Fr Gadgetvicar, amongst others, points towards Oliver Donovan’s learnèd diatribe against Liberalism on the Fulcrum website.
Who would be a Liberal believer after reading all that? As polemic goes, it is all very clever, but it does rather miss the point by refraining from asking where and why people find faith and nourishment in liberal thinking. (And if no-one did, why bother about anyway?).
This blog post seems to me to point more accurately to the liberalism that I know. There is a lot about God and its all about mission, of course. That is what liberal theology is all about, isn’t it?
Could be that humans take these large-scale labels too seriously.
I’d be quite glad if someone *didn’t* come up with a term purporting to encompass `open-minded, seeking to see the best in people and their ideas, welcoming, sensible/rational/thoughtful and socially applicative’. Until then, I guess `liberal’ will have to suffice. 🙂
finding new words
I am evermore convinced that the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’, whether applied politcally or theolgically (or otherwise), have become utterly empty signifiers, and only go to support straw-man arguments by either side of the continuum. It’s time to toss them out altogether and define ourselves differently. Would that the simple identifier ‘Christian’ would suffice …
oops
…not good when a theology student misspells both ‘politically’ and ‘theologically’ in such close proximity. I’d blame it on keys that stick or some such thing…but I’d be lying.