat to sailors who sought to pass between them. 

Avoiding Charybdis meant passing too closely to Scylla and vice versa. Accordingly, contemporary Christians are confronted with the challenge of having to pass between the Scylla of theological liberalism and the Charybdis of fundamentalism.

Many have been so intent on escaping Charybdis that they have sailed straight into the jaws of Scylla. But I repeatedly assert that we must always be careful not to flee one extreme only to fall into the opposite extreme. 

A second preliminary issue pertains to liberalism’s intended audience. Liberal theology is primarily espoused by the highly educated, sophisticated segment of society. However, the societal location of a majority of the people in the world is far from the privileged position of most who develop or affirm liberalism.

Attitudinal Issues

Three of the attitudinal problems of liberalism are found in its tendency toward compromise, arrogance, and uncertainty.

In Chapter Five, I suggest that liberals have sometimes been guilty of “throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater.” They have tended to keep the generic teachings of Jesus and the Bible about doing good and being nice, while rejecting the traditional emphases on the uniqueness and the significance of Christ and the Bible.

Further, the liberals’ rejection of fundamentalism has often led to a sense of superiority. But whenever we belittle others and criticize their religious views because of our own “superior” position, is that not a form of arrogance?

Then, in fleeing the “monster” of fundamentalism, which often expresses absolute certainty, many are swallowed by the “monster” of liberalism, which tends to eschew certainty and even in some cases to glory in uncertainty.

The certainty of the fundamentalist can, and often does, lead to a form of arrogance on that side of the spectrum, but the lack of certainty—or of strong conviction about core theological beliefs—is a weakness in those who come down on the other side of that spectrum.

Theological Issues

Specific theological issues are dealt with in the subsequent chapters of my book, but this section of Chapter Four begins with a discussion of the problem of the starting point. Which comes first, revelation or reason?

In traditional and neo-orthodox theology, God’s initiative in revealing Godself to humans is the starting point for knowing God. In liberal theology, even if there is a recognition of revelation (which there may not be), it is secondary to human reason and experience.

The proclivity to place too much weight on human reason and too little on God’s revelation is a major problem of theological liberalism.

In addition, there is the problem of liberalism’s excessive optimism and tolerance, which I won’t elaborate further here.

Finally, of prime importance is the matter of truth. Within liberalism there is a strong tendency to slide into a relativism which, to quote Lesslie Newbigin, “is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me.’”

The problem of liberalism is seen more in what it denies than in what it affirms. Moreover, the limits of liberalism are found in that what it says is often true enough, but it falls short by not acknowledging all of the truth.

The Appeal of Theological Liberalism

The title of my book that I am updating and slightly revising this year is The Limits of Liberalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Liberalism. In Chapter Three, I highlight the appeal of theological liberalism before writing in the next chapter—and in the rest of the book—about my many misgivings regarding liberalism. 

The Psychological Appeal

Perhaps the primary psychological appeal of liberalism is found in its attitude of tolerance and broadmindedness.

For most college-educated young adults, this is an attractive characteristic, indeed. Many contemporary people seem to consider religious beliefs to be narrow and divisive, and especially so in fundamentalist expressions of religion, Christianity or otherwise.

By and large, though, liberal Christianity is “politically correct” and can be discussed at dinner parties or other social gatherings without ruffling anyone’s feathers, to use an old rural expression.

The appeal of liberalism is not just to young adults, though. Across the age spectrum, liberalism has a strong psychological appeal for many people who are fed up with the divisiveness, strife, and conflicts perpetuated in the name of religion.

From ancient times until the present, many wars have been waged in the name of some religious commitment. It seems, sadly, that Pascal’s words are true: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

Furthermore, in contrast to its condemnation of many “social sins” such as war, discrimination, exploitation, and the like, on an individual level liberal Christianity tends to be non-judgmental and is seldom critical of the personal lifestyles of others.

Yes, for many people there is an attractive psychological appeal in Christian liberalism.

The Political Appeal

It is important to differentiate between theological liberalism and social/political liberalism. Despite some overlapping characteristics, there are also distinct differences and one does not necessarily imply the other.

Nevertheless, there does seem to be a close alliance between many aspects of theological liberalism and liberal politics—and most theological liberals have embraced political/social liberalism also, to varying degrees.

Among younger voters in the U.S., for decades now there has been a growing percentage of people who do not claim any religious affiliations. They are often referred to as the Nones.

An October 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 84% of U.S. adults in the “silent generation” (those born from 1928 to 1945) identified as Christians and only 10% were “unaffiliated.” By contrast, only 49% of Millennials (1981~96) self-identified as Christian and 40% were unaffiliated.

Fundamentalism as preserved and expanded by the Religious Right is a major reason for the growth of the Nones, and currently the Democratic Party, which embraces liberal Christianity far more than the Republican Party, is clearly more appealing to that segment of the population.

The Religious Appeal

In addition to the psychological and political appeals, there are also, of course, many religious appeals of Christian liberalism. These are attractive especially to those who are well-educated, sophisticated, and urbane.

Many who were reared in homes where traditional religious beliefs were highly valued have a positive feeling toward religion in general. But their broadened worldview and years of academic study made/make it difficult to hold on to the old theological views that were so much a part of their rearing.

Theological liberalism gave/gives many such persons the opportunity to hold a modern, scientific worldview and to be religious at the same time.

In Chapter Four, which I will highlight next month, we will look at the other side of the matter. Despite the various appeals of theological liberalism elucidated in Chapter Three, there are also some basic problems with Christian liberalism that call for careful attention.

The Decline and Resurgence of Theological Liberalism

Chapter Two of my book The Limits of Liberalism, which I am updating and slightly revising this year, is titled “Contemporary Liberalism.” Please think with me about the decline and resurgence of theological liberalism, two of the matters discussed in that second chapter. 

From the cover of the 2010 book; the pictures (clockwise from the bottom right) are of Schleiermacher, Bushnell, and Rauschenbush (from Chapter One) and Marcus Borg (from Chapter Two)

The Decline

Liberal theology began to fall upon hard times in the 1920s. The widespread scope of the Great War (World War I) and the extensive suffering and carnage caused by that war called into serious question the central tenets of liberalism.

Those tenets included emphasis on the innate goodness of human beings, an optimistic view of social progress, and the intention to realize the kingdom of God in society through human effort.

European theologians such as Karl Barth and Emil Brunner began to develop a theology that avoided what they saw as the errors of the failed liberal theology of the time but that also affirmed some of the progressive elements in that theology.

That new emphasis was often called crisis theology in its beginning, but in the U.S. it came to be known mostly by the rather paradoxical name of neo-orthodox theology.

Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian who early began to question theological liberalism. His Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) struck a blow at the optimistic view of humanity long held by liberalism.

My own theological education in the 1960s was largely shaped by neo-orthodox theology, which was regarded as the bulwark against both a failed fundamentalism and a failed liberalism.

Elsewhere, though, conservative theologians were criticizing neo-orthodoxy for being liberal, not acknowledging that it was a position developed in opposition to the liberal theology that had been prevalent in Germany.

The Resurgence

The resurgence of liberal theology began in the last half of the 1960s. In the following decades, that resurgence was seen in many active theologians, especially the three I have written about in Chapter Two of The Limits of Liberalism. (Two of them have died since the book was first published in 2010.)

Englishman John Hick was long an influential contemporary theological liberal, particularly in the fields of the philosophy of religion and religious pluralism. His writings have had considerable influence, and current Christian thinkers must seriously grapple with the issues he raised.

Among the important books by Hick (1922~2012) are God and the Universe of Faiths (1973), God Has Many Names (1980), and A Christian Theology of Religions (1995) as well as two that he edited: The Myth of God Incarnate (1977) and, with Paul F. Knitter, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (1987).

It is probably safe to say that John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop, has been the most widely read Christian liberal over the past thirty years. As Hick also did, much of his writing was done in opposition to fundamentalism. In fact, his bestselling book is Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991).

Other significant books by Spong (b. 1931) are Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998) and A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born (2001).

While more moderate than the previous two, Marcus J. Borg is the third of the contemporary liberal leaders I have written about in Chapter Two. Borg (1942~2015) wrote in such an evenhanded and convincing manner that in some ways he is the most “dangerous” of the contemporary liberals.

From my perspective, Borg (1942~2015) is “ dangerous” because his moderate position is easy for non-liberals to accept even though his position contains some misleading aspects that threaten what has long been, and still generally is, widely considered to be orthodox theology.

Jesus, A New Vision (1987), to mention only one of Borg’s many books, contains much that should be affirmed. Still, I find much that is questionable in that book, as in many of his other books, and I refer to him several times in later chapters.

In chapters three and four, I look first at the appeals of liberalism and then consider the problems with liberalism, and I look forward to sharing blog posts about those chapters in the next two months.

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.

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.

Two Christianities?

Can differences of degree become so great that they become differences of kind? I recall that issue being discussed long ago when I was in graduate school. But what about it? For example, can different expressions of Christianity become so great that they actually become different in kind, producing two Christianities?

The Christianity of Fundamentalism/Conservative Evangelicalism

In 1923 the eminent conservative Presbyterian scholar J. Graham Machen published a book titled Christianity and Liberalism. Among other things, Machen (1881~1937) asserts in that book that it is “perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity” (p. 160)—and it was theological liberalism he was writing about.

(For a succinct summary of Machen and his position, see the first chapter in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, pp. 25~27.)

Machen’s rejection of liberalism was nearly 100 years ago, but that same mentality is still around. In the 1920s, the attack on liberalism was regarding Christian doctrines. Now, however, progressive Christians are more likely to be castigated because of their position on social issues such as abortion and/or gay rights.

Within the last week or ten days, I have seen on Facebook scathing attacks by conservative evangelicals on one of my most esteemed Thinking Friends and also on President Carter. Both were attacked because of their position on abortion and LGBT rights.

This is the Christianity that is being espoused by many of DJT’s supporters, and their tendency to think “we are right, they are wrong” often morphs into the position of “we are (true) Christians and they are not.”

The Christianity of Progressives/Liberals

There are other Christians, however, who are as critical of fundamentalists/conservative evangelicals as the latter are of progressives/liberals.

One good example of the progressive rejection of conservatism is that of Chris Kratzer as seen in his book about which I wrote (here) on December 10.

Even though he was once a part of it, Kratzer’s stringent criticism of conservative evangelicalism is so strong, it is hard to see how the expression of Christianity he now embraces is a form of the same Christianity.

Much of the “liberal” criticism/rejection of conservative evangelicalism is because of the latter’s support of DJT. This is seen, for example, in the writings of blogger John Pavlovitz; click here to see his Dec. 5 article “Is Christianity Helpful Anymore?”

Even more explicit is William Saletan in his Nov. 25 article in Slate: “Trump’s Christian Apologists are Unchristian.” (According to Merriam-Webster, unchristian can mean “not of the Christian faith” or “contrary to the Christian spirit or character.” I am not sure which Saletan, who is Jewish, meant; maybe both.)

In reading some of the diatribes against the very large percentage of white evangelical Protestants who support DJT, and seeing some of the demeaning memes and derogatory statements about such people, it is hard not to conclude that there are, indeed, two quite different Christianities now.

Can There Be a Radiant Christian Center?

The last subsection of my book The Limits of Liberalism is titled “Recommending the Radiant Center.” There I call for a radiant center “composed of both progressive evangelicals and conservative liberals”—and I still think such a center is highly desirable and deserves the best efforts of all serious Christians, regardless of their theological beliefs or stance on social issues.

But since that book was published in 2010, I have become much less hopeful that such a center will become reality—at least in my lifetime. Rather than any noticeable movement toward a radiant center, the apparent movement has been mostly toward greater polarization.

Thus, it seems that differences in degree have become a difference in kind with the result that now, sadly, it is only too accurate to speak of two Christianities.