I was reading Michael Patton's blog today and he made a comment that I thought was pretty interesting:
"In one of our annual two-day meetings about ten years ago, we got to discussing theological liberalism during lunch. . . . Most of the scholars on this committee were theologically liberal, and one of them casually mentioned that, as far as he was aware, 100% of all theological liberals came from an evangelical or fundamentalist background. I thought his numbers were a tad high since I had once met a liberal scholar who did not come from such a background. I’d give it 99%. Whether it’s 99%, 100%, or only 75%, the fact is that overwhelmingly, theological liberals do not start their academic study of the scriptures as theological liberals. They become liberal somewhere along the road."
I thought that was an interesting observation. Of course I'm not aware of any academic studies to verify the numbers (although that would be an interesting study), but at least from an observational perspective, it's sorta ironic that those who carry the torch for Biblical liberalism most highly originally cut their teeth on the theology designed to guard itself against liberalism. I mean, what is fundamentalism or evangelicalism if there is no liberalism or modernism?
I think the common assumption is that theological liberals become liberals because they're too close to liberal areas of the country/ liberal academic institutions/ liberal churches/ liberal parents, and not grounded enough in good old fashioned evangelicalism. If Patton's right, it makes you wonder #1, how good a job evangelicalism is doing in really grounding people in good theology in a way that's defensible. or #2, How important are the categories to begin with?
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