Theo Hobson. Reinventing Liberal Christianity. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2013. See here to buy the book.
A. The title of this book is Reinventing Liberal Christianity.
I suppose that a good place to start this post is with a definition:
What, for Theo Hobson, is Liberal Christianity? Well, Hobson talks
about a variety of historical trends and concepts that he believes have
been a part of Liberal Christianity. There are the ideas of religious
liberty and the non-establishment of any religion or church
denomination. There is the de-emphasis on ritual in favor of a mental
assent to religion. There is the attempt to ground religion in reason,
while dismissing miracles.
B. Liberal Christianity has not exactly been a straight line, as far
as I can see in reading Hobson’s book; rather, it has been more like a
tree. A belief in an emotional religious experience branched out into
Romanticism, which wanted to get emotional, not about the traditional
Christian God, but rather about nature and humanity. Hobson associates
the German authoritarianism of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries with
the Liberal State and Liberal Christianity. How that was the case, I am
not entirely certain. Hobbes believed in a powerful sovereign
safeguarding liberty, and Luther thought that the state should somehow
protect the church, so these may be parts of the equation. Hobson also
says that German Liberalism was not as liberal as it could have been, so
there is a spectrum of Liberalism, in Hobson’s mind.
C. A theme that recurs throughout Hobson’s book is that of religion
being a social glue. If religion is disestablished and secularism
prevails, what exactly will hold people together and define their
culture? Some of the thinkers whom Hobson profiles, such as Rousseau,
believed that festivals and celebrations could bind the people
together. Whether Hobson is depicting Rousseau and people with similar
sentiments during Liberalism’s heyday as Liberals is difficult to
determine; they do seem to depart from the Liberal de-emphasis on cult
and ritual. Hobson also talks about Post-Liberals, who are opposed to
secularism and believe that religion can contribute to the public life
and provide some form of social glue.
D. What does Hobson believe about religion being a social glue? My
impression is that he believes that liberty by itself can be a social
glue, something to unite and define a people, as is the case in the
United States of America. At the same time, Hobson maintains that
modern understandings of liberty have some Christian religious basis.
This goes back at least as far as the apostle Paul, who held that
Gentiles should be free from the Jewish law and circumcision, and who
proclaimed that, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (II
Corinthians 3:17). In addition, there is within the Liberal Protestant
tradition the idea that Jesus did not try to compel people to believe in
God, and that faith is something that should be embraced voluntarily
and authentically, without state coercion.
E. Hobson looks pretty Liberal, but there are times in the book when
he appears to sympathize with, or at least express understanding of,
incidents of religious intolerance. Hobson is probably not
anti-Catholic or anti-atheist, but he says that there was a social and
political rationale for the times when England suppressed Catholics and
atheists: England believed that Catholics and atheists were threatening
the social and political order. Hobson expresses similar understanding
of the recent desire in England to limit Islamic religious expressions.
F. How does Hobson propose to reinvent Liberal Christianity? What
exactly needs to be reinvented? He believes that Liberal Christianity
should shift from focusing on rationality in the direction of
emphasizing cult and ritual as the occasions for faith to be discovered
and expressed. My question in reading this book has been, “Doesn’t it
already do so?” A number of theologically liberal churches, such as the
Episcopalians, emphasize ritual. That is one reason that people (such
as recovering evangelicals) go to them: they like the liturgy. Yes,
rationality does play a role in the Episcopalian denomination, as when
Episcopalians embrace the historical-critical method, or when some of
them try to de-supernaturalize the stories of Jesus’ miracles. Liturgy
and ritual are important to them, too, however. And, as far as I know,
that has not enabled Liberal Christianity to make a dramatic comeback in
terms of its cultural influence (which I am stating as an observation,
not to gloat from a conservative evangelical perspective; contrary to
what some evangelicals may imply when they boast of their numbers,
popular does not necessarily mean correct).
G. A theme that occurs in this book is that of keeping up with the
times. Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, John Robinson, and Harvey Cox wondered how
Christianity could make sense to people in a scientific, modern,
secular age, which did not believe in miracles. Some of them were open
to saying that Christianity needed to be updated. Robinson compared
removing a belief in miracles from Christianity to Paul saying that
Gentiles did not have to be circumcised to become part of the people of
God: Paul removed a hindrance to people believing in God. One can
legitimately ask how truth can be updated, and one can also point out
that Paul never said that he was removing a hindrance to Gentiles
believing in God; rather, Paul tried to ground his belief in Scripture,
as opposed to trying to keep up with the times. On the one hand, I do
not think that keeping up with the times, by itself, is a worthy excuse
for theological changes: I believe that theologians have to deal with
the historical-critical method, for example, because it has true
insights and poses genuine challenges to traditional religious views,
not because it is a hip new belief (albeit not that new, since it has
been around for centuries). On the other hand, I believe that God
speaks to people where they are, and that God often communicated who he
was through people’s cultural categories, both in the Hebrew Bible and
also the New Testament. Can God do the same with us today?
Good book! I would like to read more about Bonhoeffer, particularly
after reading in this book about his struggles with faith and
Christianity.