Liberalism, Verbicide, and Love in Christian Discourse

Men often commit verbicide because they want to snatch a word as a party banner, to appropriate its ‘selling quality.’ Verbicide was committed when we exchanged Whig and Tory for Liberal and Conservative. But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; then to become evaluative, while still retaining some hint of the sort of goodness or badness implied; and to end up by being purely evaluative – useless synonyms for good and for bad. – C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words

There is no question that language changes and words morph in their meaning. No serious student of language, especially ancient languages, can escape the ways that the meaning of words changes over time, sometimes to the point that they begin to mean the very opposite of their original meaning. Words can be mistreated to the point they are semantically dead; virtually useless for any meaningful discourse.

C. S. Lewis was being somewhat curmudgeonly when he wrote the above sentences in the introduction of Studies in Words. However, his point is well taken and worth considering, particularly in the way some terms are used in contemporary evangelical discourse.

Liberal and Liberalism

The adjective liberal and the associated noun liberalism have both been killed in contemporary evangelical discourse. They are, as Lewis described, no longer words that effectively describe the content of a theology, but a person’s evaluation that that theology is bad. They are epithets rather than effective labels, in most cases.

This in nowhere more evident than in social media debates surrounding the current president, the use of critical scholarship in theology by orthodox scholars, and religious thinking on nearly any subject.

Do you favor immigration reforms that offer a path to citizenship? You must be a theological liberal. Do you believe that there is a place in public theology to debate the limits of human economic impact on the environment? That makes you a liberal. Do you think that gross public sins make someone untrustworthy? Obviously, you are espousing liberalism. And, if you dare to think that race has an impact on the way people see the world, then there is no question that you have crossed the line into theological liberalism.

These are all examples of publicly discussed policies and ideas for which arguments can be made on explicitly religious grounds. And, if we are honest with ourselves, there are legitimate arguments for different positions (but not all positions) on these policies to be made from distinctly Christian perspectives that fall within the range of historic orthodoxy.

Because of the corrosive properties of theological liberalism, using the words liberal and liberalism to evaluate rather than describe is an easy way to avoid having to consider the merits of the argument. (It is worth noting that the same is true for the way the word fundamentalism is used.)

This form of argumentation is particularly corrosive in contemporary debates because many of the people actively engaged in debates have a vague notion of what the original meaning of liberal was or what the actual, specific theological connotations of it might be. This allows the application of the epithet to concepts that have their roots in sound Christian doctrine as a way to marginalize them.

The Meaning of Liberal

It would be impossible to adequately treat liberal theology in a blog post, but Roger Olson summarizes four common themes of liberalism,[1] which are both fair and helpful descriptions:

1. Acknowledging modernity as an authoritative source and norm for Christian theology. Doctrines that have been ruled impossible by modern standards (e.g., two natures in Christ) are to be abandoned.

2. The immanence of God overwhelms any concept of his transcendence. This is a pantheistic or panentheistic tendency that tends to blur the line between creation and creature.

3. The moralization of dogma; only doctrines that have direct implications are necessary. Thus, the deity of Christ is translated into a metaphor for his moral influence.

4. There is a strong emphasis on the universal salvation of humanity. Sin becomes alienation rather than disobedience to God’s moral law. God is no longer a judge as much as a paternalistic figure waiting for people to accept themselves and focus on loving him. Salvation is primarily therapeutic rather than transformative.

These are general statements. Within theological liberalism there are a wide range of applications of these themes, but Olson’s seems to be reasonably accurate, based on my research.

In some expressions of liberalism, especially Protestant liberalism, the differences between the historic Christian faith and the liberal expression of Christianity can rightly be described as different religions. Many of the same terms are shared between modern liberalism in the tradition of Christianity and orthodox Christianity, but they often mean radically different things.

But the significant point for this context is that theological liberalism isn’t simply a policy proposal that runs counter to the political platform of the Republican party, but a distinct theological method that has radically different theological presuppositions than orthodox Christianity. This also doesn’t necessarily include the process of taking into account the inputs from other sources, like science and sociology, as long as those inputs are subjected to the norms and authority of Scripture.

If we are going to use words, we should try to do so honestly and with knowledge of what they mean.

Love in Christian Discourse

Verbicide, as Lewis describes it, is a form of dishonesty and intellectual laziness. It may be too late to reclaim the terms liberal and liberalism from the lexical graveyard, but at least we can stop abusing the term and our brothers and sisters in Christ. We may, if we are careful, avoid committing verbicide for other useful terms of description by seeking to understand their definitions and use them accordingly.

More importantly, perhaps, we can honestly evaluate the ideas of others and make our evaluative judgments in careful terms that interact with the ideas they express rather than simply categorically rejecting them because they don’t sound enough like a certain brand of contemporary political thought.

Demonstrating Christian love in discourse does not entail agreeing with bad arguments or ignoring factual errors. It does, however, at least require honestly describing our ideological opponents’ ideas before evaluating them.

[1] Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, 549–551.