Are mainline Protestant Clergy going liberal?
Well, the latest poll results are in, and it seems that mainline clergy are, indeed, going liberal.
In response to this report appearing in the Presbyterian Outlook, I wrote the following:
While some will decry the results, I celebrate them - to be more just, on the one hand, and to freely admit our diversity of thought and belief on the other. For 1500 years, the church traded in “the right answers” - we had them; others didn't, and if you didn't you might lose your head or be burned at the stake. We knew we had the answers – they were in the councils of the church and in the Pope; in the Reformation, we found them in the Bible and enshrined them in our confessions.
But God has been slowly unshackling the church from its self-imprisonment in answers. Answers fail us badly; they divide us, one from the other - "my answer is bigger and better than your answer," and the very moment we craft an answer and spell it with capital letters, we've cast a graven image of God.
We are recovering the original diversity of the Bible - Leviticus to Psalm 23, Deuteronomy to the Song of Songs, from Matthew to John, from Paul to Peter, from James to Revelation, and we're learning the heart and soul of love for the neighbor, the harvest of righteousness (Philippians 1:11, James 3:18) as an outworking of our love for God who shows no partiality (Acts 10:34, James 2:9).
We are learning that the truth of Christ is vastly different than our answers - thus, creating a new humility and a fresh openness. If this be liberalism, God be praised.
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