The Myths of the Divides Between Conservatives & Liberals

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. I’ve talked before about the summer book group I lead at my church, with us taking a different book each month that has been on my “to read” list and diving into it. The book we read for this month’s book study was a theological doozy: The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender, and the Quest for God by Anglican priest and theologian Sarah Coakley. Dr. Coakley is an absolutely brilliant theologian. She studied at both Harvad and Cambridge and, in her career as a professor, has taught at Lancaster University, Oxford, Harvard, and Princeton. She was the first woman appointed to the prestigious post of the Norris–Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, the position she retired from in 2018. As you might expect, the book was not exactly light reading. However, it was stunningly good. Her goal in the book was to reach past the traditional divides between “conservatives” and “liberals,” to suggest that the approach of neither is truly satisfactory and to encourage a different way of engaging some of the most pressing theological issues of our time. With that book fresh on the mind, this week I’d like to try to see if Dr. Coakley can help me break the myth of the divide between conservative and liberal Christians. In general, she notes that conservative Christians tend to take recourse either to literal interpretations of biblical injunctions or, in the case of Roman Catholics, to the teaching of the church. The difficulty is that those supposed biblical injunctions (whether with regard to sex, sexuality, divorce, or any other question) are rarely as simple as they appear. I would suggest that this is abundantly clear in the willingness of most evangelicals to engage in careful interpretation with Jesus’ apparent forbidding of divorce after marriage, suggesting that context helps us understand what he said differently for our own tie. However, that same interpretive work is rarely done with regard to Biblical texts that condemn the things they want to condemn or support the things they like to support. And so, those who are outside the church see Christians as a bunch of hypocrites who clearly pick and choose what verses to follow literally and which ones to interpret differently. So far, none of this is likely surprising for most of you to hear coming from my mouth as a progressive Episcopal priest. However, Dr. Coakley also suggests that mainstream literal Christianity often provides insufficient responses to the pressing questions of our time. In her words, “Liberals tend to suggest, overbearingly, that they know better (in light of modern psychological theory) than anything that the Bible or tradition or authority could disclose to them.” The difficulty with this common liberal approach, in my view, is that it simply unroots the work of theology from any authority beyond modern sciences. It not only entirely unmoors it from a sustained reading of Scripture but also sets theology adrift in culture with no attention to the insights of two thousand years of Christian tradition…. And wrestling… and questioning. There must be a better way. Next week, I’ll talk more about the suggestion that Dr. Coakley offers. But for now, let me give you a preview. In her book she suggests that both sides should look afresh at the ascetical tradition of the church. This is the ancient Christian practice of spiritual training—much like how an athlete trains their body. It’s about intentionally shaping your habits, thoughts, and desires so they line up more closely with God’s will. And this is something both conservatives and liberals should believe in. She suggests that traditional Christian askesis actually might be able to bring conservatives and liberals together in a sustained conversation about what it means to have the love and teachings of Jesus shape and mold the desires within us towards holy ends. We’ll talk about that next week. Until then… Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.