Part 1 of this series is here. It’s about working with evangelical and liberal students on campus.
A few years ago I was sitting in a fascinating seminary class called “Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue.”
I’d already been in that dialogue for a decade at a pair of liberal colleges in Minnesota. I’d found the conversation between liberals and evangelicals on campus stimulating, challenging, and sometimes frustrating. I observed that the two parties – liberal and evangelical — often talked past (not to) each other.
Liberal theology goes back to the “Age of Reason” in the 17th and 18th centuries which did away with dogma and superstition and turned instead to the assured results of science and the accompanying advance in all the academic disciplines.
Man was now at the center of the universe, and God, if he existed at all, was a function of human philosophy and religious impulses.
German theologians (among others) of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl, carried theology further in line with secular critical methods. In the 20th century, Rudolf Bultmann famously tried to “demythologize” the New Testament by focusing on its larger existential meaning as opposed to the historical (literal) Jesus of the gospels.
Thus, today’s liberal students tend to start with their own experience and ask how God or “spirituality” might fit into their lives. Evangelical students, by contrast, tend to start with God and Scripture and move out from there.
Put more simply, evangelicals quote the Bible as the final authority. Liberals cite science and cultural norms as the final authority, and use the Bible as a respected (but not ultimate) resource.
The whole conversation is analogous to two rival siblings trying to work things out between them — one quoting Mom, the other Dad, of divorced parents.
Having been in these evangelical-liberal discussions perhaps hundreds of times over the years, I’d like to offer three suggestions for dialogue and action . . . in Part 3 of this series.
Image by Angelo Giordano from Pixabay
