A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on July 21st, 2009 in Progressive Faith

Matthew Avery Sutton writes about the inability of President Barack Obama to gain the goodwill of Evangelical Christians. His conclusion:

So what can we do? Pray for the rapture. If evangelicals vanish, the rest of us might finally get better medical care, a healthier environment, a more just international community, and full civil rights for gays and lesbians. But short of this miracle, we can at least begin to understand that before Obama is able to penetrate the evangelical heart, evangelicals themselves will need to do some serious soul-searching. Rick Warren and Joel Osteen’s shallow, positive-thinking, feel-good sermonizing is not going to help them do this. Instead, it is up to the younger evangelicals to engage in serious intellectual debate and a rigorous rethinking of the theology at the root of their politics. Anything less and the doomsayers will turn fears of Obama-as-Antichrist into big business. But hell, maybe that’s just the spark the economy needs.

I understand that this is Mr. Sutton’s humorous way to say that there is no hope, but it is a self-fulfilling prophecy to say that “Evangelicals will not change so we should not try to change them.” Politically, I agree – no democracy can function so long as it aims at 100% agreement. But I think he’s building a strawman if he’s trying to say that the reason we don’t have healthcare, environmentalism, just societies, and civil rights is because of Evangelicals.

Of course, I’m sure Mr. Sutton would be the first to agree that not all Evangelicals fall into the group that he is describing. But for there are those who do, and they form, by and large, the public face of Evangelicalism. They are often seen synonymously with the “Religious Right.” And they will cling to their faith despite all attempts to sway them. That is, after all, their definition of faith – the ability to hold fast to your beliefs when the whole world tells you that you are wrong.

But that group isn’t large enough to stop any agenda. The ARIS 2008 study found that only 34% of Americans consider themselves to be Evangelical or Born Again. When you consider that 76% claim to be Christian, that leaves some 42% who are Christian, but not Evangelical. Add another 20% who claim no religious affiliation whatsoever, and the non-Evanglical voting bloc outnumbers Evangelicals two-to-one. Even in the United States Senate, that isn’t enough to hold things up.

If you look at the deconstructed date in Table 3, you’ll see that Generic Born-Again Christians account for only 0.9 million Americans. Baptists, who would also fall in the Evangelical category, account for another 15.8 million – for a total of 16.7 million people. Meanwhile, Mainline Christians account for 12.9 million and non-Born-Again Generic Christians account for 13.3 million, for a total of 26.2 million people. That simply isn’t enough to stop a political agenda – unless it is concentrated in a single state (then it can stop a state-level agenda). So the problem isn’t “those Evangelicals.”

If I can use my own denomination as an example – some dioceses and parishes have begun breaking away from the Episcopal church over theological differences. Basically, those differences are limited to the ordination of women and openly gay clergy. But anyone with eyes could have seen this schism two decades ago.

Even as the Episcopal diocese moved towards a liberal theological standing in the 1960s and 1970s, they openly embraced conservative Episcopalians who disagreed. Not only that, but liberals were content to allow conservatives to gain control of specific regions and lock out the liberal teachings with which they disagreed. Speaking plainly – a liberal power structure not only tolerated conservative dissenters, but nurtured their dissent and watched as they consolidated their power-base.

I’m not arguing that the schism should have been forced that long ago by defrocking conservatives or by silencing them. I am arguing that those Episcopalians in those dioceses haven’t been exposed to the liberal theology of the rest of the church. Liberals, by and large, simply haven’t reached out to try and engage conservatives. Partly, this is because of the virulent opposition of the conservative power-structure. But it is also part of the very tolerance that allowed the seeds of destruction to grow to harvest.

I agree whole-heartedly with the idea of tolerance. However, dissenting opinions should not be met with a shrug of the shoulders and a “Well, if that’s what you think…” They should be challenged, respectfully. They should be engaged.

Politically, it is a waste of time. The people who think Obama is the anti-Christ, or who simply hate Obama for whatever reason, are not going to suddenly wake up, watch the scales fall from their eyes, and join us in our trek down the Yellow Brick Road to Prosperity. But it will make us better by forcing us to explain the roots of our own beliefs, and tracing them all the way forward to public policy positions of today. And, who knows? It might fall by the wayside, grow in the ditch, and we can win converts who find our arguments to be generally engaging.

In other words, when we talk to conservatives, we can get into the heads of moderates. When we talk to ourselves, we only convince ourselves of how right we are. And that, either religiously or politically, is a losing philosophy.

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