A diary poisted earlier today about Canadian writer Tom Harpur's encounter with fundamentalist Christians in the American South reminded me of the distinctions drawn between conservative and liberal Christianity by Bruce Bawer in his book "Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity." According to Bawer...
It seems to me that the difference between conservative and liberal Christianity may be most succinctly summed up by the difference between two key scriptural concepts: law and love. Simply stated, conservative Christianity focuses primarily on law, doctrine, and authority; liberal Christianity focuses on love, spiritual experience, and what Baptists call the priesthood of the believer. If conservative Christians emphasize the Great Commission - the resurrected Christ's injunction, at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, to "go to all nations and make them my disciples" - liberal Christians place more emphasis on the Great Commandment, which in Luke's Gospel reads as follows: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.'
Am I suggesting that conservative Christians are without love or that liberal Christians are lawless? No. I merely make this distinction: Conservative Christianity understands a Christian to be someone who subscribes to a specific set of theological propositions about God and the afterlife, and who professes to believe that by subscribing to those propositions, accepting Jesus Christ as savior, and (except in the case of the most extreme separatist fundamentalists) evangelizing, he or she evades God's wrath and wins salvation (for Roman Catholics, good works also count); liberal Christianity, meanwhile, tends to identify Christianity with the experience of God's abundant love and with the commandment to love God and one's neighbor. If, for the conservative Christian, outreach generally means zealous proselytizing of the "unsaved," for liberal Christians it tends to mean social programs directed at those in need.
In these pages, accordingly, I'll refer to these two broad categories of Christianity as legalistic and nonlegalistic. Further, I'll use the terms Church of Law and Church of Love to describe the two different ecclesial ideals toward which the Christians in these respective categories strive - remembering always, of course, that every church and every human soul has within it a degree of legalism and a capacity for love.
Among the differences between legalistic and nonlegalistic Protestants are these:
- Legalistic Protestantism sees Jesus' death on the cross as a transaction by means of which Jesus paid for the sins of believers and won them eternal life; nonlegalistic Protestantism sees it as a powerful and mysterious symbol of God's infinite love for suffering mankind, and as the natural culmination of Jesus' ministry of love and selflessness.
- Legalistic Protestantism believes that Jesus' chief purpose was to carry out that act of atonement; nonlegalistic Protestantism believes Jesus' chief purpose was to teach that God loves all people as parents love their children and that all humankind is one.
- Legalistic Protestantism understands eternal life to mean a heavenly reward after death for all the "true Christians" - the "Elect," the "saved" - who accept Jesus as their savior and subscribe to the correct doctrines; nonlegalistic Protestantism more often understands it to denote a unity with God that exists outside the dimension of time and that can also be experienced in this life.
- Legalistic Protestantism holds that God loves only the "saved" and that they alone are truly his children; nonlegalistic Protestantism holds that God loves all human beings and that all are his children.
- Legalistic Protestantism sees Satan as a real creature, a tempter and deceiver from whom true Christians are defended by their faith but by whom atheists, members of other religions, and "false Christians" are deceived, and whose instruments they can become; for nonlegalistic Protestantism Satan is a metaphor for the potential for evil that exists in each person, Christian or otherwise, and that must be recognized and resisted.
- Legalistic Protestantism believes that individuals should be wary of trusting their own minds and emotions, for these can be manipulated by Satan, and that questions and doubts are to be resisted as the work of the Devil; nonlegalistic Protestantism believes that the mind is a gift of God and that God wants us to think for ourselves, to follow our consciences, to ask questions, and to listen for his still, small voice.
- Legalistic Protestantism sees "truth" as something established in the Bible and known for sure by true Christians; nonlegalistic Protestantism sees truth as something known wholly only by God toward which the belief statements of religions can only attempt to point the way.
- Legalistic Protestantism reads the Bible literally and considers it the ultimate source of truth; nonlegalistic Protestantism insists that the Bible must be read critically, intelligently, and with an understanding og its historical and cultural contexts.
- Legalistic Protestantism encourages a suspicion of aesthetic values and a literalistic mentality that tends to thwart spiritual experience; nonlegalistic Protestantism encourages a recognition of mystery and beauty as attributes of the holy.
[See pages 5-7 of Bawer's book.]
Without belaboring the difference between the brand of Christianity practiced by Harpur and others - including many Kossacks - and the variety Harpur encountered in his travels, suffice it to say that one seems much more likely to coexist with a tolerant, compassionate society.