Liberal Orthodoxy
This post is based on the idea that there is a form of liberal theology that approaches religion rationally while respecting religious experience and commitment. It is passionate about both intellectual integrity and spiritual depth. Elsewhere I have referred to it as a kind of progressive orthodoxy. Michael J. Langford in his book A Liberal Theology for the Twenty-first Century: A Passion for Reason calls it liberal orthodoxy and Thomas Oden, one of the most outstanding theologians of the twentieth century thought of it as postcritical liberalism. Liberal Christian Orthodoxy can be characterized as:

A search for understanding and truth through rational critical understanding based on a faith that a benevolent and loving God of mystery is to be found wherever the human mind and spirit can reach.

With this basic definition as a starting point the gist of liberal orthodoxy, or progressive Christian orthodoxy, can be outlined as follows:

Reflective thinking
Reflective thinking involves not just one, but multiple ways of thinking or seeking the truth of things. It believes that truth is not flat and one dimensional like a window pane, but multidimensional like a diamond––reflecting light with infinite variety and beauty. Just as the beauty of a diamond must be viewed and appreciated from multiple angles so truth must be understood from multiple perspectives.

• Reason: The ability of the human mind to reason at a high level of abstraction, the power to think, understand, solve problems and form judgments by a process of complex logic is one of the most distinguishing marks between human beings and the rest of the animal world. It is not that humans alone reason, even crows can solve problems and devise simple tools, but only human being are capable of employing abstract logic sophisticated enough to eliminate smallpox or build bombs powerful enough to obliterate the whole planet. Even when someone argues there is no such thing as absolute truth they are using reason to make their case––which, strangely enough, is that the absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. The great mystics and contemplatives do not deny the need for reason and logical thought. Their advice is that thought alone can only take us so far on the spiritual journey. They are not looking for a way of knowledge that contradicts human logic, but for one that transcends it. The sort of liberal or progressive orientation advocated here, then, affirms that rational thought is crucial in the quest for truth.
• Tacit Knowledge: Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) the Hungarian scientist and philosopher who made major contributions to the study of physical chemistry, spoke of a nonverbal intelligence which he called “tacit knowledge” –– an expertise in something real, and a demonstrable knowledge about a subject which cannot be put into words. Such knowledge requires years of experience to develop, and while it cannot be put into words or stated in logical syllogisms; it is, nevertheless, very real and can be verified empirically. Tacit knowledge is “wholistic.” That is, every experience we have ever had, and all that we are in mind, body, and soul, shapes the way we perceive absolutely everything and is an essential part of the very questions we ask. Pure objective reason as described in elementary school textbooks is a delusion. It does not exist. In his book God and Spirituality: Philosophical Essays, Glenn F. Chesnut suggests that the Alcoholics Anonymous program furnishes one example of tacit knowledge. “In the Alcoholics Anonymous program,” he writes, we have a number of tests which can identify those who have developed greater expertise in the spiritual life.” Notice, that while Chesnut validates growth in tacit knowledge as growth in spiritual expertise, he simultaneously uses reason as a way of verifying tacit knowledge or spiritual expertise.
• Sensus Divinitatis: For centuries Christians like Saint Thomas Aquinas, thinker, scholar, philosopher, theologian, and contemplative Christian monk have spoken and written of what has often been referred to as the sensus diviinitatis––”sense of the divine.” Actually the concept goes back as far as Plato and perhaps even further than that. It is the recognition that there exits in us a natural sense of the reality of God. Spirituality, as genetic studies seem to suggest, is somehow hardwired into our genes. The sensus divinitatis is to be understood as a faculty like our faculties of reason, or our five senses, or feelings, or intuition which are all work to lead us to a knowledge of the truth. And like each of our other faculties our sense of deity is not infallible so that it has to be correlated with our other faculties of discernment.
I do not want to get overly involved here in epistemology––how we know what we know. I am simply proposing that liberal Christian theology which goes beyond the liberalism of the older sort, recognizes that reason is inextricably bound up in the quest for meaning and truth and beauty; but, reason narrowly defined as empiricism, or mathematical logic, or the scientific method is not a lens powerful enough to see into the vast reaches of spiritual reality. Ultimately, all ways of knowing should be lines of thought, and feeling, and being which converge in one infinite singularity.
• Probability: In the debate between Daniel Wallace and Bart Ehrman regarding whether the original autographs of the New Testament had been hopelessly corrupted in transmission; or, are essentially reliable representations of the earliest Christian documents, Wallace kept arguing that the evidence indicated a high degree of probability that the New Testament of today is a reliable version of the original writings. Bart Ehrman, on the other hand, doggedly maintained that we could not know this with absolute certainty. Ehrman’s demand for absolute proof was a clever move, but itself highly unrealistic in the pondering of those things that matter most. Reflective reasoning, recognizes that many problems, issues and question cannot be framed in such a way as to render definitive yes or no (mathematically certain) answers. Yet, life and reality, circumstances and people require answers, and choices and commitments must be made. And so we choose and commit and act based on what we are convinced is the highest reliable probability. A genuinely liberal theology will emphasize reason, but the reason it emphasizes is a more “reflective reason.”

God
Liberal Christianity, as posited here, believes that the essence of reality, as even the quantum physicists are now suggesting, is something, or someone, more akin to mind or consciousness; that is, reality is more easily and rationally understood in terms of consciousness than by materialistic concepts. This, some think, is the first and most basic question for anyone embarking on the spiritual quest to consider. What is the fundamental nature of reality? Is it mindless? material? physical? Or is it, for want of a more adequate term, better described as mind or consciousness?

Liberal Christian theology believes that the very essence of this reality is personal; that is, that this reality, this consciousness, makes itself known to human beings, is experienced by us in ways and in terms that can only be described as personal –– trust, gratitude, loving kindness, listening and hearing, presence. One trusts and is trusted only by another person. I may love my money and even in a sense trust it, but that is not the same thing as loving and being loved and trusted by my wife and children. But reason also tells us that while it is helpful and appropriate to refer to God as a person, it also informs us that God is infinitely more. So the great twelfth century theologian Anselm said, “God is that than which nothing greater can be thought.” No matter what we think, imagine, conceive, or feel God is always still greater; and, therefore, always indefinable and inexplicable even though we attempt to do so by ten thousand adjectives.
• Liberal Christian orthodoxy believes that this mysterious reality we call God is, in the words of the seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, “not the God of the philosophers, but the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.” That is to say, God is not an intellectual idea in someone’s mind, but the personal God of the Bible. This, means of course, that they also believe a number of others things about God, for example, that God is the Creator and Source of all the beauty and goodness to which we human beings are witness; that God is somehow involved in human history so that all things are moving toward a just and good resolution –– toward what the British Christian mystic Evelyn Underhill called “the triumph of charity.”

Scripture
Liberal Christian orthodoxy believes inspired Scripture has the power to transform our lives, that it shows us the way to live, brings enlightenments, corrects our character flaws, and trains us as instruments of love, justice, and compassion (See 2 Timothy 3:16). Liberal Christian Theology also affirms that Scripture must be interpreted in the light of reason, experience and tradition.
• Reason: The application of reason is necessary for even a rudimentary understanding of what we read. As a young minister I frequently heard a criticism of the Bible I hardly ever hear anymore. The criticism was: “You can make the Bible say, or mean, anything you want.” In a sense that is true, and it is true not only  of the Bible but of anything we read––including the breaking news on our computer screen. However, the fact that we can make the Bible say anything we want it to say doesn’t mean that is what it actually says. I have heard doctors tell patients they had stage four metastatic cancer. That it didn’t look good. That the patient should get his affairs in order. And then when the patient asked how long he had for the doctor to say, “Well no one can say for sure, but we will do everything we can to keep you comfortable.” Then, when the family comes in, and asks what the doctor said, the patient tells them: “Well, the doctor said it’s serious, but they can help me. I should live a long time.” Everything we hear, see, read, experience has to be interpreted by the ordinary rules of reason. The simpler the communication the less thought we have to give it. The more complex the communication the more we have to think about it, and may even have to break it down into sequential steps. Normally seminary students are required to take a class in Hermeneutics, which is a course in how to interpret Scripture–– the long established principles of interpretation and application. For example, every text must be interpreted in both its immediate and remote context. The genre of every text must be taken into consideration. When you read the Book of Revelation you have to read it as the apocalyptic literature it is. You can’t read it as if it is a literal book of history. Well, you can. But then you are going to come up with something bizarre like The Late Great Planet Earth.
Reason tells me Scripture is not “inerrant.” Given the number of factual discrepancies in the Bible inerrancy is hard to defend. I am not thinking of scribal errors or spelling mistakes that are somewhat like the equivalent of a modern “typo,” but clear differences between two passages. For example, Genesis 46:27, Exodus 1:5 and Deuteronomy 10:22 all say the total number of people who went with Jacob into Egypt was seventy. However, Acts 7:12-14 says it was seventy-five people who went into Egypt. Actually, the notion of inerrancy is a little less than a hundred-fifty years old. Even today it is a doctrine more prominent among North American than British evangelicals.
Reason also tells me that the “higher-criticism” methodology of modernity is, in spite of its intellectual sophistication, highly problematic. The Jesus Seminar was quite successful in marketing itself as a scientific exploration of the authenticity of Jesus’s words and actions; yet, the criteria it followed was riddled with obvious errors in logic. And, as is now being pointed out more and more often, the widely divergent conclusions obtained by scholars claiming to use the same methods in studying the Gospels can only lead one to the reasonable assumption that their work is neither reliable nor valid.
• Tradition –– when we examine Scripture paying attention to how the church has interpreted and understood a text across the centuries that is using tradition. Words have to be understood according to the accepted definitions at the time they were written, and the accepted grammatical rules of ancients languages applied. Tradition is the collected wisdom that we find in the practices and writings of Christians throughout history. Tradition may not always be totally correct, but that does not mean it does not have much to contribute to our understanding of significant issues and questions.
• Experience –– is the way in which not just our own individual experience, but the way the general human experience and the experience of the Christian community through the centuries coheres with reason and tradition in interpreting a biblical text. The more an interpretation of a Biblical text embraces reason, tradition, and experience all at once the greater the probability of it being correct. Unfortunately, experience as a criterion of biblical interpretation is often erroneously understood to be nothing more than the personal experience of an individual. A pivotal moment in my own life occurred when I realized that the denomination of my youth was focused on prohibiting practices in the church’s ministry based on a faulty understanding of Scripture, and were issues that had become matters of intense debate no more than twenty-five years before the night of my little epiphany. The critical moment came when I then asked myself: “Do you really think Christ is concerned with this sort of trivia? Was the Christ you have encountered in Scripture ever concerned with this sort of minutia?” I was obviously asking questions of Scripture and tradition, but also of my own personal spiritual experience––as well as that of the larger Christian community across the centuries.

Values
Liberal Christian theology embraces the values traditionally emphasized by liberal thinkers: freedom, tolerance, acceptance, justice for all in every sphere of life, and open mindedness. However, it holds these values not because they are liberal but because they are Christian. The terms used to describe liberal values may vary somewhat but the essential principles remain constant.
• Rationality: Liberal Christian theology and philosophy values rationality. By this I mean it prizes rigorous critical thinking, and adheres to the quality of appropriateness which means that what we say, feel, and think fits the event and its emotional content that we are responding to as well as its intensity. It means, among other things, that we do not make what is small large or what is large small. Rationality further means that we respond to what is required in the moment rather than reacting. The difference is simple. If in a moment of crisis we act automatically out of our inner anxieties, confusion, and turmoil that is reacting. When we are more reflective and act more in tune with what needs to be done, and in light of what will be most helpful in the present situation we are responding.
• Intellectual Integrity: Liberal Christian thought recognizes that in our philosophical and theological conclusions we can arrive at satisfying levels of probability but never absolute certainty. To reach the upper levels of probable confidence requires a sense of academic humility in which the rigor and integrity of intellectual effort convinces us that we may commit ourselves knowing we are probably right but might possibly be wrong.
• Freedom: Liberal Christianity accepts the proposition that God has conferred not only upon humanity, but evidently the entire universe, the dignity of choosing what we will become. Consequently, liberal philosophy renounces any notion that people should be coerced and forced into thinking, acting, or speaking in ways prescribed by an elite few. The caveat, of course, is that where someone is a danger to him or herself, or to others, they need to be restrained. We must each determine the way to which we are willing to commit everything. We may share with others what we have discovered and invite them to join us on this path, but we must leave them free to choose which divide in the road they will take.
• Respect: Liberal Christian theology regards respect as one of its higher values––respect for truth, for facts, for reason, for Scripture, for the sacredness of life, for beauty, for goodness and virtue, and for the Mystery we call God. Respect is a guiding principle, a lived attitude, which values the human dignity of everyone we meet, and recognizes that the desires, hopes, loves, fears, dreams, thoughts and ideas of every other person on this planet are just as significant as our own. Respect is essential for genuine progress in every area of life––intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and even physical.
• Generosity: By definition to be liberal is to be generous. I don’t hear it used this way much anymore, but as a boy I would often read or hear comments about people giving liberally to a charity––giving generously of their time, money, or skills to an organization, event, or cause meant for the good of others. But to be liberal is also to be generous in acceptance, tolerance, compassion, and good will. It is to be generous in making allowances for the mistakes people may make, leaving wide margins for error, and a willingness to understand people and interpret events in the most positive rather than automatically defaulting to viewing them in a critical or demeaning light. To have a generous spirit is be open minded. And to be open minded is to listen for understanding rather than for argumentation or points of criticism.
To be open minded also refers to how we hold our convictions. Decades ago, Milton Rokeach found in his studies that open mindedness has less to do with the ability to change one’s mind when that is warranted, than with the attitudes with which beliefs are held. He found that someone who clings to a particular set of beliefs with an angry and unreasonable attitude may very well change his or her mind; however, their new set of beliefs will be characterized by the same unpleasant attitudes. A further difference Rokeach found, was that when a closed minded person accepts a new truth it is applied only to what is understood to be the one relevant area. The open minded person sees how a new insight pertains to the whole of life. So, an alcoholic sees how the first of the Twelve Steps (Acknowledged that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable.) relates to staying sober; and, consequently is able to stop drinking. But then fail to see how this insight into a spirit of willingness, letting, go, or surrender applies to the whole of life. Consequently, while they remain sober they have little peace in doing so. The open minded person sees how that principle applies to the totality of life, practices it, and so discovers not only sobriety but a sense of serenity as well.
• Compassion: The Latin root of the word, compassion, is pati, which means “to suffer.” The prefix, com-, means “with.” So, “to have compassion” means we have fellow feeling or sympathy with those who are suffering. The most pernicious psychological disorders known are the Psychopathic, Sociopathic, and Narcissistic Personality Disorders in which the afflicted individual feels no sense of compassion, sympathy, or empathy. There is nothing but a huge empty space where fellow feelings ought to be. In Liberal Christian Theology the feeling of compassion is seen as a gift.
• Social Justice: All liberal theology agrees on the centrality of peace and social justice issues to any sort of deeper intellectual, emotional, or spiritual life. There is further agreement with the proposition that the primary imperative for human kind is love –– love for every person on the planet, love for every living creature, love for all that is––this Earth our island home, vast galaxies, and subatomic particles. Liberal thinkers may disagree over the source of this imperative, whether it rests upon a philosophical ideal or a theological reality (upon reason or the mystery of Christ), but they are in total agreement that love is the law of our being. In light of what has already been said, to now list social justice as an integral component of progressive orthodoxy may seem somewhat redundant. Nevertheless, all liberal theology is defined by a deep and pervasive sense of social justice. Racism, bigotry, hatred, unfair and hurtful or cruel treatment based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity, or socio-economic status is according to both reason and the divine law of love evil, and, therefore, to be resisted and by continuous resistance overcome. Someone once asked Ted Kennedy where all his concern for the poor came from. And he responded by asking, “Haven’t you ever read the New Testament?”
An Important Distinction
A very big difference between the sort of liberal Christian theology and philosophy being discussed here and modernity––the sort of liberal thinking previously discussed that may or may not have room for God, Christ, or Scripture as sacred text, is that liberal Christianity of this second sort believes that the liberal values all come from the Christin faith. I recently read Tom Holland’s interesting book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. If you want to explore more seriously how Christianity is the radical revolution that is the genesis of ideas like; all people are created equal; or, how Christianity is the force that since its beginning has shaped the way we think you might want to read this book. Holland says, it was Christianity which gave to womankind the recognition of their innate dignity and equality and opened the way for women to claim self-determination over their own bodies. Even when we denounce the greed, bigotry, ignorance, and self-righteousness of American fundamentalism, Holland asserts, we are arguing from ethical, moral, and spiritual concepts planted when Christianity exploded into the world. He writes, “When the Beatles boldly proclaimed, “All You Need is Love,” whether they would admit it or not they were making a profoundly Christian statement. So had Augustine proclaimed back in the late Roman Empire: “Love, and do as you want.” But you can explore the rather lengthy and rather academic development of Tom Holland’s thesis for yourself. What I want to emphasize here in this “definition” is that progressive orthodoxy is characterized by a particular set of values inherent in the Christian faith and common to all liberal theology. They may be known by other terms than I have used (equality, authenticity, tolerance,) but the meaning remains constant.

Final Note
When I wrote and posted Reflecting on What is an Evangelical? A Movement in Crisis, I did so because as a former evangelical, albeit more in the British than American sense, I was, and am, disturbed by the way in which fundamentalists have co-opted and appropriated that designation for themselves. The hope of fundamentalists was that by doing this they would be able to elevate their image, but what has happened is that the term “evangelical” has itself become a word of approbation. To misquote Shakespeare, “A skunk by any other name would smell as bad.” That reflection then led me to go on to ponder the question, What is Modern Liberal Theology? in three essays, and to now follow with this one on A Theology of Liberal Christian Orthodoxy. It has been kind of like Forest Gump who felt like running one day and didn’t stop until he had run across the whole country a couple of times. One of the things I found is that it is as difficult to distinguish between types of liberal Christian thought as it is to differentiate between conservative and liberal Christians. However, I hope what is now a total of four posts on liberal Christian thought, as well as the one on evangelicalism, have been clarifying for you, and help in recognizing some of the subtilties involved and in thinking about matters in a more nuanced way. If you attempt to use any of this as a way of rubricizing people I am afraid you will have completely misunderstood my intent. It is my plan to write one or more little essays which looks for a less conflicted way of understanding Christian faith –– a way beyond either liberal or evangelical Christianity. In my next post then you should find something on Classical Christianity.

Sin –– Does it Exist?
Liberal Christianity believes that all people are good at heart; and, therefore, need only encouragement and nurture to allow their natural goodness to express itself. God’s character, again if one wants to speak in terms of God as a reality, is one of pure benevolence so that sin does not separate anyone from God, results in no negative judgement, and is not something for which one may be held ultimately accountable. This means, as Marcus Borg argued, that Christ did not die for our sins; and, that “Christianity is not about reward and punishment in some future life”  but solely about our “transformation” in this life. Even if Borg was talking about what is known as the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement (a doctrine that only goes as far back as Anselm in the eleventh century, and is far from universally accepted) he had to have known that the sort of blanket statements he made rejecting the Christian understanding of sin as a part of the human condition would be worthy of an “F” grade for any student making it in a first year theology class. It’s one thing to argue that the Biblical concept of sin is a bad bit of theology or philosophy, or that it is offensive to people of the twenty-first century, but to argue that it has nothing to do with biblical or historic Christian spirituality is simply egregiously incorrect. If you would like to pursue the subject further I would suggest you read: The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion by O. Hobart Mowrer; Whatever Became of Sin? by Karl Menninger; and The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament by Martin Hengel. Meanwhile you might reflect on something Kathleen Norris said in her book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography:

Comprehensible , sensible sin is one of the unexpected gifts I’ve found in the monastic tradition. The fourth-century monks began to answer a question for me that the human potential movement of the late twentieth-century never seemed to address: if I’m O. K. and you’re O. K., and our friends (nice people and like us, markedly middle class, if a bit bohemian) are O. K., why is the world definitely not O. K.? Blaming others wouldn’t do. Only when I began to see the world’s ills mirrored in myself did I begin to find an answer; only as I began to address that uncomfortable word, “sin”, did I see that I was not being handed a load of needless guilt so much as a useful tool for confronting the negative side of human behavior.

Whether regarding sin, or the nature of reality, it is frequently difficult to say what liberal Christians believe. This is because a basic characteristic of liberal theologians has been to define themselves over against historic Christianity. Their statements of belief are, therefore, primarily negations –– statements of what they do not believe.

Five Final Observations on the Liberal Ethos
To understand the ethos or culture of liberal theology as modernity there are four characteristics with which it is helpful to be familiar:
• Casuistry
Where misapplied biblical quotations form the basis for most fundamentalist arguments liberals much prefer casuistry –– the use of clever and intellectually sophisticated but unsound reasoning to prove a point. Recently students at Union Theological Seminary in New York met in chapel sitting in a circle around an arrangement of green houseplants to “hold their grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings (the plants) who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.” The statement put out by Union asked, “What, do you confess to the plants in your life?” The ceremony was conducted by the students in Professor Claudio Carvalhaes’s course in Extractivism: A Ritual/Liturgical Response. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds smart. What I do recognize is that it is casuistry. And I know that Union’s response to the many mocking responses it received is casuistry:

This is a beautiful ritual. . . . We are in the throes of a climate emergency, a crisis, created by humanity’s ignorance, our disregard for Creation. . . We must build new bridges to the natural world. And that means creating new spiritual and intellectual frameworks by which we understand and relate to the plants and animals with whom we share the planet. . . . We must birth new theology, new liturgy to heal and sow, replacing ones that reap and destroy. . . . Because plants aren’t capable of verbal response, does that mean we shouldn’t engage with them?

The statement is casuistry not because it advocates the urgency of addressing the ecological crisis or reflecting on the responsibility of human beings to respect and care for God’s living creation –– awake to the realization that in its beauty we see the face of God. Nor is it casuistry because it ignorantly assumes that Christian thinkers have not been reflecting theologically on the ecological crisis for quite some time now (See for example: Francis Schaffer’s Pollution and the Death of Man written in 1970 for a healthy evangelical perspective on the needed Christian response; or, Richard Bauckham’s The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation, 2010). No it is casuistry because it uses sophisticated sounding language and liberal intellectual clichés to convince people of something dumb.
• Freedom
Liberal Christianity, modernity, envisions and promotes a freedom detached from all authority other than the reason and experience of the individual. The greater the detachment from religious, biblical, social, governmental or community responsibility the greater, so it is thought, the freedom of the person. So, altruistic behavior has been detached from Jesus’s teaching which sees selfless acts of kindness as a “secret” spiritual practice of love and compassion, and has instead become a part of the public relations strategy of local stores and national corporations –– just another part of merchandizing. Freedom to pursue the “American Dream” is ultimately little more than the hope that if one works hard, or catches a lucky break, or is smart enough he or she too can join the elite oppressor class. Freedom for contemporary Americans is frequently just another word for self-absorption. Our search is for self-actualization, self-realization, self-fulfillment. For modernity freedom means individual freedom from outside constraints. I get a kick out of that commercial Ronnie Reagan does–– the one in which he seems to be afraid someone will take away his right to go to hell. If Ron is bent on going to hell far be it from me to interfere with his freedom. Thomas Oden, the pastoral theologian who turned from modern liberalism to classical Christianity, thought that in the modern world a consuming interest in self-expression has overwhelmed our sense of community responsibility –– our human accountability to one another. “The social result,” he said, “is precisely the inordinate, hedonistic self-assertiveness that classic Jewish and Christian ethics have always eschewed as the center of the human predicament. Its horrifying consequences are often not recognized until one discovers a polluted beach, the results of acid rain, upraised barricades for an incipient revolution, a raging epidemic, or an impending genocide.”
• Values
Theoretically all liberals value tolerance and respect. They have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the rights of gays and lesbians. Liberals contrary to the old Puritan principle which says, “Ever one should help himself,” believe that government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are without adequate food, shelter, health care, or educational opportunities. If you are a literalist and strict Biblicist you should know, whether it is hard for you to accept or not, the furthest liberal to the left you can imagine may possess more real moral integrity and good will than any member of your church. Being a good person is not dependent on what someone believes about any religion. Having said that, the reality is that liberals and humanists, in general, practice these values with about as much hypocrisy as any other group practices its values. One would think that liberal Christianity would be devoted to the spiritual principle of nonviolence, but they are more likely to be proponents of “just war theory” than the peace of Christ, or the ahimsa of Gandhi. But then few Christian denominations seem to know that the teaching of Christ was that of peace and love; and, few Hindus recognize nonviolence as a central characteristic of their faith. Not many secular liberals recognize or have any real appreciation for the fact that their values are derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Ironically, even when they are denouncing the fundamentalist for their abhorrent rhetoric and policies, they are doing so on the ethical foundation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Quaker philosopher D. Elton Trueblood once described this as a “cut-flower” faith or spirituality. The stem of a flower is cut from its root and the flower placed in a vase, for a while the flower continues to look beautiful, and its fragrance may fill the room, but it quickly wilts and dies without having given new life. Christian values cut off from the wisdom of Scripture and the living Spirit of Christ are simply not the same thing as those values rooted in Christ and nourished by the Spirit. Ultimately, liberal Christianity to the far left, liberal Christianity as modernity, has no real “why” for the good it advocates other than it seems reasonable in the moment; but, as the moment is ever changing so may what one believes reasonable appears and disappear like warm breath on a frosty morning.
• Reconfiguration
Liberal Christianity, or modernity, received much of its original energy from an infatuation with new concepts and ideas –– rather like the philosophers on Mars Hill Paul encountered who “loved to hear and discuss anything new.” Ironically many modernists were originally motivated by a desire to defend the Christian faith. However, unlike conservative fundamentalism, rather than launching a frontal assault liberalism devised a defense strategy of accommodation. Consequently, in time, much of liberalism came to be preoccupied with the business of reconfiguring Christianity so as to make it more acceptable to modern thought and consciousness. Unfortunately, that is a labor more than a little like rolling the proverbial boulder up the hill every day –– the work of reconfiguring Christianity is never done.
• Clichés
Fundamentalist and evangelicals tend to trivialize Christian thought and practice by talking in empty clichés. Liberals tend to do the same thing, tend to make what is large small and to ignore the subtleties and nuances of life and reality, through obsessive political correctness.

It’s a Matter of What You Want?
Allen, my friend since grade school, and I took our first college philosophy class together. From the first day the professor insisted that it was not possible to be both a Christian believer and a philosopher. At the time we were far too naive to know how wrong he was. So, late in the second semester Allen went to the professor’s office and asked: “How can I be both a Christian and a philosopher?” It was important to Allen that he be seen as intellectually sophisticated. His question was essentially the question of early liberalism. Thomas à Kempis, the fifteenth century monk, said in his The Imitation of Christ, “The learned are always anxious to appear learned.” If that is your goal there is probably no reason you can not attain it. If your goal is to know God, is to live in conscious contact, in mystical intimacy with the God of the Burning Bush, The One Who Is, and the Christ God sent, then you will need to take a long arduous journey along the rugged path of the classical spiritual disciplines of the Christian faith. And, you will have to let go of all self-enhancing images. As E. Stanley Jones noted, “We are all free to choose, but we are not free to choose the results of our choosing.