Some excellent points and questions. Yes, we (liberal) Quakers have tended to have these same issues. I had never thought of how it possible for a group of people with so many individual theologies can also have the same political/social justice views. Interesting conundrum!

In one way your friend Telford hits it on the head: the unifying element tends to be a kind of philosophy versus a set of religious/spiritual beliefs. In this case, that would be liberalism (in the sense of how we tend to define it here in the States) - a greater emphasis on an individual's determination to decide the specifics of theology. This point of view also values what they believe to be social structures and policies that reinforce the ability for the individual to determine such things (hence, less "authority" or "centralization" of authority).

Of course, as some on the right side of things have understandably criticized, this approach involves a kind of "political correctness" to conform to this style of individualism, too. So individuals that deviate too much find themselves silenced, rejected, avoided, and/or ignored. On the other hand, doesn't a community have the right and obligation to ensure that its values are upheld?

Hmm.

At All Saints, we seem to believe it is easier to know what God wants (we tend to be fond of Micah 6:8) than who God is (we tend to be fond of Job 38). We can be clear on the former and vague on the latter and still feel ourselves to be quite consistent.

Liberal churches are easy to caricature, but no, we aren't making this stuff up as we go along. And (with all due respect to Telford) I've BEEN to Christian Assembly Eagle Rock. (My ex-wife was, years ago, on something called their Access team.) I see a church community there just as captive to the culture as All Saints Pasadena, just captive to different elements and in different ways.

You're right, that is what Telford means by liberalism. I guess it's ultimately a question of what leads to human fulfillment. Quakers and other liberal Christians (and secular liberals, for that matter) believe that it's arrived at largely by letting the individual go his own way, so they enforce the right of individuals to do so. They do, indeed, have a right to uphold those values.

I think the problem arises when they don't quite realize that this is a value with which people reasonably disagree, and not just "tolerance." After all, Catholics and Catholic-type Christians believe that human fulfillment comes from belonging to the Body of Christ and conforming to its teachings, and since man is fallen letting him go his own way leads to disaster. Even people who aren't quite that Augustinian about it may have a natural urge for communal religious experience instead of individual (like Martin Kelley in his comment to your post).

So the irony is that such groups end up enforcing upon individuals the group norm that individuals should not be subjected to group norms! This is why even though I believe in room for dissent, I don't think that individualism works as the overarching principle for a community.

Sorry, that last comment was directed at Joe (Hugo posted while I was writing). Anyway, Hugo, I don't get what Telford sees in CA either -- after all, I left! I didn't mean to turn this into a debate on whether liberal or conservative Christians are more culturally influenced, because certainly you see lots on both sides.

Regarding the identity of God, I didn't mean a total demystification, which would be impossible in any case. It's more a question of what your source of authority is. How do you know what God wants if you don't agree on the authorities through which he is speaking? If you accept the Bible as authority, you're going to come to different conclusions than if you accept the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita as authority. If you accept all of them as authority, you are going to come to yet another set of conclusions. And if you take the individual as the only authority on himself or herself, as I just wrote, that will again change things.

So I guess it still looks more dogmatic to me than it does to you.

I think it's helpful to remember that the Christian Gospel is first and foremeost a proclamation about God. The earliest creed was simply "Jesus is Lord" - very much a statement about who God is. This isn't to say that it doesn't have implications for how we live (e.g. Rom. 6), but the NT makes it clear, I think, that the Good News is what God has done, which makes our new life possible. Maybe that's just my Lutheranism coming out...

"I'm talking about membership in a Methodist church, which used to mean some level of commitment toward living a Christian life."

This is very true historically, beginning with the Methodist societies/clubs that Charles and John Wesley founded. But now I'd say that unfortunately "membership" means having your name on some sort of official church list, and as you and Heather wrote, so what? President Bush doesn't attend a United Methodist church anyway though he is still a "member!" So I'm not sure that if we kicked him out he would care very much.

At my mom's church in a small town, there was this older man who got a little too touchy-feely with the women while passing the peace, and the women spoke to him but he didn't stop. In fact, he was offended and said they'd misinterpreted him. Finally, the pastor got involved and met with him - so it kind of followed Matthew 18. But the man still did not repent; he only got angry. My mom was telling me about it and I just blurted out, "bar him from the eucharist." I don't know what happened (I'll have to remember to ask my mom but I'm sure her pastor didn't do that). In that situation, with an unrepentant sinner who is causing division in the church and harming his own soul by his perversion of the passing of the peace...indeed, what would it mean to treat him as a tax collector or Gentile? What would it mean to forgive him, if you literally can't pass the peace with him?

That's my modern (not-an-excommunication-but-perhaps-should've-been?) story.

I remembered another story, from Richard Lischer's memoir Open Secrets, which is about his first pastorate in a tiny church in Illinois in the 1970's. A young woman in his church is having an affair with a married man (not in his church.)

"Towards the end of our painful conversation Heather said, 'I don't care what you say, Pastor, I am keeping him,' as if he was a stray dog.

And entirely without meditation, I replied... 'Then you should not come to communion. This is between you and the church...'

Heather cries. In a few months she splits up with the man. Richard reflects on that conversation with her. "The moment had meaning for Heather only because she loved her church and was nourished by the sacrament. She knew she belonged to this community...She cried because she was ex-communitied. What happpens when you send a family member away from the table? If we were to insist on the purity of the church, where would it end?"

Lots of great discussion, I'm glad I found your blog. At its most pronounced, liberalism can be a kind of religion unto itself that attaches itself to other traditions.

I heard a rather noncommittal Quaker speak a few months ago. He told a story of being part of a panel on the US West Coast with a Muslim who afterwards said his Quaker speech sounded very Islamic. A week later the Quaker was in New York on a panel with a Jewish rabbi; afterwards the Friend went up to the rabbi to tell him that his speech had sounded Quaker. My speaker told this story to explain that deep down all religions are the same. But this was a theological statement in itself. I just had to laugh because what it proved was that a Liberal Quaker sounds like a Liberal Jew sounds like a Liberal Muslim. They all have much more agreement between them than they do with more traditional members of their own religious traditions. The rest of the speech that day wasn't very rooted in Quakerism and he left the distinct impression that his membership in the Society of Friends was almost accidental.

I'm not a theology expert by any means but there are basic tenets to modern religious Liberalism: the idea that we're all progressing forward; that old fashioned peculiarities should be toss aside; that science and rationality will teach us about God; that God is an impersonal process or mystical harmonic buzz, not an actual being that became flesh once. These assumptions tend to blur all the religious traditions into one big muddled lump. The differences are simply demographic, based mostly on lifestyle choices or political leanings.

I have to say I find it more annoying that anything else. It also feels so much like the rest of American globalist culture, which goes around enforcing a sameness into all our lives.