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The “ER” of Liberalism

When I started seminary, I was connected to a fairly liberal denomination. I thought that I could just jump through the hoops of my seminary experience in order to go out and be cavalier within the denomination and be part of the change. That is all well and good except for how overwhelmingly I was dismissed for my evangelical opinions within the seminary. It was always interesting that the mentality is to be accepting of all opinions and dispositions, except those that are more exclusive than theirs.

Part of the training at that seminary is CPE, or more commonly understood as chaplaincy, and we were taught to not actually talk about Jesus or provide concrete answers, but to let them come to their conclusions themselves. This dialogue, that was perfectly caught on the show ER, is a perfect picture of how we are taught to communicate.

When your theology ceases to have concrete definitions of who God is and wants from our lives, what power does it have at all? Several years ago a leading Bible seminary sent 12,000 letters to pastors of various denominations and asked one question: “Do you believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God?” The results of the survey were startling: 85% of the Presbyterian USA pastors said NO; 85% of the Methodist pastors said NO; 85% of the Episcopal pastors said NO; 55% of the Baptist pastors said NO; 45% of the Catholic priests said NO. (Statistics courtesy of Warner A. Bonner)

This man needed answers, but all that Christianity reinterpreted through post-modernism gives is more questions. What effectiveness does that have in reaching the world? None. Jesus wasn’t the question… Jesus was the answer, and as long as we proclaim that as absolute truth, we have a message for the world.

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