Radical Catholicism and Ross Douthat's Liberal Christianity

A recent editorial in the New York Times by Ross Douthat, titled "Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?", has been making the rounds. In this Douthat, commenting on the General Convention of the Episcopal Church where it approved a rubric for blessing same-sex couples, holds up the Episcopal Church as exemplary of two significant trends: (1) the capitulation of liberal Christianity to cultural norms and patterns; and (2) the radical decline of attendance and membership in liberal-leaning churches. 


For Douthat these two trends are not unrelated but rather are intrinsically connected. Douthat argues, in fact, that the pattern of parishioner exodus has been caused by the accommodationist spirit of liberal Christianity; the Episcopal Church is par excellence of this for Douthat, as it has experienced a steep membership decline of roughly 23% over the past decade, which Douthat ties explicitly to its departure from traditional orthodoxy and its drift into "one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States." [Douthat's lifting up of the Episcopal Church was preceded by a rather scathing, over-the-top commentary in the Wall Street Journal.]

But, the Episcopal Church is not alone in this, as Douthat points out that virtually across the board all the mainline denominations have experienced severe drops in attendance – the sole standouts being those "politically conservative" but "theologically shallow" congregations (presumably the megachurches populating the evangelical Protestant world).

There are, in Douthat's thesis, two underlying premises that determine his analysis of the present situation. First, Douthat assumes a fundamental cultural dividing line beginning in the 1960s, whereby society as a whole and American Christianity in particular were thrown into chaos on account of the upheavals in social, political, and sexual norms – in other words, the "relativism" injected into those discussions is the ground-point of the divisiveness on display in contemporary culture. [Of course, absent from Douthat's editorial is any mention of the machinations and engineering of the hard-rightwing, which has turned the screws intensely on the politicalisation of religion and the hardening of partisan rhetoric.]

Second, and related to the first assumption, is Douthat's conviction that Christian liberalism has become unmoored from its previous grounding in a robust, conversionist faith and adherence to doctrine, as exemplified by the Social Gospel movement and the civil rights movement [examples of a progressive social vision emanating from deep personal and biblical spirituality and practise, as documented by Gary Dorrien]; contemporary liberalism, by contrast, has jettisoned the commitment to the bible, prayer, and doctrine, opting instead for political and cultural "relevance."

As such, contemporary liberalism personifies the relativistic spirit of the radical upheavals of the 1960s and exchanges theological soundness for whatever current political flavour is on offer in wider society. The result, in Douthat's opinion, is the abandonment of liberal houses of worship en masse – their cavorting after relevance has made them irrelevant by and large.

The one bright spot for Douthat is the current state of the Catholic Church. One hears him breathe a sigh of relief that Benedict XVI has not capitulated to the demands of the liberal wing of the Catholic Church, for that would result in the same calamity that has befallen the others. Douthat, in fact, takes it as a sign of the strength of the Catholic Church, particularly its on-going adherence to "traditional faith" that the Vatican has reprimanded the American women religious.

The rebuke of the nuns, moreover, represents for Douthat an attempt to save them from disappearing altogether. No word, of course, on the fact that American Catholicism, bracketing the increases due to immigration, has experienced a fairly analogous decline itself – perhaps due to the nefarious business of clerical abuse of children and the collusion of bishops in covering up the crimes. [Simultaneously, whilst making moderate repairs of its image in the wake of that scandal, the bishops are now engaging in a partisan fight against a health-care act that is beneficial to society, over an issue that is overwhelmingly favoured and practised by a vast majority of Catholics, and now appear to be intractably authoritarian vis-a-vis one of the most respected of figures – nuns. Some think this might be a way of turning attention away from that 'other' matter.]

Of course, Douthat is not without his critics. A British theologian, Steve Holmes, for instance, argues that the social activism Douthat notes in the Social Gospel movement, etc., is more neatly rooted in older evangelicalism – the sort responsible for the abolitionist movement in England and America and the like. [A few other evangelicals have responded in kind to the piece.] American writer and historian Diana Butler Bass offered a sound riposte to Douthat on behalf of liberal Christianity, arguing, in effect, that it is the spirituality and practises cultivated in more progressive communities that may be the thing that keeps Christianity alive in the wake of full-scale decline across the board. Butler's analysis is buttressed by statistics that give the lie to a one-sided decline in attendance of religious worship.

What is evident is that virtually all denominations – Protestant and Catholic – are losing members, especially in the coveted demographic of young and middle-aged adults. It is, therefore, decidedly not the net result for only liberal Christianity nor can the blame be begged simply upon a boogey liberalism. The latter, quite pointedly, raises the question of what exactly Douthat even means by liberalism. He does not offer a definition of liberalism nor does his distinguish theological liberalism from political liberalism.

What do we say to this? Well, we do agree with one point and it is a point that is more implicit than explicit: that liberalism, insofar as that is understood to be a progressive social-political outlook, not only should be cultivated but that it is compatible with orthodox religious faith. In fact, we would say that orthodoxy demands progressive social and political values. This, we believe, is deeply rooted in our Catholic tradition in several ways.

First, the biblical witness is concretely clear: it is extraordinarily difficult to read the OT prophets and not feel the intense excoriation of the society's mistreatment and exploitation of the poor and marginalised – that, virtually more than anything else, is the subject of the divine judgment of the nation; such is carried forward in the teaching and ministry of Jesus, as seen in the sermon on the mount or the fleeting episode of the encounter with rich young man and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. [The first Christian communities, as seen in Acts, even abandoned the notion of private property, and ordained a diaconate specifically devoted to the most vulnerable of society – the elderly and orphans.]

Second, the patristic tradition embodies this same concern in its teaching and action. Many of the ancient Christian leaders were instrumental in the establishment of hospitals, relief for the impoverished, and securing the release of slaves and prisoners. Even more, their sermons, such as those of Basil the Great and John Chrysostom, offer stinging, radical critiques of wealth and the economic and social injustice inflicted upon the poor and oppressed of society.

Third, Catholic social teaching – much like the activist evangelicalism of the 19th c. – demands not only recognition of the fundamental dignity and equality of all persons, but their right to justice, to labour, to fair wages, to proper health and nutrition. As demonstrated by papal encyclicals like Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum and Benedict XVI's Caritas in veritate, these are universal rights for all and it demands that we work for structures that enable and guarantee those rights.

Fourth, the contemporary witness of various movements within the Catholic tradition, such as the French worker-priest movement, the Catholic worker movement of the US (started by Dorothy Day), and the various iterations of liberation theology provide ample witness to a progressive vision grounded in a deep, doctrinally rich faith – orthodoxy as the impulse to orthopraxy. That liberation theology – frequently castigated by the American right-wing – is consonant with the "traditional faith" of the Vatican, as extolled by Douthat, can be seen quite clearly in the joint publication by Gustavo Gutiérrez and Bernard Müller; Müller has just recently been appointed by Benedict XVI to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, his own previous post prior to his ascendancy to the Chair of Peter.

Moreover, we would say that the creedal tradition itself is substantially radical. The Nicene confession of the consubstantiality (homoousious) of Jesus Christ – that Christ is fully God and fully human – is a radical confession of the unbrokered and unqualified incarnation of the Word. It is all-inclusive in that the divine deigns to inhabit and unite with that which is created, in just such a way that the whole notion of creatureliness is transformed – and redefined – by this very event.

In fact, we have no anthropology or politics apart from this, even more from the ascension and reign of Christ himself. (One could argue, as well, that this has not just human significant, but environmental implications too, particularly when understood in conjunction with the cosmic christology bound up with this, so beloved by Benedict himself). We would say here that any attempt to leverage an anthropology, an ethics, or politics outside of this, particularly to exclude "others" or deny justice, whether through economic, social, religious, political, educational, et al, systems, is to countermand the gospel and the creed we confess every week.

What we have said, of course, will give rise to questions about issues like same-sex marriage or the debate over the mandate in the recent health-care legislation. We contend that these cannot be answered in the standard way – which, in current Catholic discussion, involves an end-run around the central points we've laid to take recourse in natural law or an apologetic based contextually un-attuned readings of isolated bible passages. We will, of course, have more to say about that in future posts; however, as a way of pointing towards constructive action, we would direct readers to this article by an Orthodox theologian, who makes the case for why [o]rthodox Christians should not feel compelled to vote in a way dictated by the prevailing conservative wind of the hierarchy. It is, for us, a satisfactory answer to this kind of question in particular, that is, what can we do in the voting booth. There's more to be said about we should be doing in the church and the world. It should be noted, too, that in saying this it is not a seeking out of "relevance" or cultural accommodation that we are after, but rather fidelity to the gospel and tradition, which, we'd offer, are always surprisingly ahead of us.