On Being a Religious Liberal: A Small Meander Through the Fields of the Heart

I was corresponding with a Catholic priest about something or other, and almost as an aside he drilled down on what my theology was. I replied I’m a “liberal Buddhist,” a subset of “religious liberal.”

He replied how he was confused how a political position is collapsed into a religious term.

I replied it is a term of art, and dates back several hundred years. “Liberal” in this sense means anti-supernatural and rationalist. And that “liberal religion” is synonymous with “rational religion.”

He grumbled a bit about Protestants, but mostly in good spirits, I thought.

I’ve been sitting with that exchange for a while now. While my characterization is accurate, historically, it could use some work.

For one thing I found an article at Wikipedia that uses the term liberal religion to stand for the contemporary and lovely mess that is Unitarian Universalism. I had to go to “religious liberalism” to find a more historical statement at Wikipedia. Although I did find a nice Britannica article called “theological liberalism.” I also found a list of articles at the Huffington Post categorized as “Liberal Religion.” Including, I noticed when I went to it, several by me.

For “rational religion” I had to go to the bottom of the second page of google results before finding anything directly relevant to what I’m talking about here. So, a historical term, for sure, but lost to common usage.

In this era of the spiritual but not religious, while I am sympathetic to liberal religion being synonymous with Unitarian Universalism, I hope we also might reclaim that use of liberal religion in a more narrow sense of anti-supernatural and rational. Or, to phrase it a bit more positively rational, and naturalistic. It might stand alone, although I’ve mostly seen it applied as a subset of another tradition. Hence my “liberal Buddhist.” And, among my friends, many “liberal Christians,” and several “liberal Jews.”

You want good religion? Or, to frame it slightly differently, you want something that draws the spiritual out of the religious?

You want to avoid the crowd control parts? You want to avoid the invitations to handling snakes and drinking poison?

But, you want invitations to the depths of your heart?

To healing? To possibility?

Well…

Here’s an assertion:

Strip away the extraneous, apply your natural intelligence, don’t accept brass for gold, keep going, opening, and opening, and what you find is love.

That’s the true heart of liberal religion.