Liberalism and Christianity, cont.

IS CHRISTIANITY THE SOURCE OF LIBERALISM?
by Alan Roebuck

About the relationship between liberalism and Christianity, an entire book could be written, but I think we can at least construct its skeleton in a reasonably short essay.

Here is the question: is Christianity responsible, at least partly, for liberalism? The accusation must be responded to, for it strikes at the legitimacy of Christianity. To approach the question, we have to begin with clear definitions.

“Liberalism” could be either “classical liberalism,” which was a moderating tendency within a system not fundamentally based on liberal premises, or else “pure liberalism,” of the kind that is our new State Religion. (The phrase “pure liberalism” is necessary to distinguish it from the other kind.) “Christianity” could be what Christ, the Apostles and the Old Testament taught, or else it could be “liberal Christianity,” which we can define in a timeless way as the attempt to adjust Christianity so that it agrees with the spirit of the age, whatever that spirit may be.

The only relevant question is: Is Christianity (of either kind) somehow responsible for the pure liberalism that is now dominant? Classical liberalism is now effectively dead, so there is no need to speculate on its causes, except insofar as it paved the way for pure liberalism.

We see part of the answer right away: Liberal Christianity, by definition, responds to non-Christian thought, not vice versa. Liberal Christianity is thus no more than a reinforcer of liberalism, not a cause.

Pure liberalism, as I see it, has four basic emphases: freedom, equality, openness to the outsider (i.e., multiculturalism) and nonjudgmentalism. In what sense might Christianity have contributed to these?

The freedom of Christianity is the freedom of the individual from slavery to sin, not the freedom of the individual to be and do whatever he wants. The equality of Christianity is the equality of all men before God, not the actual substantial equality of all individuals and groups to one another. “Openness to the outsider,” in Christianity, is the recognition of a brother in Christ, and of the necessity of treating people as created in God’s image; it is not the liberal imperative to abolish all boundaries. And Christian “nonjudgmentalism,” derived from the Sermon on the Mount, is not an absolute imperative based on moral relativism, but is instead the recognition that we often lack the knowledge to judge accurately, and that we ought to be appropriately humble when there is good reason to believe that we lack such knowledge.

Implicit in the foregoing is the assumption that Christianity is something definite, and not, as the liberals say, something to be adjusted according to the spirit of the age. If so, then Christianity contradicts pure liberalism, and therefore cannot be its cause.

But not so fast. Many Christian principles involve a delicate balancing of apparently opposing tendencies: this-worldliness and otherworldliness, faith and works, church and state, etc. It is easy to upset the balance, and emphasize one side too much. Take Pietism, for example.

The dominant form of Christianity in America for at least the last 150 years could be said to be pietism. Neither a denomination nor a specific school of theology, pietism is instead a tendency to regard the affairs of this world as not fit for the Christian to emphasize. Pietism emphasizes the individual believer’s relationship to God, through Christ, and discourages believers from both theological precision and action aimed at producing practical results in the world of secular activity. The still-strong tradition within American Protestantism that calls on Christians to shun political activity is the most obvious example of this.

Pietism is similar to (pure) liberalism in its emphasis on the self, and therefore pietistic Christianity would offer little resistance to a secular liberal movement emphasizing the freedom of the individual, unfettered by authority, tradition or even reason, as “reason” is classically understood. If all that really matters is the individual’s right relationship with God, then a movement such as liberalism, with its insistence that it has the best interests of the individual at heart, would arouse little alarm in a pietistic Christian world, despite liberalism’s radical attack on traditional authority,.

Furthermore, pietism sets an example for pure liberalism, and provides pseudo-Christian justifications for much of its platform: by borrowing pietism’s emphasis on the inner life of the self, and ignoring the theological framework that prevents pietism from becoming simply liberalism with a Christian accent, liberalism took sustenance from a sect within its mortal enemy. It was easy for a pietistic Christian to pass from a position of downplaying the importance of theological precision to the position that theology is meaningless. And if the definite Christian doctrines of God were no more than opinions, whereas the real goal of Christianity was to “just love Jesus,” perhaps by agitating for socialism, it was a short step to eliminating God altogether, and attempting to base the public order, and knowledge itself, on purely human reasoning, occasionally moderated by “unprincipled exceptions” based on the more tenacious human feelings and traditions.

Thus we can say that although Christianity proper is not a source of pure liberalism, some of its corruptions have given sustenance to the development of liberalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 26, 2007 09:48 PM | Send