Defining Liberalism

Personal, political, religious

By Brad Isbell

The “L” word is commonly used as a cudgel and insult, abused and bandied about by many who ought to know better, inasmuch as they claim to have “done the reading.” Brevity may or may not be the soul of wit, but even those busy saving the nation should have time to read this definitional dispatch of the adjective and its nouned variants.

PERSONAL

As a bible word in both testaments, it means generosity or source of blessing. It is always positive and always describes a Godly person or a Godly action.

POLITICAL

19th-century England—the Liberal Party:

If there be any party which is more pledged than another to resist a policy of restrictive legislation, having for its object social coercion, that party is the Liberal party. But liberty does not consist in making others do what you think right, (Hear, hear.) The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this—that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal Government tries, as far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do as he wishes. It has been the tradition of the Liberal party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. It is because they have done so that England is the place where people can do more what they please than in any other country in the world… It is this practice of allowing one set of people to dictate to another set of people what they shall do, what they shall think, what they shall drink, when they shall go to bed, what they shall buy, and where they shall buy it, what wages they shall get and how they shall spend them, against which the Liberal party have always protested. (1872)

This is the type of “liberalism,” which nearly always included free trade and free markets, is now referred to as classical liberalism. It would have described J. Gresham Machen, most of the U.S. founders, and the U.S. Constitution, with its concern for small government and individual liberty. The British expression of it in the 19th century was favored by religious non-conformists. The instinct for liberty and freedom faded, and “liberals” came to favor more government power, control, and interference. Some adherents were beguiled by the progressive reform movements.

In the U.S., “liberal” eventually became shorthand for supporters of the Democratic Party in the last four decades of the 20th century. As the party moved further left, “progressive” took over as the preferred descriptor.

Today’s trendy “post-liberals” often believe the U.S. Constitution is a failed document that must be changed or replaced.

RELIGIOUS

Protestant liberalism, 19th and 20th century: Marked variously by naturalism (over against supernaturalism), rejection of scripture’s inerrancy and sufficiency, denial of miracles, openness to various theories of the atonement, denial of the resurrection, denial of the virgin birth of Christ, denial of the necessity of regeneration, individual faith, and the exclusivity of Christ.

This is what Machen opposed and what overcame the mainline churches in the US and the state churches of Europe. By the middle of the 20th century, Barthianism was seen as a mild corrective but contained elements of the earlier theological liberalism.

The Roman Catholic church and even some evangelicals were affected by elements of liberalism.

Theological liberalism could be quite nationalist and favored cultural transformationalism, prioritizing the social over the individual. It favored national or international ecumenism, which always required distinctives and doctrines to be minimized.

The mainline mash-up of theological liberalism and Barthianism today is usually aligned with progressive and leftist politics.

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Because of the range of meanings non-exhaustively described above, the term is meaningless without qualification and explanation. When younger post-liberal boomer haters continue to lazily and sloppily use liberal as an all-purpose epithet, they strikingly resemble the boomers they would eschew. And own themselves.