Hi, this is Chris Hubs.

I don’t know why you’re listening to this, but since you are, let’s talk about liberalism.

Specifically today, I want to talk about theological liberalism.

So, a niche topic, but strap in and see if we can make it useful.

A couple caveats.

First, one, I picked up a cold.

My voice is a little weird.

Two, I’m also using some new audio recording software.

Hopefully that makes the voice better, but doesn’t undo the effects of the cold.

Three, I’m not a seminary-trained theologian.

I’m well-read in the areas of theology that have interested me, which means I haven’t read theology broadly.

It’s been more deep and narrow.

I grew up evangelical, fairly fundamentalist, so I studied my Bible a lot, but I have had to grow into the bigger picture of theological development.

So all that is precursor to say, I dipped my toe in a Facebook thread last night, probably mistake number one, where a bunch of more conservative Christian types who I used to be in a social group with were commenting about the magazine Christianity Today, kind of an evangelical flagship magazine that’s been going through some turmoil and reporting around it.

And a lot of them were just decrying how liberal it had gotten.

And, oh man, so many reactions.

I mean, first of all, the scope of what gets tagged as liberal.

Christianity Today, not particularly liberal in any sense other than perhaps they’re not as fundamentalist as some of these commenters were.

When you talk about actual theological liberalism in the old, maybe the stronger 1970s sense, the German theologian sense, oh my goodness, we’re so far than that.

Like, I have heard a supply priest in the Episcopal Church who got up and gave a sermon and said, Yeah, Jesus isn’t really coming back to help us out, so you’re on your own.

Good luck.

And I’m like, dude, if that’s really what you think about the gospel, how do you even pursue a career?

Why do you want to be an Episcopal priest if that’s your, you know, if that’s your take on things?

I was the reader who got to give up and lead the Nicene Creed after that, which my friend Matt described that day as the great nevertheless.

You heard all that stuff.

Nevertheless, we believe, insert creed here.

I think what really chafes me about the throwing around the term liberalism, the way that thread ended up and the way that evangelicals tend to do, isn’t so much that I dispute it in some aspects, because, I mean, my views have gotten more liberal over the last 10 or 20 years theologically.

But it doesn’t mean I’m off in that wild school of, yeah, Jesus isn’t coming back, we’re on our own, right?

I’m more thinking maybe I’m going to interpret the Bible less literally in some areas.

Not every verse gets the same weight.

Not every genre is meant to be read literally.

I’m not going to embrace all of the non-negotiables that American evangelicals do about beliefs about science and biblical authorship and those kind of literalist things.

And I’m not going to embrace all the political views that come around with it.

And the thing that gets me is, oh yeah, so I could embrace the label, but the hint, the unstated thing that comes across in those conversations is that liberal really means, eh, probably not a Christian.

And oh my gosh, like, how do we have a conversation where we can recognize that there have been much more broad varieties of Christian belief among people who all legitimately claimed the title of Christian and who were following God in the ways they saw best, and not start by just writing those people out before we even have the conversations?

Because we all have things to learn from each other, and the shared discernment of the church of believers is what helps us progress and understand how we should handle theological concerns today.

We’ve got to start by being able to talk to each other and not have the starting point be just, yeah, okay, you disagree with me, you’re probably not a Christian.

Because, man, then we don’t get anywhere.

It’s over before we started.

I could go a lot longer on this.

I’m not going to.

There’s my thoughts for today.

We’ll talk later.