Tag Archives: conservative

Am I left or am I right? (and why I don’t really care)

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I came of age theologically in a conservative evangelical environment. Canadians may know the name “Prairie Bible Institute” or “Prairie Bible College” (“Prairie College” now) as a bastion of evangelicalism— most often a conservative form of evangelicalism. That was my space, both physically and theologically.

I was a card-carrying evangelical—literally. I was a member of the Evangelical Theological Society for many years, an academic society more diverse than conservative evangelicalism but very often dominated by an American flavour of conservative evangelicalism. And yes, I had a membership card.

That was the world I occupied from the time I was twenty until I was thirty-eight—nearly twenty years of adult life, living and breathing and teaching evangelicalism.

During my ten years of teaching at Prairie Bible College, I began to shift in my theological views, but never so far as to venture outside of the evangelical fold. As I taught through the New Testament many times, as I worked on my Ph.D. focused on the Gospels, Jesus, and Paul’s theology, I became more and more Anabaptist in my theology. This is the way I identified myself during that time: first as a moderate evangelical, then an evangelical Anabaptist.

It was during those years, while serving as Associate Professor of New Testament and Chair of the Department of Bible and Theology at Prairie Bible College, that I had two encounters within the span of a week that I will never forget.

In the first, after a lengthy discussion about whether or not concern for the poor was part of the gospel, or even something Christians should be particular focused on, the man I was speaking with called me a “liberal.”

In the second, after an equally lengthy discussion about whether the Bible is inspired and authoritative for Christians, or if Christians could view other scriptures as equally inspired and authoritative, the man I was speaking with called me a “fundamentalist.”

Since then I’ve been called both “liberal” and “fundamentalist” several times—as well as “progressive” and “conservative,” “leftist” and “on the right.”

When people have used those words, most often they’re not just labelling me, placing me on their spectrum (or often, polarity) of political, social, religious, or theological views. No, when people use those words, they’re an accusation. The label allows them to slot me into a category and dismiss my thoughts without even engaging them. Even more, they seem to think that by simply calling me that term, I will be shamed, and maybe I’ll recant. After all, no one wants to be a “leftist” or a “fundamentalist.”

As I’ve reflected on this frequent experience, though, going all the way back to those paradoxical encounters at Prairie Bible College, I’m even more interested in my own response to these accusations-as-labels, these attempts at shaming: I don’t really care.

I get it. I understand the labels and how they’re used. I’ve used the labels myself, when words are inadequate to describe people’s views on X, Y, or Z, but you need something to tag them with, something to succinctly describe where they sit relative to others. And yes, on many theological or social or political issues I would be on the progressive side of the spectrum (though on others I’d be more conservative—hence the conflicting labels I get).

But while I understand those labels, and I will even at times use them, they don’t register for me as something I should be concerned about. I can’t be motivated by attempts to shame me by accusing me of being a “liberal” or a “conservative.”

Recently I most often hear the label “leftist” applied to me. I talk about getting vaccinated for Covid, or the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, or the absurd wealth gap between the richest few and the many poor, or the importance of acting on climate change, or the bigotry that LGBTQ+ people experience, or the devastation of gun violence in the U.S.—and I get labelled a “leftist.”

Categorized and dismissed. Accused and shamed.

What’s even more galling for some is that I’m a church leader and I’m “leftist.” Church leaders are supposed to be neutral. They shouldn’t enter into these politically charged debates, taking a side. They’re just supposed to love people, everyone equally.

Crank that shaming up a notch or ten.

But that just doesn’t work for me. I don’t particularly care whether someone calls me “leftist,” or even (still occasionally) when I’m dismissed as a “conservative.”

It might sound cheesy, it might sound self-righteous, it might be hard to believe, but what motivates me is seeking to be faithful to the way of Jesus as shown in the Christian Scriptures and especially the Gospels. I don’t really care whether someone labels me as “left” or “right.” If you want to engage me about what I say or do, talk with me about the life and teachings of Jesus.

Does that put me on the left? Yeah, sometimes. Does that put me on the right? Yeah, sometimes. But that simply doesn’t concern me.

Having said that, it’s not entirely true that I don’t really care. I do care when someone labels me in accusatory fashion a “leftist” or “conservative”—because that tells me something about them. It tells me what position they see themselves occupying on a left-right spectrum relative to how they view me. It tells me something about how they perceive the world, what it is that they value.

And if they’re a Christian, it tells me that this left-right spectrum, even polarity, which we have created to help us make sense of the world, may well be more important to them than following Jesus. And that saddens me deeply.

© Michael W. Pahl

The Problem with “Wokeness”

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Certain politicians in the U.S. and Canada have surged in popularity in part by decrying “wokeness” in our society, “woke ideology” in our universities, and the “woke agenda” of non-conservative governments. What exactly they mean by “wokeness,” though, can be hard to pin down.

The language of “woke” grew out of the Black experience in the U.S., all the way back in the 1930s. Originally it had the idea of being aware of—and on guard against—the violence and systemic injustice experienced by Black people in American society.

More recently “woke” language has been used to mean being aware of systemic injustice generally, as experienced by any historically marginalized or disempowered group—Black people, Indigenous people, women, impoverished people, LGBTQ+ people—and the ways these different dimensions of the human experience of marginalization or disempowerment intersect with each other.

Still more recently, picked up and nourished by those savvy conservative politicians, this language of “woke” has taken on other connotations. It now evokes for many people, including many Christians, ideas of a nefarious agenda by powerful but out-of-touch “progressives” or “leftists” or “elites”—those people who live in coastal cities or teach in liberal universities, or who work for global organizations like the United Nations—to weaken the fabric of our society, take away our freedoms, and destroy free-market capitalism.

“Woke” is now equivalent to tried-and-true scarewords of the past like “socialist” and “communist” and “Marxist.” For these “anti-woke” politicians, “wokeness” is the opposite of the down-to-earth “common sense” of “average Americans and Canadians”—who happen to be mostly white, straight, and middle-class.

The problem with “wokeness,” it seems to me, is twofold.

The first problem with “wokeness” is that there is no problem with “wokeness”—that is, with the essential ideas that originated in the Black community and have found purchase in the experience of other groups.

There are groups of people that historically, genuinely, have been pushed to the margins of society and stripped of the power to determine their own future on their own terms. It is true that various dimensions of human experience intersect in this injustice, so that an Indigenous person in Canada is at a higher risk of poverty and violence than a white person, but that an Indigenous woman is at even higher risk of these things.

It’s also true that, for Christians who look to our Scriptures and ultimately to Jesus for our moral compass, these essential ideas of “wokeness” do not run counter to our faith. In fact, they are very much with the grain of our faith. The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Gospel stories of Jesus are filled with much that highlights the need for what we today call “social justice,” including economic justice, racial justice, gender justice, and more.

This first problem with “wokeness,” then, is that the use of “woke” as a pejorative scareword has no substance. It’s based on misunderstandings at best, and baseless conspiracy theories at worst.

But there is a second problem with “wokeness,” a genuine problem, as I’ve experienced while moving in some of those “woke” circles. These circles have largely dropped the term as a self-designation, in large part because of the way it has been co-opted as a scareword by more conservative people and politicians. But this problem remains, regardless of whether the term is used: people who recognize the reality of systemic injustice in our society and with the intersectional nature of that injustice, can sometimes, as we speak against this injustice and work for greater justice, perpetuate injustice ourselves.

We can operate with prejudices, even cruelty, against those who don’t agree with us. We can divide humanity into “us” and “them” along the lines of those aware of systemic injustice and those who aren’t, and then denigrate and even vilify those who we feel are not sufficiently aware (even “cancelling” a progressive ally if they don’t meet our expectations). We can use coercive power, even institutional violence, to correct the injustices we have identified, and so perpetuate the very injustice we deplore.

In other words, while the use of “woke” as a pejorative scareword is without substance, some of those conservative critiques of “wokeness” do have some truth to them. Socially, politically, and religiously progressive folks can be elitist. We can be hypocritical. We can be cruel, even causing injustice or committing violence.

For Christians who look to our Scriptures and ultimately to Jesus for our moral compass, then, while the essential ideas of “wokeness” do not run counter to our faith, some of the by-products of “wokeness” in our society (or whatever term we use) do run counter to our faith. They run counter to love.

May we as Christians keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, and in so doing walk in his ways of love and justice and peace, without hypocrisy, without prejudice, and without violence toward all our neighbours, each of whom is created in God’s image and deeply loved by God.

Christians Need to Be More Conservative, Not Less

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It’s happened again.

The other day someone casually referred to me as “liberal” (don’t worry, Peter, I don’t hold it against you). Every time that happens I kind of smile to myself—if it’s said innocently—or else I cringe inwardly—if it’s said pejoratively.

It’s not that I particularly mind being called “liberal.” In some circles that’s the worst thing anyone can be. But the word can be a wonderful compliment: think of a doctor who is “liberal” with their time, or a wealthy person who is “liberal” with their charitable giving. (Or maybe a Christian who is “liberal” with their love, “liberal” in the grace and mercy they show to others…?)

It’s more that the word doesn’t really fit me in the way people seem to think.

Most often people seem to think I am theologically “liberal.” That’s very strange.

They might mean (though I doubt it) that I hold to classic liberal theology, that I’m a disciple of Friedrich Schleiermacher or Adolf von Harnack. But I don’t, and I’m not.

Or they might mean (more likely) that I don’t believe in the classic doctrines of Christianity, that I am not theologically “orthodox.” But I do, and I am.

I believe in the Trinity, one God in three persons. I believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man. I hold fast to the good news of salvation through Jesus, Messiah and Lord and Son of God, who died for our sins and was bodily resurrected. I look to the Scriptures as divinely inspired and authoritative for Christian belief and practice. I can recite the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds without batting an eye or crossing my fingers behind my back—pretty much the definition of being “theologically orthodox.”

In other words, I’m actually quite conservative, theologically speaking. Within the whole spectrum of Christian beliefs through history and around the globe, I’m pretty securely on the conservative side of things.

Here’s the real issue, it seems to me: I don’t fit a lot of people’s culturally conditioned notions of how “conservative Christians” act, or what else they believe.

Beliefs like biblical inerrancy or young earth creationism or penal substitutionary atonement or the rapture have crept into Christian thinking over the past few centuries, and have become part of the package of “conservative Christianity”—but they are actually recent theological innovations, not historical Christian orthodoxy.

Likewise, things like upholding “family values” or “traditional marriage,” or being a “Christian nation,” or supporting war efforts or gun rights or free-market capitalism, or abstaining from alcohol, have become part and parcel of “conservative Christianity”—but they have actually grown out of our particular Western culture, with nothing timeless or universal about them.

Some of these sorts of things I may agree with in one sense or to a certain degree, but I hold them loosely. Other things, well beyond these examples, I have questioned and continue to wonder about. Many of these sorts of things I simply don’t believe in or agree with. Some I’m even convinced are actually harmful distortions of genuine Christian faith.

But in many “conservative Christian” circles, these kinds of beliefs and ideas and behaviours tend to get all lumped together with genuine Christian orthodoxy: believing in biblical inerrancy is on par with believing in the Trinity, upholding heterosexual marriage is on the same level as upholding the gospel, and so on.

liberalYou’ll have noticed the quotation marks around “conservative Christians” through all this. That’s not because I don’t think these folks are truly Christian. It’s partly because that’s just the common phrase used to describe Christians who hold to these kinds of views. But it’s also because I’m not convinced they really are all that conservative.

Yes, you’ve heard it here first: “conservative Christians” are not conservative enough. They need to be more conservative, not less.

They need to go back to genuine, generous, historic Christian orthodoxy—and hold fast to it, being wary of all those trendy theological innovations like biblical inerrancy or young-earth creationism.

They need to go back to the original, apostolic, gospel story of Jesus—and hold fast to it, being cautious of all those recent cultural accretions like “family values” or teetotalism.

They need to go back to our sacred Scriptures, that diverse collection of ancient human writings inspired by God—and hold fast to it, being suspicious of all those simplistic assertions of right and wrong.

We Christians—all of us—need to be more conservative, not less.

And if we do so, we might actually find ourselves becoming truly liberal—in the best senses of the word.

© Michael W. Pahl

On Not Throwing the Theological Baby Out with the Bathwater

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I’ve been reflecting recently on my faith journey, in particular on the “stuff I believe” side of things. I think that journey could be summed up this way: continually sifting through it all, sorting out the essentials, casting off the non-essentials.

Throw out baby with bathwater 2I suspect many Christians go through that kind of process as they get older, whether consciously or not. But I think that’s especially true of those who grew up as I did within a more conservative stream of Christianity.

Very early in my thinking on things theological I determined one thing: this process of “essentializing” my faith would have to be done carefully. I was in my early 20s, and I distinctly recall thinking that it would be all too easy to look around at the sinking boat of my own faith tradition and jump ship to another, only to find that it was in an even worse state.

To quote an old saying, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Or another: don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

My faith journey has by and large been about draining bathwater and saving babies.

I don’t have any illusions that I’ve done that flawlessly, and I’m still very much on the journey. But I find it disheartening to see other Christians either so unthinkingly clinging to their faith tradition exactly as they have inherited it, or so carelessly casting off their faith tradition and jumping to a sinking ship worse off than the first.

There’s an awful lot of dirty theological bathwater still being bathed in, and there are an awful lot of good theological babies being thrown out.

Both sides of the problem trouble me, but lately I’ve been more concerned about the latter. For some reason it seems to me like progressives should know better. But all too often they don’t, and perfectly good theological babies get thrown out with all that dirty bathwater.

Scripture’s inspiration and authority get thrown out along with the naïve, uncritical readings of Scripture we grew up with—instead of developing a more nuanced, sophisticated view of what Scripture is and how its authority works for Christian faith and life.

Jesus’ uniqueness gets thrown out along with the negative, fear-based views of other religions we were taught—instead of exploring ways in which Jesus can still be “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” without denying the reality and truth of others’ religious experiences and claims.

The reality of sin and its devastating consequences gets thrown out along with the legalism and judgmentalism and harmful views of human nature that were modeled for us—instead of crafting healthy and helpful ways of thinking about the harms we commit against one another and our world.

And on and on it goes—babies thrown out with the bathwater.

But how do we stop that from happening? How do we discern the good theological babies when we’re trying ourselves to emerge from all that bad theological bathwater?

I’m sure there are many helpful answers that could be given. Here are two that I’ve found especially useful along the way.

First, don’t assume that the fundamentalist or conservative evangelical way of reading the Bible or thinking about Christianity is in fact the “original” or “authentic” or even “biblical” way.

Many people make this assumption—both conservatives and progressives. No, the Bible’s “divine inspiration” doesn’t mean that the Bible’s every narrative is a historical record or every depiction of nature is a scientific assertion, or that the Bible speaks to every imaginable issue, or speaks with a single, clear voice—so you can believe in biblical inspiration without holding to those rather modern ideas. No, “salvation” in the Bible doesn’t mean “getting to go to heaven when I die”—so you can speak of salvation but understand that in the more biblical terms of restoration, reconciliation, flourishing life, societal justice, and more.

Examples of such false assumptions could be multiplied many times over. Don’t give in to those assumptions, but instead do the hard work of careful biblical interpretation and wide-ranging theological reading and reflection yourself before you reject those long-held Christian beliefs. You might be surprised to discover that the traditional ideas mean something other, or something more, than what you were first taught—and they have real traction within our twenty-first century human experience.

And that leads to a second suggestion: in discerning essentials from non-essentials, let three theologies—biblical, historical, and global—be your guides.

By biblical theology I don’t mean “the teaching of the Bible,” but rather the teachings of the Bible—plural—the Bible’s many theologies, in all their complex diversity-in-unity. Read the writings of Scripture carefully and in context, seeing both what makes them different and what holds them together. Do historical and global theology the same way: explore Christian thinking across time and space, through history and around the world, listening carefully for both dissonance and harmony. The harmony of Scripture and Church speaks to essentials, the dissonance to the ways in which God’s people have worked through the challenge of living out their faith in different times and places.

I know of no better antidote to either the narrowness of fundamentalism or the indulgence of hyper-progressivism than a good dose of biblical, historical, and global theology. Read widely across Scripture and through history, listen to diverse Christian voices from around the world, and allow your vision of Christian faith to expand as your list of essentials shrinks and your confidence in those few essentials grows.

Yes, there’s a lot of dirty water to be chucked in current versions of conservative Christianity.

But please, for the love of God, check the water for babies.

Cross-posted from http://www.mordenmennonitechurch.wordpress.com. © Michael W. Pahl.