Conservative and Liberal Christianity: What's the Difference?

Conservative and Progressive Christianity: What’s’ the Difference?

Recently in a conversation I was having with friends I said that some Christians with whom I work are more conservative than others. Someone asked me what I meant by conservative in that context. I frankly don’t remember what answer I gave, but that question is one of crucial importance in Christianity today. There are in fact two distinctly different kinds of Christianity alive in our world today. I call those two kinds of Christianity conservative Christianity and progressive Christianity. What I here call progressive Christianity is sometimes also called liberal Christianity. So I’ve been giving the matter some more thought. Here’s what I’ve come up with as characteristics of those two fundamentally different types of Christianity. In practice most Christians probably belong generally to one type of the other but hold some of these characteristics more lightly than they hold others. Many may not agree with all of my characterizations for either type of Christianity. Still, I am convinced that in broad outline these are major characteristics of two different kinds of Christianity that live in our world in our time.

Conservative Christianity

God is “the Supreme Being,” that is, is experienced as a particular thing or person like us except enormously bigger, wiser, and more powerful.

God is mostly if not exclusively imaged using male language. God is the Father but not the Mother. The only appropriate pronoun for God is “He.”

The primary function of the Christian faith is to get believers to heaven after they die.

Holding the proper Christian faith is the only way to be right with God and get to heaven after you die.

Jesus is the Son of God who came to earth for the primary purpose of suffering and dying in order to pay the price of sin for humanity and thus to procure at least the possibility of God’s forgiveness of sin.

Humans secure their salvation by accepting Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.

The souls of humans who die with their sin forgiven spend eternity in a place of bliss known as heaven. These souls are recognizable as the humans they occupied during their physical life on earth.

All humans are sinners. The souls of humans who die with their sin unforgiven spend eternity of a place of unspeakable torment known as hell.

The Bible is the inerrant word of God that must be read and understood literally, that is, factually. There are no errors and no contradictions in the Bible. Because the Bible is divine and inerrant, any human science that contradicts something in the Bible must be wrong.

Sin is thought of primarily in the plural, that is, as sins. Sins are specific actions (and possibly even thoughts) that God has prohibited. They may also be the failure to do or believe things that God has commanded us to do or believe.

As a consequence of the previous two characterizations, anything that the Bible appears to prohibit is a sin and endangers a person’s salvation.

Morality is seen primarily in terms of sexual behavior. All sexual acts outside of a marriage between a man and a woman are sinful. All homosexual acts are particularly sinful. Same-gender marriage is an abomination. For some, divorce is impermissible.

Because God is male, human males are the ideal form of human existence. Women are inherently less than men. For some, women are therefore excluded from positions of leadership in the church and most particularly are excluded from ordination.

Charity for those in need is a virtue and should be practiced. However, since the primary concern of a person of faith is to get his or her soul to heaven after death, social justice, that is, work to transform human systems in order to overcome the sources of human need, is not strongly emphasized.

Violence is a permissible means of accomplishing just ends.

The United States of America is a Christian nation, and the government must be used to accomplish supposedly Christian ends, in particular, defeating the nation’s enemies and prohibiting abortion and the expansion of gay and transgender rights.

Progressive Christianity

Relates to God as personal but understands God in broader, less specific terms. God is not “a being,” not even the Supreme Being. Progressive Christianity uses terms for God like ultimate reality, being itself, the ground of being, ultimate truth. or just the Ultimate.

God is not male. Conservative Christianity may also acknowledge in theory that God is not male, but it still uses exclusively male terms for God. Progressive Christianity does not use male terms for God, or at least doesn’t exclusively use male terms for God. Feminine terms like Mother and feminine pronouns are as appropriate for God as are their male counterparts.

Christianity is a way of living this life more than it is a way of securing heaven in the next life.

Christianity is not the only true faith. All religions, including Christianity, seek to connect people with God. They can all do it to some extent, and they all do it imperfectly.

Jesus is the Son of God who came to earth to reveal God to humanity as fully as humanity is capable of receiving and understanding God. Jesus’ suffering and death are part of that revelation, but so are Jesus’ teachings and actions during his life on earth.

Humans cannot and do not procure their own salvation through their beliefs or actions. Salvation is for everyone, and it comes from God alone.

Progressive Christianity is agnostic about an afterlife. There may or may not be such a thing. Progressive Christianity is content to leave the afterlife, if any there be, up to God. Progressive Christianity doesn’t really believe in the reality of hell.

The Bible is the foundational book of the Christian faith, but it is neither written by God nor inerrant. It is a human product that reflects the beliefs and experiences of the people who wrote its various parts. It contains both errors and contradictions. The Bible is not a basis for denying the discoveries of science.

Sin is thought of more in the singular than in the plural. Sin is the status of living apart from God. That status leads humans to commit acts that are sinful, but those acts are a consequence of sin more than they are sin itself.

Because the Bible reflects the beliefs and experiences of its authors more than it reflects God, things that the Bible considers to be permissible may not be permissible at all (slavery for example); and things that the Bible prohibits may not be sinful at all (divorce in certain circumstances, for example).

Morality is much broader than sexual morality, although of course it includes sexual morality. Morality is about living with other humans and all of the earth compassionately. Human sexuality is a gift from God that we are to use responsibly but not merely by obeying any set of sexual rules. Homosexuality is neither more nor less sinful than heterosexuality. All persons should be afforded equal dignity and respect regardless of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Same-gender marriage should be offered both by the church and by the state.

God created men and women equally, both in the image and likeness of God. Therefore men and women are equal in all realms of human life, including the church. Excluding women from ordination and positions of leadership is sinful because it contradicts God’s action in creating men and women as equals.

Charity is a virtue and should be practiced. Social justice, that is, working to reform human practices and institutions that produce oppression and need, is also a requirement of Christian faith. Charity and social justice go together, and Christians are called to practice both.

Jesus taught and lived nonviolence. Therefore violence is to be avoided in all circumstances.

The United States is not a Christian nation. It’s founders were Deists or functionally secular men who looked to reason, not to faith, as the source of truth. It is not the government’s function to enforce any morality other than the minimum morality necessary to secure life for those living in a society. Government is not called to enforce any conception of supposedly Christian morality beyond that minimal standard. The government’s function is to secure public order and to structure the nation’s life in ways that benefit the people, especially the poor and oppressed.

I’m sure there are other differences between conservative and progressive Christianity that I have overlooked here. Please feel free to come up with your own criteria.