tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post5125113303419277143..comments2024-03-26T11:33:59.219-06:00Comments on Religion in American History: Conservative vs. Liberal or Evangelical vs. Churchly?Paul Harveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13881964303772343114noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-69201322100853395202015-06-21T19:43:51.437-06:002015-06-21T19:43:51.437-06:00Belated thanks for this fantastic post Elisha. I l...Belated thanks for this fantastic post Elisha. I love it. There are so many productive directions to take the discussion it's hard to know where to begin. It probably deserves a blog post rather than a comment. <br /><br />I appreciate your highlighting my desire to shift the conversation by using the term "churchly" as an opposite anchor of "evangelical." But to clarify, my intent is not to replace one set of binaries with another (as the "or" in the title of the post might imply). Rather, I'm suggesting that we add it as another variable to the mix (and actually I suggest a third, class). So it's liberal/conservative AND evangelical/churchly. Both properties are defined and function independently. Equally important, I want to dispense with theologically-defined binaries. Instead, I want to think of these as positions on a continuum, as X and Y axes, with many gradations. And they are orientations rather than systematic doctrines or creeds.<br /><br />This opens the way for us to talk about both the longstanding tensions AND the co-existence/cooperation/borrowing among four groupings of Protestants. This includes: <br />1) churchly conservatives and conservative evangelicals--tensions that I trace throughout the book <br />2) conservative evangelicals and liberal evangelicals--not only the well-known tensions, but also borrowings (i.e. in Torrey's theology and practice). <br />3) evangelical liberals (and here I mean bona-fide theological liberals who were individualistic, etc.) and churchly liberals (who held church and denomination in high esteem). <br />4) churchly conservatives (who by definition were bound to their denominations) and churchly liberals. <br /><br />This liberal side to the story is largely unexamined in the book, but I hope to see if the hypothesis stands in my next project.<br /><br />A second clarification relates to the term "Conservative Protestant." I'm not really arguing that "conservative Protestants weren't genuinely conservative;" instead that conservative Protestantism did not <i>exist</i> until evangelicals created it. And even then, it existed as a label without theological substance. Which is to say, you can be a conservative Presbyterian, or a conservative Methodist, or whatever, but there is no historical body of "Protestant" doctrine (or polity, or practice) for someone to conserve. (And saying even this oversimplifies things--as if there are stable denominational orthodoxies.) Each denomination came into being as a distinct "orthodoxy" incompatible with the others. So while conservative evangelicals asserted that they held a "mere Christianity," compatible across denominations, this was not something that churchly conservatives ever signed on to. <br /><br />Finally, I'm glad you brought up the fact that self-described liberals and conservative evangelicals had substantial doctrinal differences. This is important to remember. But I'd also say that just because two groups have incompatible beliefs does not mean that one of them must be "conservative" in any historic sense. Conservative evangelicals not only added things like seven day creationism and dispensationalism, they also dispensed with (or demoted) beliefs and practices that were once seen as essential to most "respectable" Protestants in the nineteenth century.<br /><br />This act of choosing, I argue, is key. The fact that someone uses pre-existing pieces of glass to create a picture rather than paint on a blank canvas does not make it any less artful. Both the churchly liberals you studied and conservative evangelicals I looked at made choices about what to preserve and what to dispense with. But I'm not convinced that either has a stronger claim to being traditional. It’s the churchly conservatives who have the right to that claim.<br /><br />None of this does full justice to all the points you raised, but hopefully we can continue the conversation down the road. Thanks again and I look forward to this sort of thoughtful engagement in the future.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-54533720692733357522015-06-19T11:44:55.097-06:002015-06-19T11:44:55.097-06:00Enjoyed reading the post and I look forward to get...Enjoyed reading the post and I look forward to getting the book when Hilde and I are back in the UK. <br /><br />I think many of these political and theological distinctions have to do with the period being studied. 1910-20 is quite different from 1950-60 or 60-70.<br /><br />Here's an interesting Natl Assoc of Evangs statement on funding public education that I just ran across in the Nazarene youth magazine Conquest (Sept 1957, p56): <br /><br />"Our public schools are becoming increasingly secularized and, in our judgment, federal aid would facilitate this tendency. Federal aid is a departure from our traditional American position of individual responsibility and growth, and tends toward socialism, the first step toward totalitarianism. Federal aid to education would open the avenue to federal control, and thus enable the extremely liberal educational elements in UNESCO to forward their anti-Christian program including the elimination of Christian schools."<br /><br />Calling Billy James Hargis, come in Billy James. Randallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16755286304057000048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-13566886012622599612015-06-19T06:29:30.514-06:002015-06-19T06:29:30.514-06:00Elesha,
Thanks for this thoughtful post and for p...Elesha,<br /><br />Thanks for this thoughtful post and for pointing us to your excellent review of an excellent book. Of course, I'm sympathetic to efforts to challenge the "conservative-liberal" dichotomy, especially along lines as you suggest. As you know well, "liberals" like Morrison were so troubled by the individualism in evangelicalism that, in his 1940(?) book What is Protestantism?, he declared the whole movement a heresy for its neglect of the communal nature of Christianity. It would be a understatement to say that Morrison then did not make the logical move of returning to Catholicism (although he had a few nice things to say about Anglicans in the book). However, as I detail in my book, alot of Morrison's pastoral and theological associates elsewhere were imagining themselves as harbingers of a reunion of Christendom--an "evangelical catholicism," as some called it. Morrison's successor as CC editor commented on this "catholicizing" of the mainline in an article from 1950, I think entitled "American Protestantism at Mid-Century."<br /><br />My point is that the anti-individualist, anti-consumerist "churchly" evangelicalism emerging in the 1920s as a counter-balance to MBI looked to more than business models of organization. Their "conservative" orientation was best evident in their interests in high-church forms of doing Christianity. <br /><br /> Perhaps it is time to have an open discussion about the terminology we use to make sense of these groups; maybe at the ASCH in Atlanta? :)Mark T. Edwardshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13687874101232569510noreply@blogger.com