Conservatism and Liberalism in the Christian Faith: Toward a Moderate Approach.

Humphreys, Fisher

Conservatism and Liberalism in the Christian Faith: Toward a Moderate Approach. By William E. Hull. 108 pp. (Macon, GA: Nurturing Faith, Inc., 2015)

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Perhaps the best way to clarify the ideas and practices that William Hull advocates in this posthumously published book is to ask yourself how you handle the tension between conservatism and liberalism.

Do you just ignore the issues? That's understandable, given how stressful and how complex they often are.

Or, are you committed to just one position, so that you strive to be conservative (or liberal) on every issue? This too is understandable; consistency is a noble quality in our thinking and our lives.

Or, are you a middle-of-the-road person? Once you understand what the conservative and liberal views are on a particular issue, do you instinctively look for a golden mean somewhere between them?

For example, if your church is discussing whether to sing traditional hymns from hymnals or choruses projected onto a screen during worship services, do you opt for a blended service in which you sing both kinds of music, sometimes using hymnals and sometimes screens? That is one understanding of what it means to be moderate.

Or, do you try to sort out the issues one at a time, with the result that you sometimes come down on the conservative side and sometimes on the liberal?

For example, are you conservative about fiscal matters and liberal about race relations? Or, are you conservative about Jesus but liberal about the role of women in the life of the church? There is a lot to be said for thinking through issues for yourself.

In this brief, readable hook William Hull advocates a particular way of handling conservatism and liberalism. It is to allow room for both points of view in your life and in the life of the church, provided neither one becomes so extreme as to create havoc.

Hull begins by pointing out how unexpected it is that the categories of conservatism and liberalism should have become so prominent in the life of the church. They are not biblical categories, nor have they been employed through most of the church's history.

They first came into use in the eighteenth century in accounts of the French Revolution. Even when they are employed in other areas such as economics, culture and theology, their political origins continue to color their connotations.

Hull next makes a convincing case that the Christian church has always embraced both conservatism and liberalism.

For example, the early church was intensely conservative in that, even when it went out into the Gentile world, it continually used the Old Testament as Scripture, and when in the third century Marcion advocated abandoning the Old Testament, the church condemned his proposal.

Hull points out how strange this intensely conservative view must have felt to Gentiles who were hearing the gospel for the first time: "Predominantly Gentile converts found themselves with a seemingly provincial Bible full of the genealogies of Jewish tribes that no longer existed, of the exploits of a Jewish monarchy that no longer ruled, and of the rituals of a Jewish temple that no longer stood" (p. 16).

On the other hand, the early church did abandon four of the most characteristic practices of Judaism: Sabbath observance, temple loyalty, kosher foods, and circumcision. Hull describes at length the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) at which matters such as this were discussed.

He says that the church had five kinds of leaders at that time: James the extreme conservative, Peter the moderate conservative, Barnabas the moderate, Paul the moderate liberal, and Stephen the extreme liberal who was martyred before the council convened.

On the matter of kosher food the council adopted the extremely conservative view that Christians should not eat meat unless the blood has been drained from it. But the council's decisions proved "ineffective," and the church soon abandoned all four Jewish practices.

The position the church took was not that of the extremely liberal Stephen who thought the Jewish traditions had never been appropriate, but of the moderately liberal Paul who respected the value of the traditions for the past but discontinued them for the present and future.

Hull sees the same dialectic at work through the history of the church. In the Patristic era, for example, the church created the canon of Christian writings that we call the New Testament. But the same church fathers who took this quite conservative step took the equally liberal step of translating the Christian message from Jewish into Hellenistic categories, specifically, into the categories of neo-Platonism.

In the fourth and fifth century controversies concerning the person of Christ, for example, the church confessed its faith in non-biblical, philosophical language such as hypostasis and ousia and even homoousios--words never used in the numerous biblical confessions concerning Jesus.

In the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas was both a devoutly conservative Christian theologian and a liberal who replaced the neo-Platonic language that the church had used for a thousand years with Aristotelian language. Thomas's teaching was initially condemned by influential bishops, but today Thomas is a saint and the "Angelic Doctor" of the Roman Catholic Church.

Hull's example for the Reformation era is Martin Luther, of whom Hull writes: "Luther was surely the most conservative Christian who ever lived. His mind and heart were captive to the Word of God" (p. 37).

Then he adds, "On the other hand, Luther was surely the most liberal Christian who ever lived" because he challenged the collective consensus of the church in the name of his own individual convictions. Luther held together in his mind and life what Paul Tillich later termed "catholic substance and Protestant principle." Hull writes: "The sixteenth-century Reformation paradigm was, by its very nature, both conservative and liberal" (p. 38).

Next, Hull turns to the Baptists. The first Baptists were Anglicans who had become Puritans who had become Separatists and who then became Baptists.

Their rejection of significant parts of their earlier traditions makes them "liberal in character." But, Hull writes, "the original Baptist impulse was also profoundly conservative" (p. 40).

This is clear concerning baptism: The Baptists were determined to return to the New Testament practice (as they understood it) of baptizing only believers.

As I said, I find Hull's argument is convincing. Others will want to assess it for themselves.

In the course of making his case, Hull tells stories from his experiences as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana.; as a member of the Peace Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention; as provost of Samford University; and as a participant in theological discussions of the Baptist World Alliance. These stories illustrate beautifully that Hull's understanding of conservatism and liberalism is practicable.

Hull's stories about Samford University are of special interest to me because I taught there for eighteen years. Hull says that he brought to Samford as founding dean of the divinity school Timothy George, "clearly the finest scholar in the conservative movement" in Southern Baptist life. He also brought as chair of the religion department Bill Leonard, "the most influential speaker and premier historian of the moderate movement."

These two longtime friends did not conceal their theological differences; for example, they debated Calvinism publicly. Hull reports: "I took a lot of grief over both appointments from the 'impossible' crowd. Moderates were quick to assert that I had fatally compromised the new divinity school, while conservatives wanted to fire me for playing partisan politics.... Unfortunately for my bitter critics, their doom-and-gloom scenarios failed to materialize. Both the divinity school and the religion department flourished with new leadership" (p. 77).

Then he adds: "I came away from this whole episode convinced that is not healthy for either conservatives or moderates to associate only with their own ideological crowd. It makes them too totalitarian in what they claim, too contemptuous of those who differ with them, and too dependent on group loyalty to risk diversity" (p. 77).

The 1987 report of the Peace Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention includes the claim that most Southern Baptists believe that Adam and Eve were real people, that the authors of the Bible wrote the books attributed to them, that the miracles reported in the Bible were supernatural interventions, and that the historical narratives of the Bible were reports of events that actually occurred.

Hull describes this list, which had been drawn up hastily, as "an effort to wrest control of what the Bible means from a handful of scholars with their endless technical problems" (p. 63).

Hull, who was a New Testament scholar, had doubts about whether he "could work with conservative leaders such as these. During the almost forty years since then, my mind has gradually changed regarding the issues involved" (p. 78).

What changed his mind was reflection on the profoundly Christian faith and life of numerous people, including two of his uncles, who would unhesitatingly affirm this list of ideas: "I am not going to spend my final time on earth fighting [such persons] in the SBC. Anyone who wants to know and live by the Scripture is a friend of mine" (p. 79).

Hull concedes that it is difficult to put his understanding of conservatism and liberalism into practice, but he believes it is possible. And it is morally and spiritually necessary: "How can we talk about loving one another and then show disdain for those who understand some debated point of doctrine differently? Are we willing to pray for a Spirit-inspired change of heart, daring to reach across chasms of contempt and affirm--indeed embrace--those of every ideology, all of which were nailed to the cross when God through Christ reconciled the world until himself?" (p. 80).

I recommend this book enthusiastically. It displays the mature thinking of an outstanding educator, pastor, and New Testament scholar; a man whom we remember with respect and appreciation.--Reviewed by Fisher Humphreys, professor of divinity emeritus, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University.

[This review first appeared in the September 2015 issue of Baptists Today, and is used by permission. Conservatism and Liberalism is available at NurturingFaith.net.)

Michael (Mike) E. Williams, Sr.

Book Review Editor

Michael (Mike) E. Williams, Sr. is professor of history at Dallas Baptist University, 3000 Mountain Creek Parkway, Dallas, Texas 75211-9213.

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