Am I Liberal or Conservative?

Trying to walk the tightrope

Jan 09, 2024

Photo by Loic Leray on Unsplash

(A ten-minute read.)

A few weeks back, when I was speaking in Canada and doing a Q&A time, one person raised his hand and asked a question that was somewhat amusing. In a matter-of-fact way, he simply asked, “Are you a ‘progressive Christian’?”

I don’t know that I’ve ever been asked that sort of question in such a direct way in a setting like that—but, suffice it to say, I sort of hemmed and hawed in response. I wasn’t sure, after all, if he considered himself to be progressive or strongly anti-progressive, and I wasn’t sure if he was picking up from my presentations that I was progressive.

But it’s actually a fairly hard question to answer—for many different reasons. And I think the way I responded probably left everyone more confused than anything else!

I am going to try to answer the question in this piece—but before I do that, I need to explain why it’s sort of a tricky question.

First of all, what people mean by the term “progressive” (or “liberal” or “conservative” or “traditional”) is not always obvious. Often, “progressive” and “liberal” are used interchangeably—as if they mean the same thing.

In fact, however, while there’s overlap, the terms are not synonymous from a historical and technical point of view.

But I won’t bore you with the nuances of the terms (partly because I’m not an expert in this area).

For purposes of this piece, however, I will just use the terms interchangeably—and adopt a popular understanding of them.

In this sense, a “progressive” or “liberal” Christian is someone who’s not dogmatically committed to religious tradition, and who believes that people should have the freedom to explore new ideas and practices—even if they contradict ideas and practices from the past (this is not anything close to a well-thought-out definition, but one that I’m sort of making up on the fly).

With all that said, the second problem with using the terms (as well as “conservative” or “traditional”) is that they’re famously relative terms. They’re moving targets.

Indeed, most thinking people know that every person is more progressive or liberal than other persons and yet they’re simultaneously more conservative or traditional than other persons.

And everyone has issues, ideas, values, and practices they want to conserve—and everyone has issues, ideas, values, and practices they want to progress beyond.

Simply put, we’re all more progressive than some people and we’re all more conservative than other people.

Similarly, throughout history, new movements and groups of people almost always follow a similar pattern: they start out, by their very nature, to be “progressive” in their orientation, moving beyond the values and practices of the surrounding culture. But, having secured the gains of their progressive agenda, they then usually batten down the hatches and try to conserve those gains.

I could present a thousand historical examples, but I’ll give you just one: Unitarians.

In the early nineteenth century, Unitarians were the staunch liberals within Congregationalism. In fact, they passionately embraced the label “liberal Christian” long before they accepted the label “Unitarian.” This communicated their primary value and orientation.

What they wanted to be liberated from, and progress beyond, was the strict Calvinism of Congregationalism—with its suffocating and pessimistic view of humanity’s depraved condition. These “liberal Christians” had a much more optimistic view of human nature and believed that, employing their God-given reason (and the Bible), they could arrive at richer, nobler, and more rationalistic understandings of a loving God—as well as humanity’s abilities.

This led them to reject much of Calvinism, and they became increasingly ambivalent about the idea of God being a trinity of persons (to the point where, by 1825, they officially formed their own denomination).

Thus, they were the true “liberals” of their day.

Until they weren’t.

How so?

Within a decade of officially forming, Transcendentalism—led by Ralph Waldo Emerson—was trying to take over Unitarianism. Transcendentalism ultimately rejected the belief, maintained by Unitarians, that the Bible was God’s authoritative and reliable Word—instead placing authority in the individual. The Bible was out and humanity’s intuition was in.

The “traditional” orthodox beliefs that many of the leading Unitarian figures held on to—the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection of Christ—were thus out the window as well. And these “conservative” Unitarians, once the “liberals” of New England Christianity, determined they weren’t going to go down without a fight. They needed to beat back the forces of progressivism (a fight which they ultimately lost).

The point in this little history lesson is to show the fickle nature of trying to determine if one is “liberal” or “conservative.” Such terms are moving targets and are always relative.

Of course, many people don’t quibble about the relative nature of these terms, and simply “self-identify” as either “liberal” or “conservative.” And perhaps that’s where the questioner in Canada was coming from.

So if that’s the case, what do I consider myself?

Perhaps frustratingly, though maybe not surprisingly, you’ll discover that I still refuse to be pinned down so easily.

This or that? Or this and that?

At the risk of being cheeky, I truly don’t consider myself to be either a liberal or a conservative.

And I’m not just trying to be evasive or cute when I say this.

As I’ve said before, I find that I have too many questions to be a conservative and too many answers to be a liberal.

I’ve also discovered that those who self-identify as “conservative” often leave me feeling beat-down while those who self-identify as “liberal” leave me feeling empty.

What I mean by that is those who are most doggedly conservative in the spaces in which I travel seem to push a very strict and shame-based religious outlook. There’s very little love, very little emotional safety and intelligence, very little discussion about God’s grace and forgiveness. Most of the discussion focuses on the diligent performance of obscure personal behaviors—which usually don’t directly benefit other human beings. This often results in an implicit, and often explicit, judgment against those who don’t embrace such beliefs or behaviors.

On the other hand, those who are most doggedly liberal in the spaces in which I travel often fail to articulate any positive vision of Jesus—and the transcendent issues he came to resolve. Their outlook is largely vacuous and devoid of any compelling theological content (and any mention of Christ usually omits the cross). There seems to be only questions and a lot of vagueness—and more emphasis on humanity’s social duties than God’s redemptive work. There’s also plenty of judgment—and a fair amount of “canceling”—against those who see things differently.

I’ve also noticed that, in my historical research, when I’m reading conservative Christian voices, I feel frustratingly liberal (and my newsletter probably reflects that). When I’m reading liberal Christian voices (as I’m doing right now with Unitarians), I get scared back to the right more.

I’d also put it this way: I do believe there are ideas and beliefs and practices that are worth conserving and holding onto. I’m a big fan of “orthodoxy” (however one wants to define this equally-vague term). I’m committed to a robust theology.

And yet, at the same time, I remain open-handed about a lot of what I believe and am willing to give just about any counter-point a fair hearing. I think there are many new discoveries to make, and many old “discoveries” to discard (I think of what one of my favorite theologians, Ellen White, once wrote: “We have many lessons to learn, and many, many to unlearn. God and heaven alone are infallible.”).

I’m also not ready to declare anyone a heretic just because they see things differently than me (though I’m also not ready to say that a religious group shouldn’t have any doctrinal boundaries).