The Liberal Style

September 29, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: The Free Church In The Changing World

II Theology and the Frontiers of Learning
4. The Liberal Style

When a creed cannot be admitted, can the Free Church indirectly achieve unadmitted conformity by establishing a "liberal style?" That is, although we spurn the sources of authority on which many denominations rely, do we substitute for such orthodoxy a "liberal style" which restricts us to certain ways of thinking and responding? If this is so, maybe we need the virtue of frankly admitting that no less than others we have our expected responses to certain stimuli.

Is there a liberal style? For example, the Commission on Race and Religion has reported that as best as can be estimated, there were 1600 or more Universalists and Unitarians who participated in the August 28 March on Washington or about 1 in every 100 of the total adults in our churches and fellowships across the Continent. This seems a strikingly high percentage. Is the liberal style one of active demonstration for issues currently believed of most intense importance? Or should the liberal style be appraised the opposite way – that 99 out of every 100 did not participate in the March on Washington?

Are large auditoriums with small congregations earmarks of the liberal style? In some cases, yes this one for example. In others, no, because facilities are strained to accommodate both children and adults.

Is the liberal style fashioned of radical ministers and conservative congregations? This depends on where you are and which end of the lens you peer through.

Or perhaps the liberal style comprises those who "disbelieve everything that everyone else believes and have a strong sustaining faith in they do not know quite what," to repeat Somerset Maugham's famous accusation.

In devoting this sermon to the "liberal style," I admit readily that when speaking of what the liberal style is, my own view is probably overweighted. I may be indicating more what I think the liberal style ought to be, rather than what it is. On this, I solicit your comments.

First of all, I commend that you reflect on the paragraphs that were read from THE FREE CHURCH IN THE CHANGING WORLD. There is punch in these paragraphs, particularly if you discover that there may be draperies to the liberal style which you never knew were wrapped about you.

To say a word about this analogy with style, if there is a liberal style, perhaps we can compare it to American clothing style. What is the American style of Fashion? My observations as a periodic observer awake puzzling questions. Is the American style the slacks and shorts women wear in suburban shopping plazas or the suits and dresses they wear when shopping down-town? High style on Michigan Blvd. or Fifth Ave. seems worlds apart from the old-fashioned, extremely modest garb worn by Amish folk in Pa. and Ohio. Yet Boulevarders, Avenuers and Amish are all Americans.

In spite of the pressure for uniformity exerted by all-pervasive commercial advertising, men striding Main St. in Rawlins, Wyo. are easily distinguished from their fellow Americans walking on Lexington, N. Y. C. So while I cannot assert specifically what the American style is, I have no doubt that Americans can be singled out by virtue of their styles.

There is similar difficulty mixed with reasonably certain identification in being sure that there is a liberal style marked by this-worldly concerns, strong ethical responsibility, deep commitment to democracy and a conviction that true community spirit has a religious base. As I attempt some elaboration of these marks of the liberal-style, it should come through to you that the style of liberal religion I have known is like Joseph's outer garment—a coat of many colors. (I like the older translation of Gen. 37/3; it lends itself to more picturesque illustration than does the phrases preferred by modern translators, "ornamental tunic" or "long robe with sleeves.")

This coat of many colors of the liberal style is not only our claim to distinction, but also it should be a source of pride. A coat of the liberal style is many-splendored; nevertheless, there should be continuous concern about the effect. Patriarch Jacob gave Joseph the coat because he loved him, but father Jacob could have been more concerned about the consequences of his gift. When young Joseph's arrogance clashed with the jealousy of his older brothers, there were disturbing consequences of deceit and violence.

How about the coat of many colors of our liberal style? Are the seams strong and flexible as well? Is there such a clash of adjoining colors that disharmony is apparent and useful service handicapped? My observation is that when the garment is torn up, the reason is not so much in its design as it is in the blundering way we deal with the most fragile of entities, each others' personalities.

One clear mark of the liberal style is an attention to this--worldly concerns rather than other-worldly hopes or fears. Whether or not there is a future life, the life we now live is the prime value. Because life is important, the issues and relationships that make life now more free, or more restricted, should be our concern; the attitudes that represent the difference between cooperation or conflict should have our attention; the decisions that make will create peace rather than bring war should feel our weight in this world.

On the whole our growing and changing complex of ideas has brought us to a common consensus that whatever experience [of personal immortality may await us after death], or silence of absorption into an impersonal universe, here on earth the way men think and live bring them the taste of heaven here and the bitterness of hell, here.

Now we should not be pretentious about this. Many persons whose religions seem to demonstrate much more emphatic hopes of heaven in another world and fears of hell in another world also act to bring greater growth of freedom, justice and happiness here on earth. If we maintain stoutly that because this is the only life that ever may be for us; thus we must do the very best we can for others and ourselves, the devout believer in personal immortality can live just as ethical and courageous a life here because he believes that the decisions he makes here, the things he docs here, the personal character he builds here will be his throughout eternity and thus is careful to practice good works.

Yes, a this-worldly concern is a mark of the liberal style, but a good honest look should stimulate a proper modesty. We are proud, rightfully of the great leaders of our present and past who have faithfully performed this-worldly acts for the benefit of people. But let not vanity shut the door to what really happens a great deal in human experience. An emphasis on this world can be an excuse for inertia as well as a reason for excellence. Most of us swing rather perilously between these extremities of inertia and excellence.

Some of you know that in this there has been a historical and continuing criticism of the old theology of Universalism. It goes like this: If God was sure to save all souls, then He would save the full scale sinner as well as the dabbler in little vices. So why worry about the degree of badness one reaches? Now while there is not the slightest evidence this theology of full and inevitable salvation for all souls contributed in the slightest to greater depravity, quite the contrary, it has had some influence in the building of complacency. Why try to save souls, when God would do it in His way?

Holding a not too dissimilar attitude, believers in a day of supernatural judgment, when the sheep and goats would be sorted out, were led to certain complacency also. If things were not made right here, then God would pass judgment on evil-doers at the great judgment day. If injustice prevailed here, why God's judgment would prevail in the afterworld and He would wipe away all the tears. But at least such willingness to postpone the righting of wrongs was in keeping with an other-worldly system of rewards and punishments. But we have no claim to such a heavenly escape ladder.

When the liberal style defends by actions an emphasis on this world as the scene of the only chance for righteous behavior that we yet know, or can be sure that we will ever know, then we are labeling ourselves as ones who are willing to exhibit more effort for excellence than excuses for inertia. But this is a reputation we must earn.

We will earn this respect for a this-worldly emphasis when we demonstrate both by what we say and do, that we will not accept or condone inhumanities, indignities and wrong-doing as being part of some inscrutable plan which will be revealed only in a supernatural way in an afterworld.

For many generations, the liberal style has been one which testified that we had nothing to fear from the wrath of God. God was love; God would save all souls. Whatever you may still think of such theological propositions, one of the marks of the liberal style today is a recognition that in this world evil injures and handicaps our own nature; that injustice and social wrong stirs a broth of violence and suspicion in society here.

Life-concern is part of the liberal style that we achieve only by our attention to living people and living issues. In every generation and in every place we must earn this. Praise marked on the tombstones of our forefathers in the faith is a mantle of tribute to them, not us, even though it may be easy to drape the honors of former prophets around us.

A concern for this world has the inevitable requirement of strong ethical responsibility. This strange and confusing world of 1963 is ours; each one of us can say, "I am responsible." In the "Myth of Sisyphus," (p.24), Albert Camus commented, with penetrating wisdom, "A man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them."

A deep ethical commitment to issues of this world would consistently create tyranny were it not for another mark of the liberal style – willingness to inquire as well as assert; to learn as well as teach; to be the anvil as well as the hammer. The phrase for this characteristic of the liberal style is a "deep commitment to democracy."

In the Christian gospel of Acts, there is a pertinent as well as touching episode. The new sect of the followers of Jesus were causing considerable disturbance in Jerusalem. The Roman police and religious councils were angry and ready to kill Peter, James and the others. But Gamaliel, (Acts 5) a learned and honored rabbi, spoke wisely to the agitated people. He told them to take care; that it would be evil and foolish to kill the members of the new sect, concluding, "let them alone; for if this plan or this undertaking is of men it will fail; but if it is of God you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God." The angry mob did not completely take Gamaliel's advice, for they beat the disciples, and in so doing strengthened the dedication of the new group. But Gamaliel was saying, they have the right to be wrong, let events demonstrate their rightness or their error.

The liberal style should continue to exhibit flexibility, giving me and you the right to be wrong, with decisions ever emerging from our free inquiries of each other as we are faithful to both the process of individual influence and growth in social relationships and achievement.

Here again we are tormented by devils of the ego. It is so easy to indulge in the self-deceit that because we have individual rights we can never be individually wrong. There are times when people remind me, there are times when I find myself fitting what was said of the French philosopher St. Simon, ''that even as a boy he confused a devotion to principle with sheer pigheadedness.''

Commitment to democracy sounds almost like a platitude but it simply involves the painful experience that many times when learning from each other, one must give up pride or prejudices which have been very dear and closely held. Yet this giving up the old ideas or ways that can no longer hold their own in the process of human-to-human encounter is difficult for most of us. In Shaw's "Major Barbara,'' (p. 24) Undershaft, the millionaire munitions maker tries to console his daughter Barbara when she is disillusioned by the policies of the religious rescue army. He says to her, "You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something."

Lastly, a mark of the liberal style is a recognition that true community spirit has a religious base. Let it be said again, of course we do not have this exclusively. There are many good religions which establish community spirit on religious foundations. For us, I believe we should aspire to a community spirit marked not alone by criticism of others, nor even by a plenitude of criticism of fellow liberals, but marked too by frequent and searching self-criticism.

Criticism is futile if it is expressed only to slug away constantly at how wrong everything is, or to establish a doleful setting for crying about the pity of it all. Criticism is for alliance with the best in as many ideas as we can share, for alliance in acts that we can perform together which will create in our homes, in our jobs and on our streets the living deposit of fine human experience which comes with doing what our minds believe is good. Such criticism and alliance might help us reach a quality stated so well by Henri Bergson, "Think as men of action and act as men of thought." (quoted by Key Reporter).

I believe the greatest beauty and utility of the liberal style is the sharing of our individual insights in such free inquiry and self-disciplined action as to begin to make us individually better persons in a world that must steadily increase the measure of freedom and equality in this world. To this end, of course, we must criticize, inquire and act as is within our capacity to inspire such goals. It was said of the famous craftsman and manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, that he would stump about his pottery factory on his wooden leg, scrawling on china wherever he saw evidence of careless work the words, "This won't do for Josiah Wedgwood" Religion needs quality control, too.

This goal I give you, and for myself, that when new truths establish their claims, when new discoveries and freedoms point to better ways for all men, then we can say of the older, lesser ways, "This will no longer do for us." And that is the best of the liberal style.