Liberal theology

At least one commenter here has accused me of having liberal theological ideas.  Let me say clearly that’s rubbish.  If you are going to accuse someone of having “liberal theology” be sure to mention specific ideas.  Then we have something to talk about.  Merely to cast the epithet without being specific is meaningless.  Today “liberal” can mean almost anything in Christian theology.

I’ve been asked “When did you become liberal and begin accepting women’s ordination and women ministers?”  Ha!  That’s funny.  I grew up in a fundamentalist denomination that had ordained women and women preachers and evangelists all over the place.  I’ve never heard a convincing argument against it that would cause me to change my mind.  People can be so parochial.

If “liberal theology” has any meaning it is (to quote Yale church historian Claude Welch) “maximal acknowledgment of the claims of modernity.”  That hardly fits me or many evangelicals who are accused of being “liberal” just because we don’t fit someone else’s expectations of conservatism.

I argue that neither conservatism or liberalism is biblical.  Both are tied to cultural norms and expectations. 

One person who comes here occasionally to heckle me clearly still does not understand what I mean by evangelicalism having no boundaries.  It’s a simple fact of sociology.  To him and anyone else who thinks evangelicalism has boundaries I say “Show me the person or group who has the authority and power to enforce them.”  Such do not exist.  A movement can’t have real boundaries without such authority and power–a headquarters or at least magisterium with authority and power to set them and enforce them.

Now, if you want to read REAL liberal theology–check out Peter Hodgson, Gary Dorrien, John Cobb, Donald Miller (not the author of Blue Like Jazz but the theologian who teaches at the University of Southern California) and many others who have written whole books about liberal theology.  Then compare what they say with my own approach to theology in The Mosaic of Christian Belief.  Anyone who thinks my approach is truly liberal, like theirs, is simply dense.