Liberal Christianity

Template:Short description Template:For Template:Redirect-distinguish Template:Historical Christian theology Template:Protestantism Template:Sidebar with collapsible lists Liberal Christianity, also known as liberal theology and historically as Christian modernism (see Catholic modernism and fundamentalist–modernist controversy),<ref name="thearda" /> is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by prioritizing modern knowledge, science and ethics. It emphasizes the importance of reason and experience over doctrinal authority. Liberal Christians view their theology as an alternative to both atheistic rationalism and theologies based on traditional interpretations of external authority, such as the Bible or sacred tradition.<ref>Template:Harvtxt: "Liberal Christian theology is a tradition that derives from the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Protestant attempt to reconceptualize the meaning of traditional Christian teaching in the light of modern knowledge and modern ethical values. It is not revolutionary but reformist in spirit and substance. Fundamentally it is the idea of a genuine Christianity not based on external authority. Liberal theology seeks to reinterpret the symbols of traditional Christianity in a way that creates a progressive religious alternative to atheistic rationalism and to theologies based on external authority."</ref><ref>Template:Harvtxt: "Theological liberalism, a form of religious thought that establishes religious inquiry on the basis of a norm other than the authority of tradition. It was an important influence in Protestantism from about the mid-17th century through the 1920s."</ref><ref>Template:Harvtxt: "Liberalism's program required a significant degree of flexibility in relation to traditional Christian theology. Its leading writers argued that reconstruction of belief was essential if Christianity were to remain a serious intellectual option in the modern world. For this reason, they demanded a degree of freedom in relation to the doctrinal inheritance of Christianity on the one hand, and traditional methods of biblical interpretation on the other. Where traditional ways of interpreting Scripture, or traditional beliefs, seemed to be compromised by developments in human knowledge, it was imperative that they should be discarded or reinterpreted to bring them into line with what was now known about the world."</ref>

Liberal theology grew out of the Enlightenment's rationalism and the Romanticism of the 18th and 19th centuries. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was characterized by an acceptance of Darwinian evolution, use of modern biblical criticism, and participation in the Social Gospel movement.Template:Sfn This was also the period when liberal theology was most dominant within the Protestant churches. Liberal theology's influence declined with the rise of neo-orthodoxy in the 1930s and with liberation theology in the 1960s.Template:Sfn Catholic forms of liberal theology emerged in the late 19th century. By the 21st century, liberal Christianity had become an ecumenical tradition, including both Protestants and Catholics.Template:Sfn

In the context of theology, liberal does not refer to political liberalism, and it should also be distinguished from progressive Christianity.<ref name="thearda">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Liberal ProtestantismEdit

Liberal Protestantism developed in the 19th century out of a perceived need to adapt Christianity to a modern intellectual context. With the acceptance of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, some traditional Christian beliefs, such as parts of the Genesis creation narrative, became difficult to defend. Unable to ground faith exclusively in an appeal to scripture or the person of Jesus Christ, liberals, according to theologian and intellectual historian Alister McGrath, "sought to anchor that faith in common human experience, and interpret it in ways that made sense within the modern worldview."Template:Sfn Beginning in Germany, liberal theology was influenced by several strands of thought, including the Enlightenment's high view of human reason and Pietism's emphasis on religious experience and interdenominational tolerance.Template:Sfn

The sources of religious authority recognized by liberal Protestants differed from conservative Protestants. Traditional Protestants understood the Bible to be uniquely authoritative (sola scriptura); all doctrine, teaching and the church itself derive authority from it.Template:Sfn A traditional Protestant could therefore affirm that "what Scripture says, God says."Template:Sfn Liberal Christians rejected the doctrine of biblical inerrancy or infallibility,<ref name="Chryssides 2010 p. 21"/> which they saw as the idolatry (fetishism) of the Bible.<ref name="Dorrien 2000 p. 112">Template:Cite book</ref> Instead, liberals sought to understand the Bible through modern biblical criticism, such as historical criticism, that began to be used in the late 1700s to ask if biblical accounts were based on older texts or whether the Gospels recorded the actual words of Jesus.Template:Sfn The use of these methods of biblical interpretation led liberals to conclude that "none of the New Testament writings can be said to be apostolic in the sense in which it has been traditionally held to be so".Template:Sfn This conclusion made sola scriptura an untenable position. In its place, liberals identified the historical Jesus as the "real canon of the Christian church".Template:Sfn

German theologian William Wrede wrote that "Like every other real science, New Testament Theology has its goal simply in itself, and is totally indifferent to all dogma and Systematic Theology". Theologian Hermann Gunkel affirmed that "the spirit of historical investigation has now taken the place of a traditional doctrine of inspiration".<ref name="Lyons2002">Template:Cite book</ref> Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong declared that the literal interpretation of the Bible is heresy.<ref name="Chellew-Hodge 2016">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Spong2016">Template:Cite book</ref>

The two groups also disagreed on the role of experience in confirming truth claims. Traditional Protestants believed scripture and revelation always confirmed human experience and reason. For liberal Protestants, there were two ultimate sources of religious authority: the Christian experience of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and universal human experience. In other words, only an appeal to common human reason and experience could confirm the truth claims of Christianity.Template:Sfn

In general, liberal Christians are not concerned with the presence of biblical errors or contradictions.<ref name="Chryssides 2010 p. 21">Template:Cite book</ref> Liberals abandoned or reinterpreted traditional doctrines in light of recent knowledge. For example, the traditional doctrine of original sin was rejected for being derived from Augustine of Hippo, whose views on the New Testament were believed to have been distorted by his involvement with Manichaeism. Christology was also reinterpreted. Liberals stressed Christ's humanity, and his divinity became "an affirmation of Jesus exemplifying qualities which humanity as a whole could hope to emulate".Template:Sfn

Liberal Christians sought to elevate Jesus' humane teachings as a standard for a world civilization freed from cultic traditions and traces of traditionally pagan types of belief in the supernatural.Template:Sfn As a result, liberal Christians placed less emphasis on miraculous events associated with the life of Jesus than on his teachings.Template:Sfn The debate over whether a belief in miracles was mere superstition or essential to accepting the divinity of Christ constituted a crisis within the 19th-century church, for which theological compromises were sought.<ref>The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion 1805–1900, edited by Gary J. Dorrien (Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), passim, search miracles.</ref>Template:Pages needed Some liberals prefer to read Jesus' miracles as metaphorical narratives for understanding the power of God.Template:Sfn Template:Better source needed Not all theologians with liberal inclinations reject the possibility of miracles, but many reject the polemicism that denial or affirmation entails.Template:Sfn

Nineteenth-century liberalism had an optimism about the future in which humanity would continue to achieve greater progress.Template:Sfn This optimistic view of history was sometimes interpreted as building the kingdom of God in the world.Template:Sfn

DevelopmentEdit

The roots of liberal Christianity go back to the 16th century when Christians such as Erasmus and the Deists attempted to remove what they believed were the superstitious elements from Christianity and "leave only its essential teachings (rational love of God and humanity)".Template:Sfn

Reformed theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) is often considered the father of liberal Protestantism.Template:Sfn In response to Romanticism's disillusionment with Enlightenment rationalism, Schleiermacher argued that God could only be experienced through feeling, not reason. In Schleiermacher's theology, religion is a feeling of absolute dependence on God. Humanity is conscious of its own sin and its need of redemption, which can only be accomplished by Jesus Christ. For Schleiermacher, faith is experienced within a faith community, never in isolation. This meant that theology always reflects a particular religious context, which has opened Schleirmacher to charges of relativism.Template:Sfn

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) disagreed with Schleiermacher's emphasis on feeling. He thought that religious belief should be based on history, specifically the historical events of the New Testament.Template:Sfn When studied as history without regard to miraculous events, Ritschl believed the New Testament affirmed Jesus' divine mission. He rejected doctrines such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the Trinity.Template:Sfn The Christian life for Ritschl was devoted to ethical activity and development, so he understood doctrines to be value judgments rather than assertions of facts.Template:Sfn Influenced by the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Ritschl viewed "religion as the triumph of the spirit (or moral agent) over humanity's natural origins and environment."Template:Sfn Ritschl's ideas would be taken up by others, and Ritschlianism would remain an important theological school within German Protestantism until World War I. Prominent followers of Ritschl include Wilhelm Herrmann, Julius Kaftan and Adolf von Harnack.Template:Sfn

Liberal CatholicismEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Catholic forms of theological liberalism have existed since the 19th century in England, France and Italy.Template:Sfn In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a liberal theological movement developed within the Catholic Church known as Catholic modernism.Template:Sfn Like liberal Protestantism, Catholic modernism was an attempt to bring Catholicism in line with the Enlightenment. Modernist theologians approved of radical biblical criticism and were willing to question traditional Christian doctrines, especially Christology. They also emphasized the ethical aspects of Christianity over its theological ones. Important modernist writers include Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell.Template:Sfn Modernism was condemned as heretical by the leadership of the Catholic Church.Template:Sfn

Sean O'Riordan refers to a liberal attitude as one of four schools of thought adopted among the bishops and other theologians at the Second Vatican Council: the liberal attitude, reflective of the mid-century Nouvelle théologie movement, was "modern-minded, enterprising, [and] ready for new ventures of faith", opting for "newness" in many aspects of the pastoral life of the Church "from top to bottom".<ref>O'Riordan, S, The Third Session, The Furrow, Volume 15, No. 10 (October 1964), p. 624-625, accessed on 12 October 2024</ref>

Papal condemnation of modernism and Americanism slowed the development of a liberal Catholic tradition in the United States. Since the Second Vatican Council, however, liberal theology has experienced a resurgence. Liberal Catholic theologians include David Tracy and Francis Schussler Fiorenza.Template:Sfn

Liberal QuakerismEdit

In the 1820s, Quakerism, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, experienced a major schism called the Hicksite–Orthodox split. The Hicksites were led by Quaker minister Elias Hicks, who put a strong focus on listening to one's inward light instead of a primary appeal to doctrine or creeds.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Hicks went as far as to say that strictly holding to the Bible was damaging to believers and to Christianity as a whole.<ref>Janney, Samuel M. (2008). History of the Religious Society of Friends, from its Rise to the year 1828. Quaker Heron Press.</ref> In addition to other distinctives, Hicks denied Satan as an external being and did not talk about an eternal Hell.<ref>Thomas D. Hamm (1988). The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800–1907. Indiana University Press. page 16. Template:ISBN</ref>

Hicksite-Quakerism, often called the Liberal branch, is today found most prominently in the Friends General Conference, but it also found in the centrist Friends United Meeting. Rather than holding to any firm statement of faith, Hicksite Quakers are led by the Inward Light as they believe it leads them.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> While Evangelist Quakers (see Gurneyite–Conservative split) were seen as holding to human reason, Liberal Quakers took a more spiritual and open approach. Liberal Quakers variably hold to Christian universalism, religious pluralism, progressive Christianity and other ideas not commonly held in conservative Christian circles.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Influence in the United StatesEdit

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Liberal Christianity was most influential with Mainline Protestant churches in the early 20th century, when proponents believed the changes it would bring would be the future of the Christian church. Its greatest and most influential manifestation was the Christian Social Gospel, whose most influential spokesman was the American Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch identified four institutionalized spiritual evils in American culture (which he identified as traits of "supra-personal entities", organizations capable of having moral agency): these were individualism, capitalism, nationalism and militarism.<ref>Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, 1917.</ref>

Other subsequent theological movements within the U.S. Protestant mainline included political liberation theology, philosophical forms of postmodern Christianity, and such diverse theological influences as Christian existentialism (originating with Søren Kierkegaard<ref>"Concluding Unscientific Postscript", authored pseudonymously as Johannes Climacus, 1846.</ref> and including other theologians and scholars such as Rudolf Bultmann<ref>History of Synoptic Tradition</ref> and Paul Tillich<ref>The Courage to Be.</ref>) and even conservative movements such as neo-evangelicalism, neo-orthodoxy, and paleo-orthodoxy. Dean M. Kelley, a liberal sociologist, was commissioned in the early 1970s to study the problem, and he identified a potential reason for the decline of the liberal churches: what was seen by some as excessive politicization of the Gospel, and especially their apparent tying of the Gospel with Left-Democrat/progressive political causes.<ref>Kelley, Dean M. (1972) Why Conservative Churches are Growing</ref>

The 1990s and 2000s saw a resurgence of non-doctrinal, theological work on biblical exegesis and theology, exemplified by figures such as Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong,<ref>Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism</ref> Karen Armstrong and Scotty McLennan.

Theologians and authorsEdit

Anglican and ProtestantEdit

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834), often called the "father of liberal theology", he claimed that religious experience was introspective, and that the most true understanding of God consisted of "a sense of absolute dependence".<ref>Alister McGrath. Christian Theology: An Introduction. 5th rev. ed. Wiley, 2011. Look in the index for "Schleiermacher" or "absolute dependence" and see them nearly always juxtaposed.</ref>
Charles Augustus Briggs (1841–1913), professor at Union Theological Seminary, early advocate of higher criticism of the Bible.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887), American preacher who left behind the Calvinist orthodoxy of his famous father, the Reverend Lyman Beecher, to instead preach the Social Gospel of liberal Christianity.
Adolf von Harnack, (1851–1930), German theologian and church historian, promoted the Social Gospel; wrote a seminal work of historical theology called Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (History of Dogma).
Charles Fillmore (1854–1948), Christian mystic influenced by Emerson; co-founder, with his wife, Myrtle Fillmore, of the Unity Church.
Hastings Rashdall (1858–1924), English philosopher, theologian, and Anglican priest. Dean of Carlisle from 1917 until 1924. Author of Doctrine and Development (1898).
Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) American Baptist, author of "A Theology for the Social Gospel", which gave the movement its definitive theological definition.
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969), a Northern Baptist, founding pastor of New York's Riverside Church in 1922.
Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), German biblical scholar, liberal Christian theologian until 1924.Template:Clarify<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Bultmann was more of an existentialist than a "liberal", as his defense of Jesus' healings in his "History of Synoptic Tradition" makes clear.
Paul Tillich (1886–1965), seminal figure in liberal Christianity; synthesized liberal Protestant theology with existentialist philosophy, but later came to be counted among the "neo-orthodox".
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976), English preacher and author of The Will of God and The Christian Agnostic
James Pike (1913–1969), Episcopal Bishop, Diocese of California 1958–1966. Early television preacher as Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City; social gospel advocate and civil rights supporter; author of If This Be Heresy and The Other Side; in later life studied Christian origins and spiritualism.
Lloyd Geering (b. 1918), New Zealand liberal theologian.
Paul Moore, Jr. (1919–2003), 13th Episcopal Bishop, New York Diocese
John A.T. Robinson (1919–1983), Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, author of Honest to God; later dedicated himself to demonstrating very early authorship of the New Testament writings, publishing his findings in Redating the New Testament.
John Hick (1922–2012), British philosopher of religion and liberal theologian, noted for his rejection of the Incarnation and advocacy of latitudinarianism and religious pluralism or non-exclusivism, as explained in his influential work, The Myth of God Incarnate.
William Sloane Coffin (1924–2006), Senior Minister at the Riverside Church in New York City, and President of SANE/Freeze (now Peace Action).<ref>Peace Action web page accessed at http://www.peace-action.org/history</ref>
Christopher Morse (b. 1935), Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary, noted for his theology of faithful disbelief.
John Shelby Spong (1931–2021), Episcopal bishop and very prolific author of books such as A New Christianity for a New World, in which he wrote of his rejection of historical religious and Christian beliefs such as Theism (a traditional conception of God as an existent being), the afterlife, miracles, and the Resurrection.
Richard Holloway (b. 1933), Bishop of Edinburgh, 1986 to 2000.Template:Clarify
Rubem Alves (1938–2014), Brazilian, ex-Presbyterian, former minister, retired professor from UNICAMP, seminal figure in the liberation theology movement.
Matthew Fox (b. 1940), former Roman Catholic priest of the Order of Preachers; currently an American Episcopal priest and theologian, noted for his synthesis of liberal Christian theology with New Age concepts in his ideas of "creation spirituality", "original blessing", and seminal work on the "Cosmic Christ"; founder of Creation Spirituality.
Marcus Borg (1942–2015) American Biblical scholar, prolific author, fellow of the Jesus Seminar.
Robin Meyers (b. 1952) United Church of Christ pastor and professor of Social Justice. Author of Saving Jesus from the Church.
Michael Dowd (1958-2023) Religious Naturalist theologian, evidential evangelist, and promoter of Big History and the Epic of Evolution.

Roman CatholicEdit

Thomas Berry (1914–2009), American Passionist priest, cultural historian, geologian, and cosmologist.
Hans Küng (1928–2021), Swiss theologian. Had his license to teach Catholic theology revoked in 1979 because of his vocal rejection of the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope, but remained a priest in good standing.
John Dominic Crossan (b. 1934), ex-Catholic and former priest, New Testament scholar, co-founder of the critical liberal Jesus Seminar.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (born 1938) German feminist theologian and Professor at Harvard Divinity School

OtherEdit

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), Unitarian liberal theologian in the United States, who rejected the Trinity and the strength of scriptural authority, in favor of purely rationalistic "natural religion".
Elias Hicks (1748–1830), Quaker minister who started the Liberal branch of Quakerism as a result of the Hicksite–Orthodox schism in the 1820s.
Scotty McLennan (b. 1948) Unitarian Universalist minister, Stanford University professor and author.

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