Liberal theology reconciles Christianity with modern thought, including social equality, through reexamining Christian dogma and embracing rational thought. It aims to exalt Christianity’s best qualities and has roots in Unitarian Universalism. Challenges include fostering open-mindedness and defending Christian ideas in a hostile academic community.
Liberal theology is a general term for Christian theological thought that arose concurrently with modern thought, especially elements of modern thought that originated in the Age of Enlightenment, such as social equality. Try to reconcile Christianity with progressive modern ideas that eschew certain antiquated or hegemonic worldviews. Liberal theology takes into account a diverse body of thought evolving in relation to Christianity from the late 1800s to the present. This includes most academic disciplines in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences viewed from a theological perspective.
During the late 1800s, liberal theology took shape as other major social, academic, and philosophical changes occurred throughout Europe and the United States. In philosophy and metaphysics it became increasingly evident that truth cannot be founded on an appeal to external authority; thus, liberal theology sought to reexamine claims of absolute truth inherent in Christian dogma by reapplying hermeneutics (the science of interpretation) to scripture. Since the writings of Christianity were already based on interpretation, thinkers launched a new exegesis that would embrace the evolutions of rational thought. Part of this effort has been to pull Christianity out of the Dark Ages while still keeping it relevant to issues of social and spiritual salvation.
The theological growth represented by liberal theology was not aimed at discrediting Christianity, but at exalting its best qualities. Primarily explored by intellectuals studying theology and seminary, it became a way of thinking about traditional Christian teaching that made room for such important aspects of modern knowledge as rationality, science, ethics and philosophy. Liberal theology was still Christianity, but it represented an openness to intellectual inquiry attuned to progressive Protestant ideas and the dissemination of learning characterized by the advent of the university and other public institutions of higher learning.
Other sources for early liberal theology include roots in Unitarian Universalism, which sought to bring Enlightenment concepts into a new understanding of Christian teachings. Many Unitarian thinkers and ethicists are cited in association with liberal theological thought. These include Francis Greenwood Peabody, George Burnam Foster, James Luther Adams and others, all of whom have advocated a humanitarian approach to Christianity. This humanitarian approach represented a willingness to enable personal understanding and growth, as well as progressive social change.
Throughout its history, liberal theology has answered questions of equal rights, first in connection with colonialism and the oppressive behavior practiced by old world Christianity. Later in relation to equal rights for women, people of color and finally gays and lesbians; but despite the growth of public education in the last century, liberal theology is still anathematized, even in the contemporary era, by strands of evangelization and orthodoxy resistant to modern thought.
Challenges for liberal theologians and educated Christians in the coming century include fostering open-mindedness and progressive Christian ideas among populations largely unexposed to critical thinking or higher education; while, at the same time, defending Christian ideas and traditions in an academic community whose rational thinking is largely hostile to theology and faith. According to some liberal theologians, contemporary progressive Christianity is in crisis because of this dichotomy.
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