“Liberal” is one of those squishy words that can mean many things. Originally it was a political position that advocated free markets, limited government, individual autonomy, etc. Until the mid-2010s I guess we would have called that “Conservative.” Then there was the whole movement of neoliberalism, which I guess came to its Zenith-moment under Reagan and Thatcher and the world has never been the same since.
There’s also a popular use of liberal that has a more cultural sense, with an emphasis on openness to emerging norms around gender and sexuality and I guess also diversity, etc.
In Christianity, the word “liberal” has an entirely other sense. In a way this sense resonates with the cultural liberalism above, because most cultural liberalism arises out of the same intellectual sense, but this “liberal” Christianity prioritizes reason and experience over doctrine—it’s comfortable, for example, allowing the insights of evolution to modify or even replace assumptions about the account of creation in Genesis, without therefore evacuating the Christian faith altogether.
Liberal Christianity also more willingly embraces the modern tools of biblical interpretation, like the historical-critical method that arose in the 19th century. A liberal theologian is one who can embrace the idea that, for example, the Great Commission at the end of the gospel of Matthew was tacked on by later redactors and in all likelihood was never spoken by Jesus.
Liberal theology was about the unique (and to my mind salutary) task of trying to create a “third way” being orthodox positivism and secular doubt.
As a progressive pastor, I certainly can recognize the multiple ways in which I benefit from and operate within the orbit of liberal theology. I also share quite a bit with the liberal cultural sensibility, and although I have serious problems with neoliberalism and classic liberalism, I find them such vast and influential economic and political regimes that, although I’d like to move contrary to them, mostly I find I cannot. I simply cave and participate in the hegemony of neoliberalism.
All of that being said, if you can ask me about my politics, I’ll tell you I’m a socialist, and if you ask me about my theology, I’ll say I’m a progressive, and if you ask me to combine the two I’ll say I’m a progressive, period.
Now let me try to tell you why. First, I do find the critique of liberal theology by Karl Barth and others convincing. As profound as Friedrich Schleiermacher was (and there really can’t be any question of his influence as the kind of father of liberal theology) I think Barth (and perhaps even more importantly Bonhoeffer) helped us see the issues with the kind of liberal theology that emerged under the influence of Schleiermacher.
The proof is in the pudding, you might say, and the reality we face is that liberal theology did in fact make itself quite comfortable with Nazi ideology.
Any theology so willing to evacuate itself and move away from Christ clearly has problems. We could offer a similar analysis of any theological movements in our era that make themselves comfortable or compatible with fascism and “Christian” nationalism.
I may be influenced in many ways by liberal theology, but with Bonhoeffer (and later Dorothee Soelle and others in his tradition) I hold to Christ as the center. I believe this is one reason I try not to be a liberal—sometimes it runs so hard in the direction of reason and experience it de-centers Christ, something I’m unwilling to do, on progressive (rather than traditionalist) grounds.
But let’s go on. If that’s the case, what precisely is it about “liberals,” broadly construed, with which I take issue. I think Saul Alinsky states the matter succinctly:
"A liberal is someone who leaves the room when an argument is about to turn into a fight.”
I can state the matter like this in relationship to liberal church life: liberals will try to keep everyone together at all costs. In other words, if something is divisive, even if it is right, they will choose avoidance of division in order to prioritize keeping everyone together.
We see this repeated time after time in liberal churches: they want to keep the members who are LGBTQIA inclusive AND the members who are bigots all together in one church.
Liberals want to find common ground. God bless them, they actually believe in that idea.
Liberals will try to reach across the aisle, even when those across the aisle clearly have traps in place so that when the reach occurs, there will be a violent tug.
By contrast, I understand progressives to be those who have simply come to the conclusion there is no good in compromise, no value in seeking common ground, because to seek those things is to sacrifice communities at the altar of division-avoidance.
I can still remember a conversation with a parishioner during our church split. He told me it was uncomfortable golfing Saturday mornings with his buddies because they would ask him why he attended “the gay church.”
He wanted to try and play golf with them without any friction while also participating in a church he believed (in the abstract) could be inclusive—just not too quickly or overtly.
I was reminded of how I think about the real work of being progressive when I read a recent article in Lapham Quarterly. The author writes:
I went to an activist priest and asked, not unlike the lawyer in the Gospels, how a person went about “getting involved” in the struggle to bring about the kingdom of God. The priest had marched on Washington with Dr. King and I figured he ought to know. My question seemed to annoy him.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he told me. “You don’t ‘try to engage.’ You give yourself to a community, you love the people, and your politics grow out of that love.” Writing on the love enjoined in the New Testament, Torres says, “For this love to be true it must seek to be efficacious.” (https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/revolutions/no-smoke-camilo)
As a progressive, there are specific communities I have grown to love. For me it has particularly become refugees, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants. As I have grown to love them, my politics grows out of that love.
The reason I say that I am “trying” to “not be” a liberal is because it’s actually not easy, it’s constantly a struggle, but I want the politics that grows out of that love to be efficacious.
One thing I know is that if I love the ideal of the middle, of common ground, of arguments that never become a fight, then I love that imaginary middle more than I love the communities I am actively giving myself to… I love my bigoted golf buddies more than my LGBTQIA family in Christ.
I think what a progressive gets that a liberal doesn’t is something basic like, “You have to choose. Not choosing is a choice.” There’s this guy Jesus who talked a lot about that. And who was quite comfortable with being divisive. Because of who he loved.
And we know this one Jesus in a non-foundationalist manner, which is what maintains the appropriate difference in similarity between progressivism and liberalism.
Christian communities seldom entertain the Barthian option (can I claim Barth as a progressive?), that a radical over-against-ness in the political life of the church can arise, in fact must arise, out of the progressive church's loyalty to Jesus Christ. In short, we have neither a recoverable historical Jesus to guide us, nor a natural theology to discern, nor an inerrant and divine text to utilize as a playbook, but instead a God who maintains a relationship with us, and establishes a church, through the revelation that God is not us. The church thus established is in this very way political, a church of reconciliation, nonconformity, and of the cross.
It’s okay to be different.
What about a politics of no permanent enemies & no permanent friends?
Situational coalitions, only.