Religious liberalism
Religious liberalism is a philosophical stance that posits the coexistence of multiple religious truths and emphasizes the importance of individual interpretation over a singular authoritative doctrine. It emerged from Enlightenment thought, particularly influenced by philosophers like René Descartes, who argued for the primacy of individual reasoning in determining belief. This approach has led to a view that all religious creeds merit tolerance, as they are seen as subjective perspectives rather than objective truths.
In contrast to religious orthodoxy and fundamentalism, which uphold specific interpretations and deny the need for personal interpretation, religious liberalism encourages believers to explore and derive meaning from their own experiences. This has been particularly significant in Christianity and Judaism, where movements such as Reform and Conservative Judaism have allowed for reinterpretation of traditional beliefs in the light of modern understanding. Additionally, religious liberalism has impacted Islam and other Eastern religions, fostering movements toward personal autonomy in interpreting sacred texts.
Ultimately, religious liberalism invites a more pluralistic approach to spirituality, where diverse paths to understanding the divine are acknowledged and respected.
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Religious liberalism
The term religious liberalism refers to a philosophical or theological belief that many religious truths are simultaneously possible and that no single revealed or derived religious tenet can automatically be privileged over another. This would be consistent with the aphorism popular during the early twenty-first century that "there are many paths to one God," though the true religious liberal would refuse to privilege on any a priori basis the idea of either God’s existence or God’s unity. Religious liberalism is a rare belief in that a devoted adherent might well agree with the characterization of a fierce opponent, such as this by Roman Catholic theologian Cardinal Newman: "Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another. . . . It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy." Religious liberalism is often contrasted with notions of religious orthodoxy, which privilege one particular interpretation of revealed truth over all others, or, especially, with religious fundamentalism, which tends to deny the need for any interpretation at all.
History
Religious liberalism traces its origin at least as far back as the philosopher Rene Descartes, who declared the thinking individual as the source of all that was to be judged as real. An implication of Descartes’ philosophy was that individual belief is not properly coerced by forces external to the self, including the authority of a church or synagogue hierarchy or even the truth claims of a received text. The idea of the primacy of individual thought in the personal determination of religious truth was further developed by the Romantic philosophers and theologians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who understood individual experience as a distinctive source of infinite meaning.
The effect of philosophical modernism on religious liberalism, beginning in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, was to introduce a historical perspective into evaluations of religious truth: what is perceived as truth at any given moment is determined not only by the individuality of the minds that perceive such truth but also by the times during which those minds are active. The notion, then, of real "objective" truth recedes further and further into the background.
Beliefs
Christianity was the first of the major world religions to confront the challenges of religious liberalism, as the philosophical notion of liberalism originated in scholarly circles during the European Enlightenment. Particularly important to both Christian and Jewish religious liberalism was the general acceptance of so-called "scientific methods" of biblical study. This new approach to the Bible asserted that the Bible should be studied and interpreted as any other ancient text. While the Bible might illuminate supernatural realities, it came about by the ordinary workings of human beings. The elimination of supernatural origins from discussions of the Bible became an intellectual hallmark of religious liberalism, and a point of particular contention with more conservative thinkers who did posit the supernatural origin of the text.
Religious liberalism took on many different forms in the development of modern-day Christian thought. Among them was a kind of religious naturalism that discarded all the supernatural elements of Christian tradition. Another form was a version of modernism that accepted elements of traditional Christian teaching that could be reconciled with what were considered the "best parts" of contemporary science and culture. A third form of religiously liberal belief was championed by the Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, a New York City pastor of the First Presbyterian Church from 1918 to 1925 and the Park Avenue Riverside Baptist Church from 1925 to 1946. In his 1922 sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Fosdick proposed early ideas of modern Christian liberalism. He posited that theology could only be "tentative, partial, and very faulty presentations of the Divine Reality, which is far beyond our adequate comprehension." Thus, the experience of the individual comes first, unmediated by dogma that claims to be authoritative.
Enlightenment ideas began to penetrate Judaism in the early to mid-nineteenth century; by the 1870s, two influential, essentially "liberal" Jewish denominations (Reform and Conservative) had emerged and caused traditional Jewish orthodoxy to formally define itself by contrast. The traditional authority structure of Judaism depended upon faith in the unbroken chain of tradition from Moses at Mt. Sinai through the authoritative teachers of each generation. Such faith was challenged by critical bible studies and by the illumination of the history of changing religious observance that had long masqueraded as being static. The effect of this challenge in many circles was to empower the individual to make their own choices about Jewish belief and observance. Ideally, the individual would be instructed by the beliefs and practices of past generations and by current community standards, but such strictures would not bind them.
Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other Eastern religions have each experienced certain internal dynamics that are related to religious liberalism in its Western sense, as they have also responded to Western religious liberalism during the period of their contact with the West. Within Islam, particularly a scripture-based faith like Judaism and Christianity, religious liberalism has centered on new techniques of literary criticism that have challenged the hegemony of traditional interpretation. Some liberal Muslims, for instance, reject the authority of the hadith literature while following the Qur’an alone. Others still accept both Qur’an and hadith, but make each individual responsible for their own process of ijtihad, legal reasoning to arrive at pious practice. This process was traditionally reserved for only the most revered scholars of each generation. This broadening of the basis for more personal religious autonomy is strikingly similar to developments within liberal Judaism.
Many twenty-first-century religious leaders and theologists have contributed to modern religious liberalism. Universal Live Church and Church of Christ pastor Michael Dowd incorporated ecological research into his religious teachings, coining the term Grace Limits to refer to Earth's carrying capacity in his three-part Standing for the Future sermon series. John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal bishop, embraced religious liberalism and supported the church's inclusion of the LGBTQIA+ community. He outlined his beliefs in many books, including Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile (1999), A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born (2002), and Unbelievable: Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today (2018).
Bibliography
Douthat, Ross. "What Is Liberal Christianity?" The New York Times, 16 July 2012, archive.nytimes.com/douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/what-is-liberal-christianity. Accessed 1 Jan. 2025.
Loconte, Joseph, and Mustafa Akyol. "Is Liberalism Good for Religions?" CATO Institute, 2019, www.cato.org/policy-report/julyaugust-2019/liberalism-good-religions. Accessed 1 Jan. 2025.
Miller, Robert Moats. Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet. Oxford UP, 1985.
Newman, Cardinal. "Biglietto Speech." The Newman Reader, National Institute for Newman Studies, www.newmanreader.org/works/addresses/file2.html. Accessed 1 Jan. 2025.
"Religious Liberalism in America." Religions in Minnesota, religionsmn.carleton.edu/exhibits/show/jrlc/historical-context/liberalism. Accessed 1 Jan. 2025.
Schmidt, Leigh Eric, and Sally M. Promey. American Religious Liberalism. Indiana UP, 2012.
Wacker, Grant. "Religious Liberalism and the Modern Crisis of Faith." Divining America: Religion in American History, National Humanities Center, nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/liberal.htm. Accessed 1 Jan. 2025.