"Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?" ...

Ross Douthat

That was the title of a column by Ross Douthat in The New York Times of Sunday, July 14. A week later it was reprinted in the parish bulletin of St. Ignatius Church, Baltimore, with pastor Bill Watters, S.J., commenting that it offers food for thought.

And it truly does.

Douthat writes from the perspective of a conservative Catholic, while as a liberal one, I generally tend to disagree with him. But the points he raises are important, and they deserve to be considered by all.

Douthat has it that liberal Christianity, Protestant-style, has slid into an abyss of secularism and shrinking support. Churchgoers in mainstream denominations — Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran — are way down in numbers since the scurrilous sixties, when these faiths began deemphasizing the transcendant in favor of the what's-happening-now.

"The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life," Douthat writes. But the liberals have lost track of what people are to be personally converted to:

As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

So true.

But I still think Douthat goes too far, by identifying that sentiment with a general, undifferentiated opposition to:

... the sexual revolution, but also consumerism and materialism, multiculturalism and relativism.

Whoa! It's as if all the "evils" inherent in the progressive cultural forces of the last half century or more can be exorcised only by means of a widespread return to a more "dogmatic" faith.

So the recent Vatican crackdown against American religious women and the recent Fortnight for Freedom campaign of the American bishops can be seen as much-needed efforts to take back the night, as it were:

Few of the outraged critiques of the Vatican’s investigation of progressive nuns mentioned the fact that Rome had intervened because otherwise the orders in question were likely to disappear in a generation. Fewer still noted the consequences of this eclipse: Because progressive Catholicism has failed to inspire a new generation of sisters, Catholic hospitals across the country are passing into the hands of more bottom-line-focused administrators, with inevitable consequences for how they serve the poor.

Catholic hospitals are, of course, among the institutions that under the new "contraception mandate" that Obamacare has brought about, will have to include free access to birth control in their employees' health insurance. Fortnight for Freedom opposed that on "religious freedom" grounds. At a deeper level, it's obvious that the more hospitals are run by administrators and the fewer by sisters, the more difficult it is to see them as "religious" in the first place ... and the more they would seem to qualify as institutions needing to be included in the contraception mandate.

All these things interlock with one another: the sexual revolution ... contraception ... women's health-care rights ... religious freedom ... Vatican crackdowns and bishops' campaigns .... a more dogmatic faith.

Truly food for thought!