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Commentary
WESLEYAN WISDOM: Definition of ‘liberal’ has drifted from its generous roots Donald W. Haynes, Feb 3, 2010
Donald Haynes
By Donald W. Haynes UMR Columnist
Historian Christopher Strain was quoted recently in the Palm Beach Post: “We live in a wireless world and often a witless one as well. I feel like we’ve been caught in a mood of fear and apprehension, a post-9/11 fog that we haven’t pulled out of yet—sociologically, culturally, politically and economically. [I would add “religiously.”] The end of this decade may mark the close of the American Century if China does indeed become the world power it’s capable of becoming. And that’s frightening.”
And that fear extends to United Methodism as well. In Methodist Connectionalism, Russell Richey of Emory’s Candler School of Theology offers historical perspective and opens with these sobering lines:
“United Methodism in the United States—indeed mainstream Protestantism—remains in trouble. The signs abound. They appear at General Conference, they bedevil annual conferences; they polarize faculties; they sometimes traumatize congregations. Caucuses vie for attention, place and priority. They divide us by agenda. Meetings fracture. We unite, not as a whole, but into warring parties, sometimes by region, and often under the general banners of liberal and evangelical. Here we huddle by caucus or commitment, our identity established by differentiation, prepared for trench warfare between the two major camps. . . . Gatherings become tense, contentious, even mean-spirited affairs. Fewer and fewer follow . . . malaise reigns.”
Russ Richey is a very mild-mannered man! If he said it is bad, it must be bad indeed!
Are these prophetic voices or has a spirit of fear simply been turned loose in the halls of academia and the United Methodist connection gatherings? Has the polemic of the political arena usurped the catholic spirit of Wesley’s conneXion? Are we preachers of the gospel or cultural chameleons?
An old septuagenarian does not like to hear voices of doom so near his own denouement! At least to me, it is helpful to recall my own journey from a time in my own faith life when I was “contentious, tense, even mean-spirited . . . prepared for trench warfare.” I propose that we need today what I discovered as a seminary student: what it means to be truly liberal!
By the time I was a teenager, “modernism” was an early 20th-century caricature of “liberalism.” I was warned not to attend a “modernist” college or I would lose my faith. I went, and sure enough, I met a professor straight out of Boston School of Theology, perhaps the most theologically liberal faculty among the Methodist seminaries.
I was prepared for warfare and I unsheathed my fundamentalist sword. My sophomoric mastery of biblical literalism, Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and sanctification as an instant work of grace were my “talking points.” I embarrassed my friends and disgusted my critics as I stormed against any hint of biblical higher criticism through all my undergraduate years. I was a self-appointed defender of the faith.
Then came seminary. A professor who had grown up in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church asked me to be his reader for his post-exilic prophet course and testified that his embrace of biblical criticism was as much a dramatic work of the Holy Spirit as his conversion. When I met with this professor, William H. Brownlee, I felt I was having a session with Jesus.
Then right in the middle of seminary, I heard Dr. E. Stanley Jones, and saw him lift up his tattered Bible and say, “The Word did not become printer’s ink; the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” I had to re-read the entire New Testament with a red pencil in hand!
Dr. McMurry Richey, full of grace, introduced me to the Jesus I never knew as a fundamentalist. From them I learned what it meant to be “liberal.” But somewhere since 1952, the word “liberal” has morphed into something far different from the spirit of its roots.
A layman, Harold Warstler, became my midlife mentor. Harold was a product of River Brethren pacifism. He and I came to Jesus from diametrically opposite positions of faith and works.
Some of his beliefs I found intellectually shocking, but the kindness in his face, his quiet humor, his self-effacing manner and the unselfishness in his mission among the poor were all factors in his becoming a major influence in my faith journey. Harold personified the cross; I saw Jesus in Harold.
The Saturday night after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, I received a telegram from the governor. As pastor of a county seat “First Church,” I was being asked to appeal for reconciliation and dialogue.
My sermon that Palm Sunday morning was, “If Jesus Came to Our Town.” I imagined meeting him at the edge of our mountain village, walking him past our school, our hall of justice, our “Church Street.” Then I asked the ushers to open the door so Jesus could walk down the aisle of First Methodist Church of Franklin, N.C. Now we all sensed his presence in our town, in our church, in our pulpit.
I was humiliated and humbled as I asked my congregation on that scary day in 1968: “Jesus is now standing beside me. What do you think he would have me say?” In context, Jesus placed grace over law, the person over prejudice, compassion over regulation, humanity over ethnicity, need over custom.
Doctrinally, I never became a “radical liberal.” I suppose my best label would be “evangelical liberal.” Whatever the label, becoming more “liberal” meant becoming more gracious, more tolerant, more gentle in argument, more “freed-up” from some old taboos of my holiness code days and more brave in calling our culture into the crosshairs of our Christian message. With a great debt owed those who liberated me from fundamentalism and doctrinal straitjacketing, I was able to let God go free of my confined doctrinal boxes.
In short, liberals were liberal, gentle and kind. The lines of Edwin Markham’s poem “Outwitted” described my changed theology and attitude toward people with whom I disagreed:
“He drew a circle that shut me out, heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had a wit to win; we drew a circle and took him in.”
At about that same time, I began actually reading John Wesley’s sermons rather than simply repeating the most common of his quotes. I internalized his “Catholic Spirit” sermon and redlined the words, “If thy heart is as mine, give me thy hand,” trying to seek its meaning in my parish ministry and in conference leadership. This became the quintessential meaning of the word “liberal” to me.
Since seminary, when I was embracing a liberalism of catholic spirit, I have seen both political and theological liberalism hurling absolutist postures that stereotype terms of ridicule, castigation and mockery. Is that historic liberalism? Have we soiled the word? Where is Edwin Markham when we need him?
God is not through with Methodism. We are not predestined to go from movement, to machine, to monument. Every pastor, every local church, every connectional meeting could put our impediments on the table. The term “connecting table” is appropriate—if we can live out the language. At every level—individually and structurally—we must be willing to be laid aside or be used. We can seek a new spirit and a new language.
Long ago I found true liberalism to be a Christ-like spirit that reflects Paul’s litany in Philippians 4: whatever is honorable, pleasing, commendable, reflective of excellence, worthy of praise. The old mentor continued, “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in [Jesus] and the God of peace will be with you.”
Sociologist B.J. Gallagher reminds us that in Chinese, the word “crisis” has two meanings: “danger” and “opportunity.” The Florida newspaper editor followed that quote with these words: “So America stands, near the beginning of a new century, at the dawn of a decade, moving forward more tentatively than in the past, less sure our ourselves than in the past, knowing only that, as always, fortune favors the brave—but never the foolish.”
I would substitute the United Methodist Church for “America,” and cite Proverbs 1:7—“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Perhaps the Chinese are correct; crisis brings danger and opportunity. In his “A Jesus Manifesto for the 21st Century Church,” Leonard Sweet writes, “Christians have made the Gospel about so many things . . . things other than Christ. Jesus Christ is the gravitational pull that brings everything together. . . . Without him all things lose their value.”
Let us say with the charwoman who looked at the painting of Aldersgate, “Do it again, Lord, do it again.” At every strategic point in history, God’s will is clear: “thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”
Dr. Haynes is an instructor in United Methodist studies at Hood Theological Seminary. dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.
Donald Haynes
