"Liberal Theology for the 2110s"

Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
November 8, 2009

I remember one class at Meadville Lombard Theological School when I complained to one of my favorite professors that we needed a UU theology.  Before I went off to seminary, at my former UU church, I had heard many times that UUs hold different beliefs, that there would never be a UU creed – a statement of beliefs to which a person must consent in order to become a UU.  But, first as a lay person and then as a ministerial candidate, I found it incredible that we were so reluctant to articulate UU theology – one which at least gave an outline of what theology is and does.  I felt ever more acutely that I needed a tangible philosophy of religion when I went out from school into a congregation to help people with their religious needs, and I wasn’t the only seminarian to feel that need.  My professor, who had been Unitarian Universalist minister for over 30 years, told us in no uncertain terms that Unitarian Universalism could never have “a” theology, that our belief system must always remain open-ended.

Many UUs would agree with my professor.  UUs hold such a variety of theological beliefs how could we ever combine them into a coherent system?   Unitarian Universalism is a creedless religion and will remain so.  On the other hand, without some kind of a belief system, how can we help people with the big religious questions we all face – the ones about where did we come from, where are we going, and what do I hold onto when I’m in despair some dark night?   When people come to me needing help, I can’t tell them, “It’s up to you to figure this out; we’re all alone in the universe, and Unitarian Universalism has no theology which will help you find answers.”

Have you chosen a side in this debate, yet?  I contend this doesn’t have to be a debate, that liberal religion can support the needs of people who want something substantial to believe in and of those who want a flexible theology.  Now, I have studied liberal theology and philosophy along with Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and more, but I don’t claim to have enough theological expertise to personally put together a systematic Unitarian Universalist theology.  But, while I’m still waiting for one of our great UU theology professors to do that, I have become more comfortable with what I know of liberal theology.  I’m convinced liberal religion stands on firm ground, because it is built on liberal theology which has evolved over centuries of rigorous and rational development, which provides philosophical and personal spiritual support for followers of our faith, and which has demonstrated the ability to improve conditions in our society and help people.

Later this church program year, I intend to preach on a couple of the components of theology over which UUs have had lively debates and I hope we can find some common ground and tone down the controversies.  I will do sermons on the use of religious language, beliefs we might hold in common, and process theology – one possible way for modern people to understand God.  So, promising you we’ll have fun with those topics later, I will not address them today.  I assume that many of you have heard a lot of the history of liberal religion, so I am going to tell you some of the general characteristics of liberal theology, some of the critiques leveled at it in the 20th century, and tell you some things we’ll have to do if liberal religion is to remain relevant in the next decade and beyond.

My text this morning is the book from which we took our reading, Faith Without Certainty, by Paul Rasor, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a more thorough treatment of the historical, intellectual and social context of liberal theology.  I love digging into theology and found  his book fascinating, but I think most people aren’t really that turned on by theology.  Fortunately studying theology in depth is not required of UUs.  However, I think it’s important to learn enough theology to have some rationale to explain to non-UU family and friends why we feel compelled to practice love and kindness and to help bring about more justice in the world.  Understanding the principles of liberal theology, its sincere open-mindedness, its emphasis on clear thinking and its commitment to social justice provides us self-assurance to deal with the complexities of life.

These characteristics can’t be bound into a dogma; they are better described as a liberal spirit, attitude or mind-set.  They describe the way we approach the world - forward looking and reform minded, committed to intellectual freedom and not overly bound by traditional orthodoxies.  Liberals may hold strong opinions, but they rarely think anyone holds the whole or the final truth.  We’d have a hard time playing “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” because when asked, “Is that your final answer?” we’d always equivocate.  We enjoy a good joke about our lack of theological absolutes, but don’t let Garrison Keillor’s Unitarian jokes make you believe there is no real substance to liberal theology. 

A central theme of liberal theology is that for religion to be relevant to the needs of the present, its ideas must be continuously updated and stated in the language and terms of contemporary culture.  In order to do this, we often look to the natural and social sciences, the arts, and other cultural sources in formulating our religious messages.   In the middle of the 20th century, Unitarian Henry Nelson Wieman developed a view of God which was more in line with modern scientific and philosophic insights.  Wieman’s was not the traditional all-powerful supernatural God, but one integral to the natural world, creating many forms of human good, but often opposed by processes of destruction.  Other liberal theologians looking to the social sciences spawned the social gospel which held that we should not be concerned solely with individual salvation but our ideals should also be applied to social structures and economic relations.  Thus liberal theologians, committed to critical inquiry with an open mind, engage in rigorous analysis which often results in important social commentary.  “The goal of the social gospel movement, according to Walter Rauschenbusch, the leading theologian of the movement, was the establishment “a progressive reign of love in human affairs,” which tended “toward a social order which will best guarantee to all their freest and highest development.”

Another quality of liberal theology that derives from cultural analysis is the idea that truth is relational and will evolve and change over time as our society changes.  Reality does not exist and cannot be understood in isolation.  Thinkers of the Enlightenment rejected the medieval worldview that truth was given once and for all time by God thru Christ in scripture in favor of the notion that new truths could be unearthed through human reason.  Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson recognizing our interdependence with nature reflected the romantic notion that there was no gap between the human and the divine.  He urged each individual to be self-reliant and to personally become conscious of a mystical, transcendent connection with the universal spirit of God in nature.  Thus whether they depend more on rationality or intuition, liberal religionists “tend to see the world in terms of dynamic elements such as change and growth.”

We often point to Emerson as our guru of the autonomy of the self, but the idea that as reasoning individuals we are free moral agents who are our own ultimate authority was a key part of western thought long before Emerson.  Liberal theology empowers the self by affirming free will, insisting individuals can determine for themselves what is good.  Liberal theology used this idea to place humans, not God, at center stage, and began to emphasize not the sinfulness of human nature but instead our potential for goodness and our ethical responsibility for creating the good we envision.  Thus, rather than focusing on one central symbol of divinity, liberal theology emphasizes a set of human qualities which provide orientation, focus and constructive guidance for our lives, relationships, activities and institutions.  Liberals stress the positive, but driven by our idealism, we offer critiques of the larger society.  This is a natural outgrowth of our belief in human potentials and our commitment to creating a wholesome future for our world.  

The lineage of liberalism can be traced all through the history of ideas, but its most fruitful period was probably from the 18th through the beginning of the 20th centuries.  Liberalism’s successes fueled a self-confident optimism which was linked to it’s theories of the inevitable progress of man because God was actively guiding American society to become his kingdom on earth.  Liberal theology’s optimistic worldview was seriously challenged by the horrific events of the first half of the twentieth century – two world wars, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and more.  Karl Barth in Europe and Reinhold Niebuhr in the United States spawned the neo-orthodoxy movement within Christianity challenging liberal theology’s understanding of sin and evil as totally inadequate.  In the middle decades of the 20th century Neo-orthodoxy became the dominant theological force in America toppling liberal theology from prominence and leaving it struggling to rethink its central theological claims.

In my sermon, Making Meaning: The Paradox of Postmodernism, last June I talked about other recent challenges to liberal theology, namely postmodernism and an over-emphasis on the individual sometimes to the detriment of relationships and community.  You can read that sermon from our website, so I will not cover those topics this morning.  But I do want to say something about liberation theology because I believe we can learn some things from it’s methodologies we’ll need going forward.

Liberation Theology is concerned with overcoming oppression and seeking justice in the world, things we claim as our concerns also, so at first glance liberals often respond positively to liberation theology.  Cornel West says liberation theologies “are the principal forms of Christian prophetic thought and action” today, and they have convinced the church to open its eyes to  human misery and oppose socio-economic structures that perpetuate such misery…and they project the possibility of class, racial, and sexual equality.”   In liberation theology the ultimate Christian faith is expressed by a sustained commitment to overcoming oppression, often expressed as God’s preferential option for the poor.  While conservatives tend to blame poverty on the individual and see it as a personal moral failure, liberals find the causes of failure in social circumstances and thus are in agreement with this part of liberation theology’s analysis of poverty.

But, liberation theology did not grow out of the liberal tradition, and it offers some insights into some of liberal theology’s failings.  Liberation theology begins with a committed, active Christian faith, which it sees as the source of its power.  Liberation theology is impatient with abstract discussions about doctrine or the existence of God; instead it demands sociological analysis based on concrete and historical realities.  It sees liberalism’s overly cautious religious stances as too far removed from reality on the ground and ineffective in bringing about social justice.  Liberation theology begins by learning directly from the actual lived experience of suffering people and works with them in dialogue to create solutions they want and need.  Historically, liberal religion’s orientation has been toward the “sophisticated skepticism of the educated classes” with its principle concern the nature of religious belief in the modern scientific age,” and it has not looked to hungry people as a class whose survival is the question, for the solutions to poverty.  “Liberations theology’s underlying ethic is neither self-help nor service, but liberation, and overcoming the oppression of poverty will take more than social programs and the good will of the middle class; it will take a radical re-alignment of the social and economic order.”

In the last 50 years theologies to the right of ours were on the ascendant, but there have also been a resurgence of liberal theologies including feminist and ecological theologies and those focusing on the process of creation and the relation between science and religion. “For all the criticism,” I believe “liberal theology has been and remains the most creative and influential tradition of theological reflection since the Reformation.”   Certainly you’ll want to know more about these newer theologies, so they’ll provide me sermon fodder for some time to come.

In addition to these intellectual pursuits, however, the liberal church must face some real challenges to our survival.  If we want to be seen as relevant in the modern world, we must dig deeper into the ongoing tragic legacy of poverty and racism in America.  Our approach to these issues should be more like that of liberation theology where we actually involve ourselves in the lives of the poor and oppressed.  This means doing more than donating a few dollars to our favorite charities and more than spending a few hours volunteering at Valley Inferfaith or Prepare Affair–although those are good starting points. It means actually getting involved with the poor and minorities in our communities in projects they lead–and I know that’s a stretch for those of us like me who think they know best.

And liberal theology’s new big challenge is how to respond to the reality of a much more multicultural America.  The liberal church is mostly white and middle class and is not attracting the people who are the future of this country.  Buying imported goods and foods may help us appreciate different cultures, but more than that is required if we are to form real relationships with Latinos, Arabs, Chechnyan’s, Tibetans – or any other ethnic group now growing in number in America.  And, oh, by the way, our children and grandchildren expect multiculturalism to be treated as totally normal, and they will not be part of a church which does not do that.

Liberation theology would tell us to begin meeting these challenges by depending on our faith for strength and guidance, and I know liberal theology is up to the task of supporting us in our work for social justice.  Using liberal theology’s principles that religion must be able to mediate in the culture we live in, and that it must be able to change to be relevant to current realities, we can immerse ourselves deeply in the unresolved issues of our time, form relationships with people not like us, and together learn how to make a difference in our world.  This is important work, and we need each other to accomplish it.  We will probably never all think alike, but by reaching out to each other, by sharing in each other’s struggles and participating in each other’s journeys, we can deepen our sense of community as we build our common future together.