Jan 12
31
What is Liberalism? – Christian Smith
“Years ago the religious right kidnapped Jesus. They blindfolded him, bound and gagged him and currently hold him in a windowless room in the church basement. They make him sign confessions that he hates homosexuals, opposes gun control, backs all of America’s military adventures, loves free market capitalism, loathes taxation and thinks the poor are poor because they are lazy, dope-peddling good-for-nothings. That is the bad news. The good news is that the guy in the basement isn’t Jesus at all. Jesus escaped two millennia ago.” –Richard Schiffman, Huffington Post. Accessed 1/31/12.
Christian Liberalism is not the opposite of fundamentalism, conservatism, the Christian right, traditional or orthodox Christianity. Liberalism is opposed to Christianity.
Schiffman offers some dictionary definitions:
- The dictionary defines liberal as, “Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.”
- The dictionary says to be liberal is to be “tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.”
- The dictionary says that to be liberal is to be “favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible.”
- The dictionary tells us that the word “liberal” derives from the Latin liberalis (“generous”). It states that liberal means “characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts: a liberal donor.”
But Christian Smith outlines how it works out in the real world:
- Theological liberalism is all about rethinking Christianity from an anthropological perspective, making it essentially about human consciousness and experience and progress.
- [Christianity] is all about its definition and existence in relation to the reality of Jesus Christ.
- Liberalism wants to reconfigure Christian faith and doctrine in the terms of modern, human categories and concerns.
- [Christianity] says that every category, concern, idea, and identity must itself be reconceived in light of the ultimate fact of Jesus Christ.
- Liberalism wants to “demythologize” Christian stories and beliefs in view of “modern” scientific knowledge and plausibility systems.
- [Christianity] tells us that every knowledge system—including, if not especially, modern epistemologies—is literally lost and needing to be rescued and reoriented by the living person of Jesus Christ.
- Liberalism gives prior authorization to some or other human philosophical or political system.
- [Christianity] acknowledges that all authority has been given to the living Lord, Jesus Christ (Matt. 28:18; John 17:2; Eph. 1:17-21; 1 Cor. 15:24).
Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture