Postliberal.

The term "Postliberal" gets increasingly used these days.  Since I have used this term to define myself for many years, I find myself both amused and alarmed to hear how some secular writers and politicians use it now.  For one thing, I understand that Sen. J. D. Vance describes himself this way.  Since I don't have a whole lot in common with him, I felt a need to get to the bottom of this language.

I have considered myself "Postliberal" since college, from which I graduated in 1977.  So this is not a new thing.  In reading books like The End of the Modern Age by philosopher Allen Wheelis, I came to the conviction that the whole civilizational framework that has dominated the West, and then the world, since the so-called Enlightenment in the 1600's, had basically ended.  Something else would take its place which people began to call "Postmodern."  In seminary and later I found myself most attracted to theological thinkers who questioned the assumptions and practices of Modernity, starting with Karl Barth's rejection of Liberal Theology after World War I, and extending to people like Hans Frei, George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, John Milbank, and others.  I call myself Postliberal in that sense.

But today, many of those who adopt this label, who often come out of a Roman Catholic perspective, just use it to mean "conservative."  As I read their stuff, they seem really more anti-liberal and pre-modern than anything else.  They hate a lot of the way Modernity turned out.  (So do I, but we are repulsed by different things.)  They respond by looking back and seeking to restore some important things that Modernity originally devalued or even got rid of.  I understand the sentiment and have some sympathy with it.  But when they say they want to get back to the traditional virtues, I have to wonder what they mean.  I could never go along with them because of the cruelties they casually embrace and defend.  Too many of these guys seem motivated mainly by homophobic bigotry.  Like Rod Dreher, who writes a very interesting book called The Benedict Option, and fatally mars it with hate-speech towards Gays throughout.  Or take the case of Vance who admits to inventing and spreading noxious lies defaming immigrants to make a point.  So... lying is now a virtue?    

I do not believe it possible or desirable to go back.  Even to make the attempt requires the deployment of massive and unconscionable violence and cruelty.  Think Fascism.  For me "post" means after; "Postliberal" means we always move forward.  For one thing, this is the only way time moves.  Nothing ever gets "restored" or "recovered" in full; new things are new because our context continually shifts.  Every moment and everything in it is new.  

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Another word that describes me is "traditionalist."  But I cannot abide those who take this to mean looking back and keeping things rigidly the same as they were.  For me tradition does not reject change, but understands it to happen within a framework of continuity and community.  I hold to basic values and practices, particular ways of thinking and acting, while responding to an ever-changing world.  For me the organizing principles are those of orthodox Christianity.  

I use a sailing metaphor to talk about this.  As a traditionalist I maintain the same larger goal, but I also realize that I need to respond to changes in my context moving forward.  As with sailing, a straight line simply doesn't do it.  Rather, to reach the destination one must make turns and go in directions that seem completely counter-intuitive.  In sailing the sails and the rudder, and the immediate direction of the boat, continually change.  But it is all in the service attaining an unchanging goal.  Walking a labyrinth has similar qualities of being led in directions that seem to preclude reaching the goal.  Yet we must trust the Way itself as continuous with the goal.

In my view, the conservative approach, even if they call it "postliberal," insists on keeping the sails and rudder where they have always been, which means to go in circles at best.  On the other hand, I can't follow the approach of many liberals that dispenses with the goal altogether and chooses to simply go along with where the wind and the current take us.

As much as liberal theology would like to imagine otherwise, we never exist outside of the context of tradition and community.  Never.  If we think we can do this we not only lie to ourselves but allow ourselves to function as a tool of Empire.    

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The goal, destination, telos, and desire of Christianity -- and me, I hope -- is Jesus Christ.  We only have access to Jesus Christ through and in the community and tradition bearing his name.  So no matter how radically we may feel we have to tack and wear to account for rough and challenging conditions, we have to make an honest and credible case that this serves that one Destination.  The end does not justify the means because the end is the means. Jesus Christ is not just the destination; he is also the path, the Way.  We have some leeway, but not infinitely.  It is in fact very limited.  Postliberal for me means both reestablishing Christ as the Goal, and seeing and participating in his life as the Way to the goal.  Here the labyrinth image works better than the one about sailing. 

In other words, we depend on Jesus Christ like a "tractor beam" that occurs in science fiction, pulling a spaceship towards it source.  Jesus Christ works like an energy field that grabs us and draws us inexorably towards himself.  Just as in the words of pacifist, A. J. Muste, that there is no way to peace but peace is itself the way, so also with Christ.  There is no way to Christ except obedience to Christ.  In him the Way and the Goal are one. 

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Finally, I only care about postliberalism as it pertains to the Church.  We have no stake in getting in on the ground flood with the next manifestation of Empire, even if it is technically post-Modern.  Our Protestant forebears made that mistake by making an alliance with Modernity, the new form of Empire that solidified in their own time.  Our global society hurtles towards a postmodern civilizational framework that only now begins to congeal and take on a recognizable form.  I see as yet no evidence that it will manage to separate itself from greed, shame, domination, injustice, cruelty, and the manipulation of fear and anger by the Leaders, whatever we will eventually call them.  Whatever it becomes, it will inevitably be at least as far from the Way of Jesus Christ as was Modernity.  Our initial job is never to convert the culture, but simply follow Jesus. Our following the Light needs to be enough of an attractive and admirable example to function, like salt and yeast, and influence the whole around us.

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Exvangelicals.

I have noticed a class of Christians that we have come to call the "exvangelicals."  The word refers to people who have left evangelical churches for various reasons.  Often they experienced some kind of abuse or rejection.  Sometimes they simply realized that what their church taught did not reflect the Jesus of the gospels, or their own views. 

Exvangelicals have been around for a while.  They featured prominently in the Emerging Church movement around the turn of the century, and they had an instrumental role in setting up the Wild Goose Festival, which Susan and I enthusiastically attend every year.  I've met a lot of them.  In the beginning these folks sought to rediscover Jesus and the Church, and emerge free from corrupted versions of both.  Sometimes they even came to see things that we in the mainline Protestant churches have known and done for decades, like social justice, and we welcomed their participation.

But lately it seems to me that many exvangelicals do not just want a better, more faithful and authentic understanding of Christianity.  Instead, they either reject Christian faith altogether or seem to feel they need to reconstruct it for themselves along new and different lines.  In other words, they abandon orthodox Christianity and try to invent some new kind of spirituality that may or may not have anything to do with Jesus.

I think they took the version of Christianity they were being fed in evangelicalism as somehow the whole thing.  So when they left their former churches they assumed they were leaving Christianity.  Hence, they may toss out much of basic Christian doctrine and even the Bible.

While I understand their motivation, I also feel that maybe it exhibits a certain immaturity, like when a person bitten by a dog as a child therefore resolves to fear all dogs forever.  Or someone uses their bad experience with one person of a certain demographic category to be always suspicious of everyone in that category.  As if their experience of a toxic evangelical church justifies their belief that all Christians, all churches, and Christianity itself need to be radically changed or done away with.

Sometimes people carelessly toss into a dumpster something that, when cleaned up, polished, and restored to its original form, holds immeasurable value.  To reject something because of what it looks like to me at the moment is the hight of arrogance.  People have pulled amazing and precious things out of trash bins or found them in garage sales.

In any case, I certainly hope that people leaving evangelicalism -- or any presentation of Christianity that they find wanting -- will look anew at the deeper, broader, higher, and older strains of Christianity, many of which conventional churches of all stripes tend to ignore.  We have a rich mystical tradition, for instance.  And even our core creeds and doctrines are not the oppressive documents they often get presented as, but powerful statements to guide practice and transcendence.  Finally, there are expressions of authentic Christianity from other times and other parts of the world that counter a lot of the toxicity that has come to predominate in the West.  I have found that the Eastern Church offers a deep well of spirituality in a different key that is often quite refreshing.  It's time people knew about all this.

So if your church is disappointing you or even worse, please don't let that lead you to reject Christianity altogether.  You may choose to go deeper to find and follow a very different Jesus Christ, the real One, who remains present and alive in you and the world.

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Constantine.

The Protestants I know almost universally revile the Roman Emperor Constantine.  He legalized and then endorsed and sponsored Christianity in the 4th century, ending centuries of persecution.  This wedding between Church and State continued well into the 20th century and still persists today in some places. 

I find a general agreement that the deal between the Church and the Empire, however and for whatever reason it was reached, did immense damage.  I understand the arguments, and largely agree.  A lot of Church-people complain that the Church got corrupted and basically became a lapdog for the State.  The Church became complicit in all kinds of atrocities, from the Crusades to the Inquisition, from slavery to countless wars, to colonialism.  Secular people see it differently.  They say religion corrupted the State and used it to enforce its morality, stamp out other religions, and prosecute sectarian wars.  I get it.  

The Eastern Church has a different view of this, generally, and see Constantine as a saint.  His establishment of Christianity took a lot of pressure off the Church so that survival was no longer an issue, enabling it to focus on developing its theology, spirituality, and mission.  But in the West, we often view this alliance between Church and State as a catastrophe from which the Church never recovered.  I think a lot of this illegitimately reads our contemporary sensibilities into the ancient past. 

I have often expressed criticism of the wedding between Church and State myself.  But I also wonder, frankly, if we wouldn't make the same deal were it offered to us today.

If the US government started actively reflecting and expressing in policy the stated values and goals of Progressive Protestantism, how much would we complain?  If the President regularly consulted with William Barber, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Brian McLaren, and Barbara Brown Taylor, would we object?  What if they poured a load of money into our churches and service agencies?  What if they even offered to assume the financial responsibility for paying our ministers?  Or wanted to use the military to free people from fascist dictators around the world?     

Hey, I remember how excited we were when an African-American, Progressive Protestant member of a UCC congregation got elected President.  Wouldn't we be ecstatic and overjoyed if most elected officials agreed and voted with us?  Are we going to say no to that?

Certainly, some of us would be nervous if this went too far, because we know the history and we have read Kierkegaard and understand the dangers of "Christendom".  But in the 4th century?  Were they going to pass up a deal that looked like the coming of the Kingdom of God?  I mean, the government that had been literally banning and even killing Christians for centuries, now does a 180 and offers to be their sponsors, patrons, and protectors?  I'm sure it seemed like a divine miracle!  

If this happened to us we would surely find ourselves tempted to think of all the good we could do with State power at our disposal!!  Think of the people we could lift out of poverty, and the sick to whom we could provide health care, the oppressed we could liberate, and the minorities we could empower!  We could make diversity, equity, and inclusion the law of the land!  Imagine a woke world, joining hands and joyfully singing together, "For everyone born, a place at the table"! 

And churches would fill up again because people would want to join the successful, powerful Progressive Protestant church near them. 

I hope you get the point that we don't have much cause to place ourselves over the Christians who accepted Constantine's offer in the 4th century.  We too want political power and influence.  We too want government to reflect our values.  We get access to some of this by living in a democracy.  Obviously, the Church in Constantine's time did not have that option, so they chose the deal that Constantine offered them.  It may have been unwise and ultimately disastrous, but I seriously doubt if we would act any differently.

Finally, I certainly do not make any argument for a restoration of Christendom, which strikes me as insane, anachronistic, and suicidal to the Church at this historical moment.  The Church finds itself in a freer and more creative and missionally productive place when separated from the State.  

Christendom/establishment also rendered the Church a lot weaker in many ways.  We saw an atrophy in our missional capacity that left us fairly paralyzed when the State finally took the separation seriously in the 1960's and stopped propping up Christianity in places like schools.  We had lost the tools to do our own evangelization, having left that to others, allowing the State to do it in its own self-serving way.  We have not recovered.

Neither do I hold that we have to forego seeking any political or economic influence.  We live in a democracy (at least for now), and we have a responsibility to live and express our faith in the world, which includes voting and lobbying for people and policies that reflect what Jesus teaches about the Reign of God.  Just remember that power corrupts, and if we do exercise any political clout or influence, to do it gently and with a lot of humility and circumspection.

All I want to do in this essay is buy a little slack for the Church and the decisions they made in the 4th century, and encourage some humility and self-awareness about our own approaches. 

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