I’m a Liberal…and I admit it
I guess I’m a liberal and my dad was a liberal before
me. I’m not speaking of being
theologically liberal or even politically liberal but I admit I’m a denominational liberal.
I am a liberal in the “Holiness movement” which is a collection of small denominations many of
whom “came out” of Methodism especially when Methodism started doing liberal
things like having robed choirs or doing away with revival meetings, prayer
meetings and Sunday night services.[1] The Holiness movement denominations were
peopled by lots of conservatives who were reacting to the growing “liberalism”
of the Methodists.
Thus, my denomination[2] has
conservative roots. By 1905 we had defined ourselves as being “more
conservative than the liberal Methodists.”
Once we labeled “conservative” as a good thing we soon defined “more
conservative” as more good. It became
kind of a race for who could be the most conservative since the more conservative
you were the more holy you were.
Eventually this race to conservatism led to hundreds of our own churches
to split from the denomination-that-split-from-other-liberals. These
splits-from-splits happened because the splitters claimed to be even more
conservative then the liberal conservatives they were splitting from This is
how my dad got to be a liberal.
My dad was a liberal on television. In 1952 my uncle Hobart, a wealthy executive with
U.S. Steel, bought our family a television to help my parents “provide an
enriched environment” for their favorite nephew—me. Our TV was trouble for my dad’s ministerial
career. It created such a furor among
the conservative pastors in
I became a liberal by going bowling. Good conservative Christians in my denomination
didn’t go bowling. In bowling alleys people smoked, they sometimes played pool
and sometimes they even drank alcohol. Bowling alleys were not the sort of
place a Christian young person would want to be found at the rapture. My first
high school rebellion against the conservatives was to take a girlfriend
bowling. I borrowed my dad’s car but he asked “Where you going?” I never lied to my dad so I confessed I
intended to take my girlfriend bowling. Pondering my plans a few moments he
replied, “Park out back, OK?” [4]
This is how I became a liberal in my church—I went bowling. Later on I even
went further and snuck off to a movie—I saw the world war II movie, The Longest Day. This is how I became a liberal.
Now my entire denomination is liberal. There are generally two branches of “holiness
churches.” There are the “mainline holiness denominations” including my
denomination, the Nazarenes and the Free Methodists but there is also a
“Conservative holiness movement” which comprises hundreds of “come out”
churches who work to preserve the “old paths” of holiness culture and convictions.
These churches consider the leaders at my denomination’s headquarters
“liberals” and most think all of my denomination’s colleges as dangerously
“liberal.” They do not think a woman should cut her hair and their women do not
wear jewelry since the Bible plainly forbids it. Many still do not own TVs,
reject the use of the Internet, and will not eat in any restaurant that serves
liquor. They won’t eat at all in a restaurant on Sunday or even take a Sunday
newspaper. They think people like me who do these things are “liberal.” So when
we toss around labels like “liberal” or “conservative” they are not new to
me—I’ve seen plenty of labeling in the church through my lifetime.
I’d like to share this week
what I don’t like about
conservatives.
What I don’t like about
conservatives
1. Conservatives specialize in name-calling and
labeling.
Conservatives are masters at
dirty words. They know how to present a word, damn it by association then stick
that label on their enemies damning their enemy with the damned word. Knowing
“liberal” is already dirtied they drag it into the conversation attaching it to
denominations, colleges and preachers who don’t completely toe the conservative
line. To them “liberal” is anyone who departs from their own narrow understanding
of lifestyle. Labeling and name-calling is a shortcut way to condemning others.
Conservatives are specialists in libeling through labeling
2. Conservatives get their following through
negativity and fear.
Conservatives seldom derive
their strength from positive forces like evangelism, promoting holiness, or
planting churches—or even promoting the value of a conservative lifestyle. They
get most of their energy from criticizing liberals, warning what will happen
when liberals get in charge, or pining for the past. It is easier to condemn
“liberal churches full of women dressed like Jezebels” than to say something
positive about the beauty of simplicity. Conservatives have mastered the art of
fear-mongering to raise money, “If you don’t support our cause the liberals
will take over and ruin your children.” Their cause is condemnation and there
are plenty of folk who will give money to have their own anger and fear stirred
up. Fear-mongering is a cheap way to get a following. It is far easier to curse
the darkness than to light a candle.
3. Conservatives take a single issue approach.
While there are dozens of
ways conservative holiness folk differ from progressive churches they often
pick one master issue to attack the liberals on. Ironically, for all the heated
denunciation these single issues shift over time. I recall when the master
issue was “bobbed hair” as conservatives damned the liberals for letting their
women “cut off the very hair God gave them as their glory. They said, “Ichabod—the glory has departed.” Then the issue switched to Television. If you
owned a TV you were a liberal. Then came jewelry or make-up—the liberal women
wore ear-rings or “rubbed their faces with rouge.” When conservatives
themselves got their own TVs they switched to VCRs, CATV and later the
Internet. One conservative group prided themselves in using “text only” on
their Internet connection as they condemned others who let the graphics
through. Conservatives don’t dance but they sure have danced from one
single-issue test to another in the last 50 years. The leaders raising money
from the conservatives know when to drop their last single issue and pick up
another one to maintain their cash flow. The truth is the primary difference between
the conservatives and the liberals is about 30 years. Conservatives quietly adopt the things they
condemned 30 years ago then cover it over by picking a new single issue to
prove they are still conservative compared to the liberals they condemn. Most
conservatives have no permanent lifestyle position other than to be behind the
liberals.
4. Conservatives refuse to compromise.
Conservatives are proud they
refuse to compromise. Indeed they consider “compromise” a dirty word useful in labeling
others as “compromisers.” When hundreds of conservatives and churches left my
denomination in the 1930’s and the 1960’s, attempts were made to find a
compromise on the single issues of the day. They would not hear of it.
Conservatives insisted that everyone in the denomination from
5. Conservatives will go down with the ship to stay
pure.
Being unwilling to
compromise, conservatives chase all compromisers out of their clubs and condemn
the liberal conservatives as they shrink smaller and smaller. As they sink they
brag that they “are small but pure.” They would rather stay on their own
sinking ship than cooperate with people less pure than themselves for the
greater good of all. As their own children flee the sinking ship they take it
as one more piece of evidence that the world is sliding into a great abyss.
This is how the conservatives consider themselves the “true remnant.” They
become like the solitary Japanese fighters in the Pacific who hid in caves long
after the war was over fighting a war that ended years before. They raise their
flag every day and salute it in loyalty to a cause that has been
vanquished. But conservatives are
willing to lose the war -- if they can just keep wearing their uniform, because
the war was never about the enemy anyway—it was about their uniforms.
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OK I’ve been hard on conservatives here. Probably harder than they deserve. I have written
elsewhere about what I
like about holiness conservatives so my readers already know I think
conservatives could have a lot to say to the “liberals” in the holiness
movement and elsewhere. When the hyper-conservatives left my conservative
denomination and launched their liberal-labeling campaign we lost the
conservative voice. We lost an anchor that was good for us. Now the
conservatives have their own party and the conservative leaders can preside
over their own organizations and churches. But they have little effect on the
rest of us. Mostly the conservatives lob grenades at each other for being more
“liberal conservatives” than themselves.
The rest of us hear none of it. They still talk, but they talk mostly to
themselves and they talk mostly about each other. Choosing to label liberals
rather than persuade us they have lost traction in making a difference in the
larger community. So, they gather in their self-made antique shops and recall
the glory of the past while they make little difference for the future.
HOWEVER, I think there’s hope for conservatives. They could persuade
the larger body. All they have to do is join the conversation by reversing the
five complaints above:
How Conservatives can Leaven the Whole
Lump
1) Abandon name-calling and labeling instead making sensible arguments
and carrying on logical discourse.
2) Rally your following with a positive alternative vision of
conservatism rather than using fear-mongering and denunciation as a primary
means of getting a following.
3) Broaden your vision for the future beyond your latest single issue
rejecting of liberals.
4) Make alliances with others for common causes even if you have to
compromise a bit and let them live differently than you.
5.) Expand the conservative tent to include people how don’t have
perfect conservative purity on every issue.[6]
If conservatives could take
these steps they could leaven the whole lump. Left barricaded in the cellar
they will only leaven the leaven.
So what do you
think?
During the first few weeks, click
here to comment or read comments
[1] Half of my denomination (The Wesleyan Methodist half) was born to opposite way around—when Methodism wasn’t liberal or progressive enough—when Methodists refused to condemn slavery as sin. Once the civil war settled that issue many of those original leaders went back home to Methodism but others remained separate and gradually came to define themselves as more conservative then Methodists so eventually what I say here applies to this half of the church as much as the other half, though more so by 1900.
[2] My
denomination is The Wesleyan Church,
which resulted from a merger of the
[3] My
father was a master of the “strategic retreat.” He seldom stayed and fought and never
encouraged his pastors to, either. When
trouble began he usually just left. My
dad attempted to befriend his opposition but they wouldn’t hear of it. Then he simply ignored them until their
movement grew large enough to make his life uncomfortable—to which he responded
with a smile, then walked away. He moved
across the state to pastor a local church.
In 1957 he left the work of a District Superintendent and re-entered
pastoral ministry. He had been elected DS at age 36 and left that work at age
47 when he determined not to fight the conservatives. His new church in
[4] As I reflected later on this response I realized he was teaching me that there are some things you can do but you should not be flagrant or in-you-face in doing them. This “two fences” approach to life (God’s fence & the church’s fence) may seem duplicitous at first but I learned through it that there are things a church or particular church culture may forbid that are not particularly God’s rules. He had explained this to me first in the sixth grade regarding attending an amusement park, but that’s a story for another time.
[5] For instance the Amish are more conservative then the strictest holiness folk, but they are admired by others partly because they preach to themselves and not to others. We admire them because they do not shout at the rest of us for refusing to dress or live like them. They are a testimony by just being there.
[6] There are some sterling examples of this kind of leadership in the conservative holiness movement—I could cite their names and the names of their institutions, however to do so would only set them up as a targets for the radical conservatives nearest them who would take my compliment of them as evidence of their compromise and impurity so I shall not mention their names.