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The trouble with liberalism

By Peter Sellick - posted Monday, 30 March 2009


Readers must understand that I use the term “liberal” not in the usual sense that it is used in party politics in Australia. Although the Liberal part is more liberal than Labor, all political persuasions have more than a hint of liberalism.

Mounting an argument against liberalism is a big ask. It is like arguing against common sense or motherhood. The spirit of liberalism inhabits so many spheres of our life and is so entrenched in how we see ourselves that it takes a superhuman effort to move against it. The difficulty in defining and criticising liberalism is that it does not look like an ideology but the end of all ideologies. Liberalism is not so much an ideology but the vacuum left after the implosion of Christianity. It consists of the detritus left over from that implosion, more negative than positive, a fall-back position that defends the nihilism that exists in its centre.

It seems to be the natural outcome of the history of the West and has been linked to the end of history, the final development of civilisation. Liberalism stands for freedom, tolerance, fairness, self expression, choice and fulfilment. It stands against doctrine, discipline, self sacrifice and discipleship.

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Liberalism is marked by humanistic optimism. It sees life as essentially unproblematic, a matter of making of it what you will. It is opposed to the idea that life is a narrow way set about with dangers. Rather, life is under our control and we will decide what to do with it. When we have decided, no matter how hollow the decision, how hedonistic, or narcissistic, those decisions may not be criticised. This is because the centre of the ethics of liberalism is individual choice. No value judgments are allowed with the only proviso that no one gets hurt. In liberalism the individual is king and his choices inviolate. We are all free to go to heaven or hell in our own way. The hymn of liberalism is Frank Sinatra singing “My way”. Liberalism is the politics of self assertion.

The optimism of liberalism produces a pragmatic ethics characterised by the negative “why not?” Coupled with a sense of entitlement, this produces an ethics in which desire is central. If you can afford to indulge yourself, then “why not?” Life is reduced to desire and gratification. It is no wonder that liberalism is closely aligned to the market.

Positive ethics, suggested from outside of ourselves, that are predicated on an idea of what we should be are easily dismissed as redundant. Why would we want to make it hard for ourselves? The ethics of liberalism is the line of least resistance. This is why harm reduction is the favoured excuse of governments who legalise abortion to reduce the deaths from backyard operators, prostitution to reduce disease, drugs to reduce the criminality of the drug culture. Harm reduction takes the place of morality and the evils that we seek to control quickly become industries that are to be respected.

Liberalism is optimistic about the human condition because it has learnt from John Locke that we are clean slates, we are free of the past. He argued that it was simply unfair to impute the sins of Adam onto a new born. While this appears rational and right it ignores our experience of deep seated evil in our own breasts and in the actions of others.

This simplistic view of the human leaves perpetrated evil a mystery. History becomes a puzzle because we have no insight into human motivation. Dwelling on past evil is liable to be viewed as a “black arm band view of history”. One does not dwell on human evil because there is no reason for its existence. This produces a naïve confidence in our ability to solve the problems of the world from obesity to armed conflict by means of our good intentions. Devoid of any religious or ethnic orientation ourselves we cannot understand why these may lead to conflict. For liberalism, good intentions are enough. We believe that world peace may simply be announced and we don’t understand why anyone would hate us. The recent celebration of “Harmony day” is a prime example. Liberalism quarantines serious discussion and suggests that the evils we witness in the world are easily solved by a resort to tolerance.

The same shallow understanding of human motivation that leaves history a mystery also produces de-culturation. Hamlet or Macbeth are simply deranged and their plight bears no relationship to ours. The passion of Christ is morbid and unnecessary. You can see how the “power of positive thinking” begins to make sense along with that other liberal shibboleth “self esteem”. The mystery of human suffering cannot be a subject of art because suffering finds no place in our view of things. Yes, we know that other people’s children die but we choose not to “go there”. We want our lives happily preserved in our little bubble of contentment. The reality of death is vanquished and our treatment of it has become formulaic. One cannot succumb to cancer unless it is after a “courageous battle”. This means that death becomes a kind of secret that may not be discussed because it is the final word to the self directed person.

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Liberalism celebrates radical individual freedom and is threatened by a freedom that is defined in terms of discipleship. The two kinds of freedom are quite different, the former opening onto a vacuum and the latter on to a positive “freedom for” a personal history that sees the self transformed into the type of Christ. While liberal freedom leaves the person with a thousand choices it allows no direction. Children are not to be formed in a religious tradition but are trained in the disciplines of cynicism. Religious studies displace catechesis. The freedom of the Christian is won with blood; that of liberalism is simply announced. It is fragile because nature abhors a vacuum and the human heart, desperate to hang on to some solid thing, will choose the most obvious.

This kind of freedom easily becomes a form of slavery because it is based on nothing other than an idea of itself. Having no ground in reality it quickly implodes on itself and generates political correctness, the attempt at improvement through the policing of language.

Liberalism has been coupled with a political system, democracy. What could be wrong with liberal democracy? Is it not the essence of freedom, even the end of history? Surely this is the pinnacle of human endeavour in which every individual has as much freedom as he can stand or that the community can stand. Liberal democracy has triumphed over individual passion. It has reduced us all to voters who once in every few years exercise their most sacred duty to cast a vote for the candidate of our choice. This is our lot, our duty and our righteousness. We like it because it costs us nothing and may even stir something akin to tribal sympathy thus conferring an identity of sorts. No emphasis may be placed on maturity of political thought or virtue because these have been erased by the great egalitarian sweep of democracy and the reduction of public duty to voting.

However, liberal democracy is not entirely satisfied with itself. There is an insight that the “as long as no one gets hurt” freedom has produced a crass and shallow culture and we are sickened at the sight of conspicuous consumption. The problem is that we cannot criticise because we would be criticising someone’s free choice. This unease has led to programs to insert chaplains in schools and lessons on values with the proviso that these programs are not allowed to proselytise. One thing that liberalism will not stand is conversion to serious religion. Any attempt at evangelism is seen as imposing ones ideas on another, as brain washing. For liberalism is committed to rationalism in the public sphere. It is only in private that one can be religious, indeed you can be as crazy as you like in the privacy of your own home. And so as the late Richard John Neuhaus observed, the public square is stripped of any theological content.

It comes as no surprise that liberalism has infected the church, particularly in what has come to be called “Liberal Protestantism”. While the Catholics and the Evangelicals have held out in their own ways, Liberal Protestants have colluded with the program of liberalism. It has done so in order to be a part of the society that surrounds it in a parody of Paul becoming all things to all men. However, Paul remained a disciple of Jesus, while liberal Protestantism became an expression of the society around them. This is marked by the unwillingness to ask too much of parishioners. Instead of inducting them into rich traditions that penetrate to the centre of life, public worship is in danger of becoming a form of group therapy at which spiritual insights are dispensed to help us in our lives.

The besetting sin of Liberal Protestantism is that it has mistaken the grace of God to mean that nothing is asked of the believer and that almost any moral position can be defended. As Dietrich Bonheoffer pointed out many years ago this is cheap grace that costs nothing and therefore leads to nothing. Cheap grace means that no attempt is required of the believer to amend his life, the call of the gospel may be “come as you are” but certainly does not mean “remain as you are”.

There is a tendency in Liberal Protestantism to reduce the liturgy of the church or abolish it altogether. With “the man in the street” in view anything that is puzzling or confronting is erased. Often the creed is dropped for being too doctrinaire. The prayers of confession are weakened. The Eucharist, that most radical act that we do in church, is celebrated rarely. This is the church on the back foot, mired in apologetics and willing to give anything up in order to be loved. Its one prize characteristic is to accept all comers. The problem is that such a reduction means that it may offer no alternative view other than that of the culture that it has conformed to and is thus irrelevant.

Liberal preaching tends to avoid the difficult readings, i.e. anything to do with the great upheaval that the gospel brings. One must be careful not to say anything that threatens the self assertion that lies at the centre of life. Love is often central but is disconnected from the love that propelled Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross. Love is a principle that can be used to heal our lives and the world. Preachers are into spirituality rather than theology and spirituality can come from anywhere. It is therefore difficult to proclaim that Christ is the way, the truth and the light without, at the same time acknowledging other sources of enlightenment. While this sounds fair and tolerant and broad minded, when the narrow way of Christ is broadened to include all spiritualities that are uncritically accepted as goods in themselves, the Church loses its identity as a sign in the wilderness. Preaching is hedged in with qualifications and loses its edge.

Liberal Christianity has been aided by modern biblical criticism because it robs the text of its authority and power. I am reminded of a play about Luther who freezes up during a celebration of the mass. When asked by his father what happened he said that the gospel “struck at his life”. Such an event is unlikely when the scripture is dissected and analysed even when that process is a respected academic pursuit. Liberalism carefully manages biblical texts so that they lose any ability to strike at the life of the preacher, let alone those listening to him. It is obvious why liberal Protestant churches are failing all over the Western World, its demise lies in its inability to differentiate itself from secular society and articulate a radical alternative. Christians are no longer aliens in a strange land but well ensconced worshippers of secular deities by another name.

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About the Author

Peter Sellick an Anglican deacon working in Perth with a background in the biological sciences.

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