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{"id":1448,"date":"2009-03-19T10:01:56","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T16:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2009\/03\/liberal-conservative-evangelical-mainline-progressive\/"},"modified":"2015-03-13T17:05:21","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T22:05:21","slug":"liberal-conservative-evangelical-mainline-progressive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tonyjones\/2009\/03\/19\/liberal-conservative-evangelical-mainline-progressive\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal, Conservative, Evangelical, Mainline, Progressive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last week at the Transforming Theology confab<\/a>, these terms came up again and again.\u00a0 And, as usual, much frustration was expressed about the lack of meaning in these words.<\/p>\n

One debate was over the words \u201cliberal\u201d and \u201cprogressive.\u201d Some in the room wanted to recover the word \u201cliberalism\u201d from those who\u2019ve made it to mean a \u201c Tax-Raising,
\nLatte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading,
\nBody-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show<\/a>.\u201d My advice: too late.<\/p>\n

Others expressed dislike of the word \u201cprogressive\u201d because it implies human agency in our ability to progress over against divine agency. My take: that\u2019s a good point, but I still like the word\u2026for now.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, many in the room like the word \u201cevangelical\u201d and would like to reclaim that appellation.\u00a0 They hearkened back to the 19th century when that word was used to describe liberals, and the African American theologians present told us that the black church is, by definition, evangelical.\u00a0 In general, everyone agreed that the gospel we represented is ultimately more hopeful, more good<\/i> news, than the conservative version of the gospel, thus we were, by definition, more evangelical.<\/p>\n

These things are particularly on my mind because this weekend I\u2019ll be at the Christian Book Expo, which will be populated by tens of thousands of Christians more conservative than I.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll be on a panel with Scot McKnight, who has recently written about what it means to be evangelical (in his opinion)<\/a> and three Moody authors who have written disparagingly about me and my friends.\u00a0 The panel will be moderated by Mark Galli, who has his own take on evangelicalism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see if on that panel, \u201cevangelical\u201d is defined theologically or culturally.\u00a0 And it will be interesting to compare my experience there to my experience last week.\u00a0 It\u2019ll be another in a long series of theological whiplashes in my life.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"