The political tension of the past four years has polarized our country in ways not seen in recent history. One need only spend a few minutes on social media to acquire “participative knowledge” (to use a phrase from St. Maximus) of just how vitriolic American political discourse has become. The terms “conservative” and “liberal”, which formerly served as descriptors of one’s political leanings, now more frequently function as terms of slander. The political right views the political left as elitist, soft on law, enabling, amoral, and too preoccupied with the world at the expense of America. Likewise, many political liberals view their conservative counterparts as racist, ignorant, narrow minded, lacking compassion, too preoccupied with martial power, oppressively moralistic, and fixated on an idealized (and non-existent) past.[1]
The rancor and bifurcation in our contemporary political discourse means that neither side views the other as having anything valuable to offer. Indeed, it’s worse than that. Both sides view the other side as obstacles on the way to a better world. Historian Tom Holland, in his recent book, Dominion: The Making of the Western World,[2] makes a persuasive case that the church has not escaped the tension between humanity’s innate conservative and liberal impulses. In his sweeping account of Christianity’s legacy in the West, Holland chronicles the historic (and undulating) struggle within Christianity between these impulses. On the one hand, Christianity—from its earliest days—offered a conservative vision to the world; its biblical commands and divinely-sanctioned standards called for human beings to restrain and chastise their natural appetites in the service of loving God and neighbor. On the other hand, Christianity’s very call to love—especially the lesser, the broken, the poor, and the disenfranchised—fueled a liberal impulse that worked for the liberation and thriving of the marginalized. Christian views of power are likewise understood within this larger polarity. The valorization of power is a distinctly conservative impulse; the empowerment of the powerless is a distinctly liberal impulse. These two impulses—conservative and liberal—Holland argues, are woven into the very fabric of Christianity. And both have been essential in establishing the Western tradition’s emphasis on freedom, democracy, and human rights.
Holland, I believe, is exactly correct. Insofar as both conservative and liberal impulses flow from the heart and nature of God, both impulses are entirely and thoroughly Christian, even if the various political expressions of these impulses do not always land on the mark. The conservative impulse of Christianity seeks to work within the frame of “the world as it is”. It values order, repentance, structure, fixed norms, rules, the meritocracy, justice, self-agency, self-restraint, and accountability. And perhaps above all, the conservative impulse of Christianity valorizes strength, insofar as strength is the effective agent that protects and establishes all other virtues. These conservative values, of course, are consistent with a God of order and rules and justice and power. In his hegemony and sovereignty over all creation, God rewards according to merit and has communicated an ethical framework that cuts with the grain of creation; likewise, he has established structures of worldly power designed to secure justice and order.
The liberal impulse of Christianity runs in the same direction along the other side of the narrow way. Christianity’s liberal impulses, broadly considered, seek to progress beyond the (too often oppressive) norms of “the world as it is” into “the world as it should be”. The liberal impulse of Christianity values compassion, equality, dignity, fairness, patience, unmerited grace, care for the marginalized, and a reliance upon community. And perhaps above all, the liberal impulse of Christianity valorizes love, insofar as love is the final and ultimate telos of the Christian life. These liberal impulses—just as much as Christianity’s conservative impulses—are inherently part of Christianity. God is a God of love who grants his grace unconditionally and shows special concern for the marginalized and forgotten. His call to love the unloved is the ultimate expression of his will in the world.
A primary take-away from Holland’s book (and the Bible, of course ) is that both impulses are necessary for the flourishing of Christianity’s vision for the world. The conservative impulse, divorced from its liberal counterpart, becomes hard edged and unkind. The liberal impulse, cut off from its conservative counterpart, becomes permissive and enabling. And both impulses—left too long in isolation from each other—become totalizing and oppressive. The mutual dependency of both impulses was dramatically (and painfully) illustrated in the Second World War.[3] The fascism of Hitler was driven by a rabid conservative impulse—rabid precisely because it had been severed from a liberal telos. Hitler began the war as an ally of Stalin. But when Hitler broke their non-aggression pact in 1941 it was not because he had lost faith in Stalin’s political vision. Hitler had never shared Stalin’s vision; in fact he had despised it. Hitler’s vision for Europe was a nationalist vision of the German übermensch—the German superman—at the ruling center of a racially purified Europe. Hitler despised any notion of European equality; his power grab was fundamentally power turned inward in service of self. Stalin’s vision, drawn from Marx and Lenin, ran in the exact opposite direction (which is why Hitler hated it). Stalin’s vision was a liberal socialist/communist vision which sought to establish Marx’s socialist dream of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Hitler’s hyper-conservative fascism pursued the hegemony of the German nation state; Stalin’s hyper-liberal communism sought the economic equality of a utopian and classless Europe.
The deep and profound irony is that Hitler and Stalin—while aiming at seemingly opposite ideals, ended up in the same place. Their respective regimes represented the two most totalizing and oppressive powers of World War II. Together, they embody the classic “horseshoe effect”—where two ideas at the top of the horseshoe start out running in opposite directions, only to end up in essentially in the same spot as they reach the bottom of the horseshoe. The conservative impulse of Hitler, unrestrained by a liberating counter-balance, resulted in despotism and millions of German deaths. And Stalin’s liberal impulse, untethered from a conservative counterbalance, also resulted in despotism and millions of Russian deaths.
The pagan world is constantly recapitulating the same error. Estranged from each other, the left and right polarities can only oppress. Christianity properly holds together right and left in a way that brings life to the world.
The Proper Relationship between Conservative and Liberal Impulses
Honest Christians will agree that the conservative and liberal impulses are not inherently opposed to each other. Mature Christians on the right affirm the liberal impulse to love, and Christians on the left affirm the conservative impulse for rules and law. But clarifying how these two impulses fit together is as important as insisting that they do fit together. Christianity’s conservative and liberal impulses do not merely sit side by side like two distinct but equally important value sets—as though sometimes we use one, and sometimes the other. Nor are they mixed together like two colors on a pallet, with a view to creating a new third color (purple). Nor do they exist like two equally weighted ballasts sitting on opposite ends of a balanced beam.
Instead, Christianity’s conservative and liberal impulses fit together like the foundation and superstructure of a building. In any building project, the visible superstructure of a building is built upon a solid foundation. The superstructure is the telos, or end of the foundation; without the superstructure, the foundation is merely a slab of concrete. Yet the superstructure cannot support itself. Without the foundation, the superstructure is doomed to topple in on itself. In the same way that a building’s superstructure is necessarily built upon a building’s foundation, so too Christianity’s liberal impulses are necessarily built upon, and draw their staying power, from Christianity’s conservative impulses. Both must be fully operative, and properly ordered, for the building of faith to prosper.
As such, neither Christianity’s conservative or liberal impulses comprise the entire edifice of faith. Conservatively speaking, Christians are called to strength, to obedience, self-control, self-agency, and adherence to God’s law in order to bless the world with emancipating love. Conservativism, if neglectful of its liberal telos, becomes totalizing and oppressive. This was the mistake of the Pharisees—they adhered to the Jewish Law with conservative zeal, but forgot that the Sabbath was made for man. Love, not rules, is the telos of rules.
In the same way, though Christianity’s liberal impulse forms the visible edifice of faith, it cannot support itself. Christians are called to fairness and love, but how can they know what love and fairness are, if they neglect God’s moral order? Liberalism, if neglectful of God’s ethical and moral framework, topples in upon itself and ends up just as totalizing and oppressive as its conservative counterpart. This was the mistake of the early Christian Gnostics—they embraced the love and liberation of God, but rejected the moral framework of God and sowed chaos in the church. True liberty is built upon, and supported by the sustaining power of a fixed conservative ethical framework.
(For an example of the mutually supporting relation of these two impulses, see the Appendix below on John Paul II’s articulation of human sexuality.)
Christian Left and Right vs. Political Left and Right
Most of us resonate more readily—by personality and life experience—with either the conservative or liberal impulse of Christianity. This is natural, and in keeping with St. Paul’s vision of the “many members” of the one body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12). It takes both left and right impulses to build the Church. But the footing gets treacherous when the body of Christ moves out into our politicized and polarized culture.
The United States, just as much as the Church, is in need of the left and right impulses. And historically, the U. S. has moved (perhaps better stated, lurched) back and forth between these two impulses. At times, our nation’s conservative impulses have been properly chastised by our liberal impulses (as was the case with slavery), and at other times our liberal impulses have been resisted and chastised by our conservative impulses (as was the case during World War II). Both impulses have been good and necessary. Taken on the whole, both political parties—driven as they are by each respective impulse, are striving for the same basic goal—a better country. Following the Augustinian insight that everyone can’t help but seek their own good, even if they are deceived about the nature of the Good, both political parties are seeking the greatness of America. (Neither party has in its platform, “Ruin America”.) While there are legitimate differences between political parties, the differences chiefly amount to differences of means, rather than differences of goals. Christopher Bracey makes this basic point in his book on the history of black conservativism in America. Bracey writes as a self-described liberal, a black Harvard-trained sociologist who is attempting to help his fellow black liberals understand the logic of black conservativism. Core to his thesis is the idea that both black liberals and black conservatives have been seeking the same thing—racial empowerment for the black community. The political means by which they have pursued this goal, however, have been quite distinct. Like a true enneagram nine, Bracey is concerned to hold together both impulses on the way to racial empowerment. At the conclusion of his book he writes:
Both liberals and conservatives must understand that neither has the entire solution to the problems facing blacks....Both the liberal and the conservative traditions of racial empowerment have entailed real sacrifices and trade-offs....It is vital that both conservatives and liberals appreciate the complex manner in which both liberals and conservative ideas can be understood to advance as well as undermine prospects for racial empowerment.[4]
Christians do well to heed Bracey’s advice. All Christians are called to the same orthodoxic and orthopraxic vision of the world—a world in which human beings flourish into all that God has called them to be. Both left and right impulses will be necessary for bringing this about. Insofar as we live in a democracy and have been given a say (however minor) in determining the political means by which our country pursues its national ideal, it makes sense that conservative minded Christians will seek the national ideal via politically conservative means, and liberally minded Christians will seek this national ideal via politically liberal means.
This is not inherently problematic, so long as we are pursuing the same Christianized national ideal. I am fully aware that good Christian people will have differing opinions about whether the cultural moment necessitates a lean to the left or a lean to the right. Political issues are enormously complex, and one never quite knows what chain of events will follow from pulling a particular lever. God has very clearly given us a vision of the ideal society. And he has given us the left and right impulses to bring it about (insofar as such an ideal is possible prior to the eschaton). But he has not always been explicit about which impulse needs to take precedence in every particular moment. We must be generous to our fellow Christians who embody the ying to our yang of these mutually Christian and necessary impulses.
The problem arises when we allow the conservative vs. liberal polarization of North American politics to drive a wedge between a properly Christian conservative and liberal synergy. The scorched earth nature of American politics has required Christians to transcend the political frames in which the conservative/liberal polarity is so often viewed. But we have largely failed to do this.[5] The more tightly we have meshed together our Christian left/right impulses with our political left/right impulses, the more we have allowed our country’s political left/right polarization to force us into an unhealthy Christian left/right polarization. Political conservatives and liberals—especially in the Trump era—now view each other as the enemy. Christians, insofar as we have unnecessarily identified ourselves with American politics, rather than Kingdom politics, have likewise come to view Christians across the aisle as the enemy. The inevitable result is that our churches have now mostly bifurcated along political party lines. Very infrequently do we find churches with an equal distribution of members from both political parties. The problem with politically homogenous churches is that they will tend to be churches that have lost their Christian left/right wholeness. If your goal as a conservative pastor is to get rid of (or rebuke, which amounts to the same thing) all the politically liberal people in your congregation, be warned that you are almost certainly driving Christianity’s liberal impulse out of your church—an impulse that is necessary for building the edifice of faith. And of course, the problem runs in both directions. This political homogenizing of our churches is not just a political loss, but a distinctly Christian loss. A congregation needs the full scope of Christianity’s left and right impulses. If allowing for political left/right diversity is the price I must pay to maintain Christian left/right diversity, then I am more than willing to pay it.
As pastors, we should be striving to create congregations that leave genuine room for the political diversity of both left and right—not because political diversity is good in itself; but because churches with political diversity will almost certainly be churches that contain both the left and right impulses of Christianity. We must not let our nation’s political polarization cause us to polarize away from each other within the church. As the people of God, we must continually strive to embrace both impulses of Christianity—the foundational conservative impulse, as well as the liberal end for which the conservative impulse exists.
Conclusion
Like the hypostatic union of Christ’s human and divine natures, Christianity consists equally of both liberal and conservative impulses; these two impulses, like Christ’s two natures, exist independently, unconfused and in their proper relation to each other. Just as Christ’s divine nature undergirds and supports his human nature, so too does Christianity’s conservativism undergirds and support its liberalism.
This resource is part of the series Kingdom Politics. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Gerald Hiestand is the Co-Founder and Board Chair of the Center for Pastor Theologians. He has over 15 years of pastoral ministry experience and currently serves as the Senior Pastor of Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, IL. He is the editor and author/co-author of several books, including The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting an Ancient Vision. He holds a PhD in Classics from the University of Reading. He is also a founding member of the St. Anselm Fellowship of the CPT.
Appendix: Conservative and Liberal Sexuality in John Paul II
An example of the mutually supporting relation of these two impulses can be seen in John Paul II’s articulation of sexual relations. John Paul II’s vision of sexuality is established on the conservative foundation of continence, but it is pointed toward the liberal impulse of self-giving love. Throughout his Theology of the Body, John Paul II frequently emphasizes the need for chastity and self-control. Accordingly, he defines continence in both negative and positive terms. Negatively, continence is the “ability to abstain,” and exercise “mastery” [6] over one’s sexual actions. In other words, continence is not acting in ways contrary to chastity; it is restraining (herding) one’s sexual conduct into the lawful confines of the spousal relationship. This vision is consistent with St. Paul’s conservative admonition in 1 Thessalonians 4:4-5 where he states that each person must learn how to “possess his own vessel in holiness and honor.” John Paul II’s perspective on continence is fundamentally conservative, but as we move deeper into his vision of continence, we begin to sense the liberal telos of this vision. Positively considered, continence moves beyond mere abstinence; it includes “the ability to orient the respective [sexual] reactions both as to their content and as to their character.”[7] Which is to say, continence is not merely restraining one’s sexual conduct, but also positively “aiming” one’s sexual desire toward its proper liberal telos, which in John Paul II’s framework, is spousal “self-giving love”.
This liberal impulse is given full expression in John Paul II’s concept of sex as the “gift of self.” John Paul II rejects the Cartisian mind/body dualism (i.e., that the human person is a mind that has a body) and insists that the human person is a body. Thus the sharing of one’s body with another is the sharing of one’s person. Sex then, is a form of personal communion, a means of connecting and enacting the spousal union. The beauty and power of this “self-gift” is that it is unmediated. Unlike the gift of a flower, or a new house, or a diamond ring, the gift of self does not merely symbolize spousal love; rather it tangibly embodies spousal love. There is no deeper or more liberal form of communication. Thus, “The fullest, the most uncompromising form of love consists precisely in self-giving, in making one's inalienable and non-transferable ‘I’ someone else’s property.”[8] In spousal sexuality, the husband does not merely give a gift of love to his wife; he himself is the gift of love that he gives to his wife. Likewise, the wife herself is the gift of love that she gives to the husband. For John Paul II, this vision of sex as “self-gift” is the liberal telos—the end toward which his conservative vision of continence points. In short, the Christian is conservatively continent in order to give himself or herself away liberally as a gift of love.[9]
John Paul II rightly helps us see that we can only liberally give away what we first conservatively possess. Christianity’s conservative impulse channels and restrains human sexuality, but it does so not as an end in itself; the goal of continence is the free gift of self.[10] In a counter-intuitive way, conservative boundaries give birth to freedom and life-giving love. The conservative and liberal impulses of sexuality run aground (and amok) when severed from their proper inter-related nesting. Conservative sexuality, when not pointed toward the liberal telos of love, must either be completely suppressed, or become totalizing and tyrannical. In the same way, the liberal impulse of sexuality, when not set upon the fixed foundation of Christian ethics, becomes libertine and indulgent. Sexuality, unhinged from self-restraint and a transcendent ethical structure leads ultimately to excessive promiscuity, to emotional pain, abortion, and out of wed lock births.[11]
Notes:
[1] The same bifurcation between conservative and liberal exists in Christian theology. Conservative theologians view their liberal counterparts as compromisers, soft on truth, soft on ethics, and too beholding to culture. Likewise, liberal theologians view conservatives as too rigid, out of step with the Spirit, more concerned with the church’s past than its future, and too dismissive of the culture.
[2] Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western World (Little Brown, 2019).
[3] Holland covers much of this territory in Dominion. For his account of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, see pp. 435-42. For Hitler and fascism, see 451-60.
[4] John Paul II, Male and Female He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston, Mass.: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), 650; 129:5.
[5] Christopher Alan Bracey, Saviors or Sellouts: The Promise and Peril of Black Conservativism, from Booker T. Washington to Condoleezza Rice (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2008), 196-97.
[6] James Davidson Hunter makes a convincing case of this in his, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). See especially pp. 101-49.
[7] John Paul II, Male and Female, 650, 129:5.
[8] John Paul II, Love and Responsibility, 97.
[9] Sarah Ruden makes the same basic point about Paul’s vision for sexuality in her Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Time (New York: Image Books, 2010). She notes that Paul’s conservative sexual ethic was intended to stymie the very frequent and rapacious practices of the Greco-Roman world. “He challenged centuries of execrable practice in seeking a more just, more loving society” (71). Which is to say, the telos of Paul’s conservative sexual ethic was liberality. “And he gets called a bigot,” Ruden adds, ironically.
[10] This conservative-foundation-supporting-a-liberal-end provides a helpful framework for thinking about the whole range of issues related to sexuality and gender. For how this framework informs male and female power relations, see my “‘Put Pain Like That Beyond My Power:’ A Christocentric Theodicy Regarding the Inequality of Male and Female Power,” in Gerald Hiestand and Todd Wilson, eds., Beauty, Order and Mystery: A Christian Vision of Human Sexuality (Downers Grove, IVP Academic, 2017), 101-18 See also Holland, Dominion, 508-17 for how this conservative/liberal dynamic informs our understanding of the recent #metoo movement.
[11] Holland correctly notes that the failure of a culture to restrain its sexual impulses invariably hurts women, even more so than men. Abortion, emotional pain, and out of wedlock births are disproportionately more damaging to women.
