Having had some conservative Christians label me as “liberal” in recent weeks, with the apparent assumption that doing so is all that is necessary in order to show that I’m wrong, I began thinking about this question:
Where do conservative Christians find in the Bible the idea that liberalism is wrong?
Given the propensity of conservatives to believe that the Bible addresses modern issues directly, surely it is striking that there is no commandment “Do not be liberal!”
Obviously liberalism means different things in different contexts. For some, it is about the critical study of the Bible. For others it is a particular theological outlook. For many Christians, the only thing worse than being a theological liberal is being a political or economic liberal. And of course, “liberal” and “conservative” work better as terms of comparison, and do not denote uniform, clearly-defined positions.
But I still think this question is worth asking. The Bible’s outlook certainly doesn’t seem to line up unproblematically behind any particular party in American politics or any modern economic system. But certainly there are things in the Bible that problematize the views held by modern-day conservative Christians about poverty and wealth, social justice, and even the Bible itself.
So what do readers think? What passages in the Bible, if any, have you understood (or found others to understand) as denouncing “liberalism” of some sort?
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