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Originally posted by Wood:
You may find this hilarious coming from me, but it's the smugness and the intellectual arrogance I get that turns me off more than anything. The "if you really thought about this, you'd be in agreement with me" attitude that is shared in a different mode with the worst right-wing thinkers.

Many self-labelled "liberals" I know are just double fundie swirl fundamentalists-in-denial, who'll believe the daftest non-Christian fallacies even when happily debunking Christian ones (see "the Ichthus and Vagina" thread in Limbo) and who will even critique scripture with the same lack of intellectual rigour that the fundamentalists do (*cough* Jesus Seminar*cough*). The kind of people who think you're a benighted fool for putting your faith in a literal resurection.

So, it's not a tenet of liberalism at all. But so many of the liberals I have met are frankly intellectual fascists that one can't help thinking that there's something in the mindset that encourages it, in the same way that there's so many who see That Certain Something which turns people into bigots intrinsic in Evangelicalism.

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• The odd evangelical bogeymen
  
  or
• The odd liberal who think you should feel guilty for your past sins and say you have to pay for them the rest of your life

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• You have to be a believing Christian to be "saved"
• If you aren't "saved" then you end up in hell
• There is an assumption that hell goes on for ever
• There seems to be a strong suspicion that people should be from quite Protestant traditions and go to lively churches to be really saved
• Other traditions have got it badly wrong and may be seats of power for demonic forces
• Christian marriage is about the only outlet for one's sexuality. Homosexuals just...shouldn't...
• Evangelicals have a message to pass on. The message is that everybody else should become an evangelical...
• If the idea of this seems a bit, well, circular, you mustn't let a silly thing like embarrassment get in your way
• Resistance to this sort of evangelical agenda, besides, is likely to be demonic in origin
• There is a sort of mix of scripture and tradition in that there are certain interpretations of scripture that have been accepted over time - such as those suggesting that homosexuality is wrong, in as far as they do - and this is seen as "scripture" and "truth"
• We are waiting for a Revival
• What God really wants is for you to spend a lot of time singing choruses that tell Him He is holy and worthy with a lot of stuff about the blood of the lamb in them. If everybody wanted to spend all their time doing that, that would be Revival.
• And (in church A), baptism is a really good thing. You can't have too much of a good thing!

• God is very big and intelligent
• He is therefore perfectly capable of dealing appropriately with someone like Gandhi, for example.
• God is also capable of sorting out the complexities of our spiritual states when and after we die
• I don't see that we are necessarily going to stop changing or developing spiritually after we die (yes, I know, the idea of Purgatory isn't very evangelical). If we are talking about life after death, then being able to change would be logical, because living things grow and change.
• I believe that it is possible that Hell, or people's time in Hell, might be finite. That doesn't mean that you can do anything you want to in life, or that there would be no punishment, or that you should liightly risk the wrath of God. It just means that He loves us and wants us...
• I think that Christian marriage would be an ideal for me. I also think that some alternative lifestyles can be very damaging - such as promiscuity, heterosexual or homosexual. But I certainly don't see homosexuality as the unforgiveable sin that it is being made out to be. I find that baffling. Surely a loving emotional relationship is a good and Christian thing. And if it is celibate why is that wrong? And I don't see why people who are homosexual should be ashamed of their orientation if it is something they can't really help.
• I believe the devil exists. I don't believe in slapping the label "demonic' around without some very good justification.
• I believe that the Bible is complicated
• I believe that the message of the Bible is about love and that it is right to communcate that by talking about Jesus, but the best way to communicate it is by loving people - and this is compulsory and the most important part of the exercise...
• I quite like singing choruses, but I do feel heartily sorry for God having to listen to some of those awful lyrics...again and again and again...
• Being baptised once is quite enough, thank you

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To put it another way, I would contend that each and every one of the theological beliefs in my (liberal) belief structure has as its source the Christian scriptures. I do not sit reading the Koran and the Vedas and Buddhist writings alongside the Scriptures and then try to distill some essential likeness as my religion. Instead, my searching to understand the Bible adequately in the context of the 21st century, informed by my knowledge of the world, science, anthropology etc leads me to the positions I take. And in my own experience, most (not all) theological liberals I know have a similar stance.

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• so that evangelism can be more effective
• because they believe that God prepares the way for evangelism by making sure that there is an element of truth in other beliefs and cultures that can be expanded and explained so that belief in Christ ensues
• because of the tradition in evangelicalism of becoming literate and expanding the mind as far as possible, so that study is what God planned for our minds

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Originally posted by Porgy:
Gomez,

"Substitutionary atonement" refers to the belief that Jesus' death was a payment or penalty that we deserved to have to pay, but which he paid instead--thus, he was our substitute. In its conservative evangelical form, God the Father is the one who demands a penalty, for his holiness is offended by our sin, and someone must pay the price. The price is death (for us, hell), a punishment that must be borne in the interests of justice. So God sends his Son to bear the punishment so that we don't have to. He endures God's anger in our place.

There are variations within that, of course.

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I believe that the message of the Bible is about love and that it is right to communcate that by talking about Jesus, but the best way to communicate it is by loving people - and this is compulsory and the most important part of the exercise...

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Originally posted by welsh dragon:
Well, some of this is theology but it's more the package of attitudes you are supposed to have that interest me.

Somewhere in the sea of stuff about Jeffrey John on the ship is the comment that Christina Rees had defended Jeffrey John and been told she wasn't really an evangelical anyway. This isn't really a theological statement is it?

I can affirm the tenets set out by Wood. But there is a raft of stuff, assumptions that other people seem to make and their and your own beliwefs in evangelical churches.

Lokking, not really from the outside, but around the churches I go to, the ideas seem to be

• You have to be a believing Christian to be "saved"
• If you aren't "saved" then you end up in hell
• There is an assumption that hell goes on for ever
• There seems to be a strong suspicion that people should be from quite Protestant traditions and go to lively churches to be really saved
• Other traditions have got it badly wrong and may be seats of power for demonic forces
• Christian marriage is about the only outlet for one's sexuality. Homosexuals just...shouldn't...
• Evangelicals have a message to pass on. The message is that everybody else should become an evangelical...
• If the idea of this seems a bit, well, circular, you mustn't let a silly thing like embarrassment get in your way
• Resistance to this sort of evangelical agenda, besides, is likely to be demonic in origin
• There is a sort of mix of scripture and tradition in that there are certain interpretations of scripture that have been accepted over time - such as those suggesting that homosexuality is wrong, in as far as they do - and this is seen as "scripture" and "truth"
• We are waiting for a Revival
• What God really wants is for you to spend a lot of time singing choruses that tell Him He is holy and worthy with a lot of stuff about the blood of the lamb in them. If everybody wanted to spend all their time doing that, that would be Revival.
• And (in church A), baptism is a really good thing. You can't have too much of a good thing!

Now, I am very happy going to these churches, in many ways. I would be happier if I felt that we accorded rather better on some of these points, but I can see, after several months searching for a church last year, that compromise is necessary.

I don't want a lot of ritual. I would prefer, if anything, not to have vestments. I like having modern instruments. I don't want Anglo catholic tat. I especially don't want a Pope. And I feel passionate about my faith and I don't want Anglical liberal politeness.

I personally believe

• God is very big and intelligent
• He is therefore perfectly capable of dealing appropriately with someone like Gandhi, for example.
• God is also capable of sorting out the complexities of our spiritual states when and after we die
• I don't see that we are necessarily going to stop changing or developing spiritually after we die (yes, I know, the idea of Purgatory isn't very evangelical). If we are talking about life after death, then being able to change would be logical, because living things grow and change.
• I believe that it is possible that Hell, or people's time in Hell, might be finite. That doesn't mean that you can do anything you want to in life, or that there would be no punishment, or that you should liightly risk the wrath of God. It just means that He loves us and wants us...
• I think that Christian marriage would be an ideal for me. I also think that some alternative lifestyles can be very damaging - such as promiscuity, heterosexual or homosexual. But I certainly don't see homosexuality as the unforgiveable sin that it is being made out to be. I find that baffling. Surely a loving emotional relationship is a good and Christian thing. And if it is celibate why is that wrong? And I don't see why people who are homosexual should be ashamed of their orientation if it is something they can't really help.
• I believe the devil exists. I don't believe in slapping the label "demonic' around without some very good justification.
• I believe that the Bible is complicated
• I believe that the message of the Bible is about love and that it is right to communcate that by talking about Jesus, but the best way to communicate it is by loving people - and this is compulsory and the most important part of the exercise...
• I quite like singing choruses, but I do feel heartily sorry for God having to listen to some of those awful lyrics...again and again and again...
• Being baptised once is quite enough, thank you

This isn't probably that different from what a number of evangelicals on the Ship believe. But I don't come from an evangelical background. I'm not a "post evangelical". I'm a rather confused outsider trying to work out if there is enough congruity betwen my beliefs and those of the people in the churches where I worship for me to align myself to their denominational label...

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Originally posted by JimT:
1. Revelation is primary. It is also personal and thus variable but always rooted in Truth and Love.
2. Religion should have no roots in fear. It is fact that we are imperfect and fallible but it is fallacy that we are detestible to God in our native state and that he is reluctant but willing to punish us eternally for any sin.
3. Christ is the human face of God. This face can be seen to varying degrees in everyone, even the most hardened “sinner” or “heathen” but it is discernable nonetheless and can be brought out of anyone.
4. If religion is to have any impact at all, it should be applied on a societal as well as an individual level. In other words, it is not purely a matter of private belief and individual practice.

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Originally posted by Wood:
The only one of those I would apply in general to every liberal I've met is point 4. Thing is, I agree with both these and the four points of Pete Ward. So what does that make me?

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Wood my friend we may have to consider the frightening possibility that when you throw in politics, I am actually an evangelical and you are actually a liberal but we can't stand to apply the correct labels to ourselves. Not really. But from my (ancient, distorted and no longer relevant) perspective you are more liberal than evangelical.

I do have to make one Purgatorial challenge: you can't really have two items that are both "primary." The top of my list says revelation is primary and the top of the Wood list says that scripture is primary. My customers always had ten top priorities and perhaps theology should allow this logical inconsistency but it is of concern to me. To say "scripture is primary" invites the problems associated with literalism. To be sure "individual revelation is primary" invites the problem of "anything goes" but I just like that problem better.

Perhaps I am putting thoughts into people's minds instead of words into their mouths, but when I read Jack Spong (notorious and some would say nefarious liberal) I hear these four points made consistently. It genuinely surprises me to hear Wood say that he has not heard the first three points coming from liberals. I suppose I can imagine it if the conversation starts with an assertion that scripture is primary and substitutionary atonement is essential. A liberal like me is likely to lauch into a fuming fit about literalism, anti-evolution, blood, and Hell before the dazed evangelical has a chance to properly explain themselves.

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Originally posted by daisymay:
OTOH, there is a long tradition within evangelicals of studying other scriptures and religions

• so that evangelism can be more effective
• because they believe that God prepares the way for evangelism by making sure that there is an element of truth in other beliefs and cultures that can be expanded and explained so that belief in Christ ensues
• because of the tradition in evangelicalism of becoming literate and expanding the mind as far as possible, so that study is what God planned for our minds

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Originally posted by JimT:
I do have to make one Purgatorial challenge: you can't really have two items that are both "primary." The top of my list says revelation is primary and the top of the Wood list says that scripture is primary.

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The evangelical stock answer to that (which I happen to believe ) is that Scripture is our record of the self-revelation of God Incarnate. And as we trust God not to lie to us, any personal revelation anyone might have, any new revelation, is going to be at least compatible with Scripture. If it isn't, then it isn't from God.

Scripture is a privileged witness because it is our witness to the Incarnation - it derives its special status from Jesus Christ who we meet in its pages.

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Originally posted by Jim T:
To say "scripture is primary" invites the problems associated with literalism. To be sure "individual revelation is primary" invites the problem of "anything goes" but I just like that problem better.

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Originally posted by JimT:
you can't really have two items that are both "primary." The top of my list says revelation is primary and the top of the Wood list says that scripture is primary.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Do liberals really see revelation as something completely different? or just a different emphasis somewhere?

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Originally posted by Merseymike:
Liberal anglo-catholics ( I regard myself as one) give strong emphasis to Tradition too, particularlly with regard to worship and practice, which in a strange sort of way makes them the most liberal of all, in the sense of least reliant on Scripture alone.

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I do have to make one Purgatorial challenge: you can't really have two items that are both "primary." The top of my list says revelation is primary and the top of the Wood list says that scripture is primary.

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Why not? Perhaps they are in constant conjunction - like faith and works, or free will and predestination, or bacon and eggs (well maybe not the last one, bacon can be very nice with cheese I find...)

Revelations and their imprint on disciples and followers of Christ ("and" obviously Yahweh) make up the Bible. The Bible helps us to have "revelations" by God's Spirit speaking to us through his Word (I mean "speak" in the vague, wishy-washy "oh, I see this is true" not the Southern Baptist "PRAISE THE LORD THAT THESE WORDS ARE TRUE!" kinda way). These "revelations" are not out of hand because, after all, they are words written down on a page. God may speak to us through other means - people, images, places, music etc. but this doesn't rule out either Scripture's primacy nor revelation's primacy.

Now AUTHORITY... that's a WHOLE different kettle of de fish...

--------------------
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

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Originally posted by Wood:
I think Kevin's nine criteria are way too specific.

While point 4 (emphasis on difference of life before and after conversion) is indeed emphasised by many evangelicals I know, points 8 (social conservatism) and 9 (obsession with eschatology), while certainly strong tendencies within evangelicalism are not really borne out by the evidence, at least in my own experience here in the UK. I think the problem is that Kevin is conflating the culture (with the social aspects, the sci-fi eschatology and the sentimentalisation of conversion) with the theology.
...
I still think that the four points I posted at the beginning of the thread for the umpteenth time (and which I got from Pete Ward, in The Post-Evangelical Debate, SPCK/Triangle 1997, p20) are the most useful definition.
...

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• A focus, both devotional and theological, on the person of Jesus Christ , especially his death on the Cross;
• The identification of Scripture as the ultimate authority in matters of spirituality, doctrine and ethics;
• An emphasis upon conversion or a "new birth" as a life-changing experience;
• A concern for sharing the faith, especially through evangelism.

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Originally posted by Rob - ID crisis InDiE KiD:

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I do have to make one Purgatorial challenge: you can't really have two items that are both "primary." <snip>

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Why not? Perhaps they are in constant conjunction - like faith and works, or free will and predestination, <snip>

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Originally posted by MerseyMike:

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Maybe you could fire a few issues at me on which you think I am not liberal, or where you don't know my views.

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Originally posted by JimT:
May I ask for an evangelical volunteer to explain how "substitutionary atonement" avoids the picture of a bloodthirsty God whose fallen creatures were redeemed from deserving eternal punishment? I couldn't really get that from John Stott as I alluded to in an earlier post.

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Originally posted by Kevin Iga:
Here are three possible options (all, I believe, with long traditional roots, but I forget from where. They can be extracted from Romans though):

1. <snip> [God] pays the price that Justice demands: His life.
2. Sin has captured mankind and holds him in slavery. God comes and pays the asking price with His own life.
3. Not only that our death (that is, penalty for sin) becomes God's death, but that God's death and resurrection becomes our death and resurrection, through baptism.

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That is not rational to me.

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Originally posted by Rob - ID crisis InDiE KiD:

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That is not rational to me.

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Because everything HAS to be rational in OUR eyes. <snip> What I think you're asking for, Jim, is for all mystery to be taken away from God and placed in our hands, because we obviously handle the truth BRILLIANTLY, don't we? Not that we can't, we just usually don't...

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Originally posted by JimT We are rational creatures and we DO handle it BRILLIANTLY.

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Originally posted by Rob - ID crisis InDiE KiD:

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Originally posted by JimT We are rational creatures and we DO handle it BRILLIANTLY.

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I don't have any idea where you got this idea from, but it is patently false. Have you SEEN the world?!

<snip>

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Originally posted by fatprophet:
Don't understand the bible? Can't be an evangelical? You really need to get into the mindset of a bronze age nomad.

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Originally posted by Rob - ID crisis InDiE KiD:
I think the Sea of Faith lot are a cross between liberal and radical myself. And on your continuum, that would make them evangelical Spong!

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Originally posted by Spong:
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3. There is a tendency to downplay the personal, and emphasise the pantheistic or panentheistic in a definition of who or what God is.
...

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Originally posted by Merseymike:
I would be seriously worried if Cupitt and Spong are viewed as typical of liberal Christianity. Though I liked Spong's demolition of fundamentalism and the bible, I would have thought both were mavericks and not representative of liberals.

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...I'd agree - however, the basic truth is that those who criticise Liberalism tend to use such folks as a definition of what Liberals are.

Similarly, the views of the former Bishop of Durham (David Jenkins) are usually posted in their most simplified and posterised form to suit such purposes. "Liberal" as a theological label seems grossly detached from the reality I'd use it in, and actually more like the product of a need for some bogeymen for conservatives to use as Aunt Sallies than anything to do with reality.

However, I doubt I can change that tide of misconception...