There is so much crap on YouTube that it is a pleasure to discover worthwhile channels. As I’ve said before I consciously seek out differing points of few than my own (I mean, I already know what I think!) and I’m especially interested in how believers are navigating the troubled waters of modernity. Or, if that’s too precious and pretentious, let’s just say I’m curious about the fate of a system of thought that shaped me from my youth. (I will always carry within me that boy who grew up in a rural Georgia fundamentalist Cotton Mill village. Indeed, I would never want to lose contact with him.)
So-called “liberal” Christianity has a rather long pedigree. I take it to mean those believers who retain their faith but wish to engage the evolving culture, to reflect it and even accommodate it. (Of course the ways of doing this are as various as there are persons who attempt it.) Believers who refuse to let their faith become a hermetically sealed refuge from reality. I respect this attempt even though for various reasons this solution was not finally available to me.
C. J. Cornthwaite has a PhD in the study of New Testament origins. He studied under John S. Kloppenborg at St Micheal’s in Toronto. He self-identifies as a “liberal” Christian and his faith is informed by historical critical study. In this video he discusses his own perspective and viewpoint.
I’m happy to discuss any of his specific comments of course but the first question that immediately comes to mind for me after watching the video is this – Could Christianity survive if Cornthwaite’s was the dominant point of view?
Thanks, Robert. The usefulness of this forum is immediately apparent! Encountering differing viewpoints and life experiences.
I suppose it’s useful to remember that modern fundamentalism itself began as a reaction to modern culture. So right from the get-go there was a tension and the impetus has been to define itself over and against that which lies “outside”. So natural enough that refugees from such a tradition would look at it in that way I suppose.
The aspect that always attracted me and my young student friends about Catholicism was the fact it actually had a rich intellectual tradition, something evangelicalism clearly lacked. In those days we were concerned with relevance. This was especially important because we were so very conscious of having been raised in an environment where the church was used as a refuge from reality. Art and philosophy and their associated culture seemed important. Something to be engaged with. Not simply shunned and dismissed. We were like castaways on a deserted island who only ever had unleavened bread to eat suddenly presented with a banquet. We gorged ourselves, and reeled back intoxicated and more than a little delirious.
Then we discovered there was no way back. (Some tried.) We found ourselves caught in a middle space between a now inaccessible past and a future that seemed out of focus. One consequence was that I slowly realized, cast adrift from the only community I had ever known, I would never be able to truly enter another. (I tried.)
I’ve often wondered what it would’ve been like to have been raised in a less absolutist tradition. This was their formulation: you’re either all the way in or all the way out. There was no safety valve to release the pressure. Accommodation was compromise and compromise was corruption.
I also wonder if I had sprung up in a more sane circumstance if I would be where I am now. The old fathers did their work too well. I was brought up to expect the Lord of Hosts raging out of the whirlwind. The “supreme ethical concern” or “ground of being” just ain’t going to cut it.
But folks like Cornthwaite, and my pastor friend, never cease to fascinate.
The usefulness of this forum is immediately apparent! Encountering differing viewpoints and life experiences.
Indeed. One of its many wonders.
Although I’ve only been a member for two years, I’ve learned and continue to learn so much from the discussions, present and past, and from the books recommended and read.
I’m posting these videos purely to provide a context for discussion. There is no assumption on my part that everyone will agree with Cornthwaite or that he speaks for anyone but himself. His comments have served to help me clarify my own viewpoint. Robert’s comments have caused me to consider more carefully how my own attitudes might be dependent on my own socially molded perspective.
A lot to think about. A good time of year to ponder these inward things. More comments to come. I feel no obligation to explain myself to others but I do feel an obligation to explain myself to myself. The one assists with the other.
I’ve been developing a little practice as a faith transition coach–working with people in the midst of faith crises trying to find their feet. At some point in that, liberal Christianity has started to make a lot of sense to me.
Christianity is a major cultural identity, one that is hard or impossible to let go of. So if you have people who find they can’t believe the traditional dogma, but still have a deep cultural connection to Christianity as broader cultural movement, liberal Christianity looks like a natural result.
Porphyry said
I’ve been developing a little practice as a faith transition coach–working with people in the midst of faith crises trying to find their feet. At some point in that, liberal Christianity has started to make a lot of sense to me.
Christianity is a major cultural identity, one that is hard or impossible to let go of. So if you have people who find they can’t believe the traditional dogma, but still have a deep cultural connection to Christianity as broader cultural movement, liberal Christianity looks like a natural result.
Porphyry, I thought you had wandered off.
Re: “developing a little practice as a faith transition coach…”
Well I certainly want to hear more about that! I obviously don’t want to you break confidences but please, discuss!
I have been giving some thought as to why “liberal Christianity” ultimately wasn’t enough for me. As Cornthwaite commented, for me a temporary waystation on the journey out the door.
But, before proceeding, I want to go back to my own original question.
Could Christianity survive if Cornthwaite’s was the dominant point of view?
Certainly I wish it was. But, it seems to me a preferred mode of thinking is not always compatible with the flourishing of an idea. Cornthwaite is disturbed by “gatekeeping”. But this means, by definition, his own “country” must have porous borders. The fundamentalist impulse is enabled precisely by a concern for gatekeeping. The fundamentalist wants to know exactly where he stands. Who’s “in”. Who’s “out”. Sectarianism is defined precisely by its firm and fixed borders. This comforts people of a certain mindset. They want carefully delineated expectations and confirmations. A free-floating system of correspondences such as Cornwaite’s simply gives them spiritual vertigo.
There is a reason that the more “mainstream” denominations are rapidly losing members. Easy to arrive, easy to depart. Now even the fundamentalisms are in decline; this is how we truly know a sea change is taking place, but they are declining much more slowly. Ominously, the last to go will be the truly hard-core – and they will not go quietly.
So as much as I prefer Cornthwaite’s point of view, I think it is ultimately revealing of decline rather than expanse.
Robert, could we say that “liberal” Christianity is largely a Protestant phenomenon?
Could Christianity survive if Cornthwaite’s was the dominant point of view?
While I don’t think Cornthwaite’s is the dominant view within Chrisitanity as a whole, still I think his view is pretty close to what liberal Christians actually believe, and I think it can survive and be passed down through generations. I mean, liberal Christianity has managed to endure since at least the mid-19th century. Robert himself attests to having been born into liberal Christianity. The glue that holds liberal Christianity together is that cultural element: Art, liturgy, mythology. The shared language and experience that Cornthwaite calls a “faith tradition.” That can outlive dogmatic faith; and it can be passed on to people who have never had dogmatic faith. It is a bit like Greco-Roman paganism: you didn’t need to believe in the gods to be part of the cult and culture. That said, I do think there is a natural tension in liberal Christianity since historical Christianity (at least in its the major form) is pretty deeply dogmatic. But I think that is the sort of tension that doctrinal liberalism lets one ease.
Some more general comments: What Cornthwaite describes is a fairly typical trajectory. Aside from his noting the importance of a faith tradition and a faith community, one thing that really jumped out at me was when he briefly mentioned certainty and uncertainty (although the theme runs through his comments in other words), because that has become a hermeneutical key I use to understand faith transitions.
Fundamentalist or dogmatic faith gives certainty about the big existential questions (why am I here, what is the point of suffering, how should I live, what happens after death), but it is a fragile certainty rooted in external authorities. (And by the way, I think this is why dogmatic religion ends up gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is a by-product of that fragile certainty about important things.) When the system of certainty collapses, you then start looking for certainty that you are right to reject it–this is when you get the obsessive consumption of content about your former religion and criticisms of it. But that is a negative sort of certainty, you are sure that you were right to reject it, but now you want the certainty about the big questions hat you gave up when you left (this is a critical moment because there is a risk of going out of the frying pan and into the fire, latching onto some other dogmatic religious or quasi-religious system to fill that hole–like rabid atheism or political ideology). Real and significant regrowth begins once you learn to live with the uncertainty and ambiguity, actually embracing mystery. But then a curious thing happens (sometimes): Once you grow comfortable with uncertainty, you discover that you actually have certainty (you may even have had it all along without realizing it)–but you had been identifying the wrong questions as the ones that really mattered. Once you see the questions that actually have import, you realize that you have a lot of confidence in how to answer them, and it is a confidence rooted in your own internal convictions, not just in a fragile external authority.
Anyway, that is the framework I’ve come to use to conceptualize this stuff. It if of course incomplete, and the process is never clean and linear, but I have found it a helpful framework.
I’m pressed for time so just some quick comments.
The glue that holds liberal Christianity together is that cultural element: Art, liturgy, mythology.
My interest in Christianity at this point is largely historical. But any surviving connection I feel towards it as a living tradition is purely aesthetic. (Porphyry your comment does illustrate a phenomenon we see commonly now of former evangelicals becoming Catholics or Orthodox. Part of it is a desire for a tradition that engages all the senses and that doesn’t rest primarily on increasingly problematic doctrinal affirmations.)
However, my perception is that this “liberal” Christianity is one of the strategies that play out when a system of thought is in decline. I don’t have time now to expand on this point but I do think it is important.
And after all the discussion I’m pushed back to the question, why wasn’t this solution enough for me?
I’ll respond at length when I have more time.
I’m pushed back to the question, why wasn’t this solution enough for me?
It seems to me that is a deeply personal question (and I didn’t mean earlier to suggest that liberal Christianity is normative at an individual level; I think it is a normal and natural occurrence at a societal level).
A few considerations I’ve seen come out:
How much did your religion give you that remains meaningful without the dogma giving it meaning? Some people have an enduing deep connection to aspects of their religion after they stop believing; others feel bitterness and resentment towards all of it; many people feel some mixture.
Are you able, subjectively, to separate the cultural aspects of your religion from their dogmatic roots? Some people still find deep meaning in their old religious practices, but others find it impossible to separate the practice from the dogma and the whole thing feels fake and unauthentic. Again, many people are a mixture.
Have you found a community where you are comfortable practicing without belief? Some people find a community that feels like home where they can continue to practice without their old beliefs. Others just can’t. Maybe the only places that are liberal enough to accept you fall into a liturgical uncanny valley that will never feel right. Maybe you find some liberal community, but they are basically the liberal resistance within a larger ecclesial body that wants to crush them, and that prevents you from ever feeling like you really belong there, and you don’t really feel like playing the larger community’s game.
I think that is all super-situation specific and personal, and there are no right answers.
Tangentially related to the topic of being able to embrace your religious tradition on your own terms:
(I may have already shared this thought, so if I’m just being a senile old man who always tells the same story whether it is relevant or not, just ignore me.)
I’ve been inspired by the example of the Hebrew people who lived when child sacrifice was falling out of favor.
I mean, imagine that you belong to a religion that has till recently condoned and practiced child sacrifice. Your scriptures have Yahweh commanding child sacrifice on a regular basis, and they provide some pretty vivid descriptions of child sacrifice. But you are convinced it is a very bad thing.
Now, if it were me, I would almost certainly wash my hands of the whole thing. I’d reject the entirety of that god’s cult as demonic. I’d want nothing to do with such enormity.
But they held on to that god, that tradition, those scriptures. Instead of rejecting the whole thing, they just changed it–fairly lightly–to reflect their new beliefs.
The whole thing shows a really interesting attitude towards inherited religious tradition.
BDEhrman
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Robert
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