A Pastor's Thoughts: Conservative vs Liberal: Legitimizing Division in the Church

(Audio version; Music: "Say Something" by A Great Big World--WorshipMob cover)

Introduction

It’s the political season here in America again and with it comes the inevitable mud slinging and name calling; gutter-dwellers and slithering fear-mongerors. To say that politics in America is contentious would be a ridiculously gross understatement. Battle lines are drawn between opposing parties with their own cherished ideologies. The political parties have names but they are more appropriately known for their opposing ideologies. On one side of the ideological spectrum stand the conservatives and at the other side of the spectrum stand the liberals and it is rare that the two can find common ground to stand on. I tried to come up with a broad definition of each so you could get a general feel for the differences. It is important to remember that these definitions are specifically American. I know they may not mean the same thing in your country but you’ll be able to use my definitions to understand the point I will eventually get around to making.

Liberalism

Modern American liberalism combines the ideologies of social liberalism, social justice, and a mixed economy. Social liberalism can be understood as government provision or involvement in welfare programs, healthcare programs, education, fair housing, and job creation to name a few. On the front-lines of liberalism are matters of social justice that include voting rights for minorities, unfettered abortion rights for women, legalization of same-sex marriage, environmental management as well as many other social justice issues. By supporting a “mixed economy” I mean that liberalism advocates an economic market that is directed by both private and government influences. Economic issues for liberalism is rooted in Keynesian economic theory that believes that government must manage the macro-economy to produce desired outcomes in unemployment, inflation, and economic growth. A self-described liberal and former President of the United States, John F. Kennedy described a liberal as “Someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties.” Preceding President Kennedy was another self-described liberal and also former President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, once said of liberalism “That as new conditions and problems arise beyond the power of men and women to meet as individuals, it becomes the duty of government itself to find new remedies with which to meet them. The liberal party insists that the government has the defined duty to use all its power and resources to meet new social problems with new social controls.”

Conservatism

Modern American conservatism also combines a number of varying facets. Social conservatism tend to adopt traditional social values including free religious expression in public schools, opposition to abortion, and opposition to same-sex marriage. Conservatives are also fiscally conservative in that they believe in small government, limited regulation, low taxes, and free enterprise—specifically economic enterprise that is not artificially manipulated by the state. Conservatives are tireless in their pursuit of freedom from oppression by government—and the protection of government against oppression. One of the cornerstones of conservatism is liberty—political liberty; the liberty to speak openly and without censorship on matters of public policy. It means religious liberty; the liberty to worship without interference, or not worship at all. It also means economic liberty; the liberty to own property and to allocate resources without coercion in an economy free of government or other artificial manipulation. Essential to conservatism is a defined and predictable legal system that allows its citizenry the freedom to live within clearly prescribed rules that are equally enforced—Meaning that its officials and its citizenry are subject to the same laws enforced uniformly.

A strong belief in God is also attributed to conservatism although it is by no means exclusive to conservatism nor does it mean that all conservatives believe in God. Nevertheless, faith in God forms a kind of foundation for its beliefs about justice, virtue, fairness, charity, community, and duty. Conservative ideology is tied to the idea that there is an allegiance to God that transcends politics and therefore sets the standard for politics. Conservatives believe there must be an authority greater than man, greater than any government or ruler: government cannot demand our absolute obedience or attempt to control every aspect of our lives. There must be a moral order, conservatives believe, that undergirds political order. This pillar of conservatism does not mean mixing up faith and politics, and it certainly does not mean settling religious disputes politically.

I’ll grant you that I have used a very broad brush to paint a picture of modern American liberalism and conservatism. There are many more intricacies that would serve to further clarify both especially with respect to belief in God which exists within both ideologies to a greater or lesser extent. Additionally, I fully realize that the description of both is actually reversed in other places in the world. Nevertheless, my purpose is to demonstrate the deep division between the two ideologies and I think I have demonstrated that many of their founding principles are in direct opposition to each other. So what difference does this make? Well the difference is that people bring these deep divisions into the Church and last week’s lesson, Hated For Christ, is a perfect example. I received countless comments on one of the public message boards where I also post my weekly lessons and many of the comments were prefaced with I am a “conservative” Christian or I am a “liberal” Christian. Not surprising, the comments expressed the deep division between the two ideologies I just described. In fact, the divisions were so deep that some of the comments were laced with vile profanity coming from people claiming to be Christians directed at others claiming to be Christians. By the time I was able to wade through the many comments, I realized that the Church was actually becoming a direct reflection of the culture instead of the other way around. The Church is being informed by the culture instead of not only informing but also transforming the culture. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the divisions that are very real and palpable in our culture have found their way into the Church. Christians are now interpreting the same biblical passages based on their conservative or liberal biases. Consequently they are informing the biblical text instead of allowing the biblical text to inform them. However, accepting that there are two different versions of the biblical text, conservative or liberal, legitimizes division in the Church. Division in the Church is nothing new but it has been destructive in all ages and something Paul was very passionate in warning the early Church about.

Subject Text

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

¹⁰I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. ¹¹My brothers, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. ¹²What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.” ¹³Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? ¹⁴I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. ¹⁶(Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) ¹⁷For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Context

This letter was written from Ephesus during Paul’s third missionary journey probably around 55-56 AD. The church in Corinth was established by Paul during his second missionary journey to the region from 49 AD to 51 AD. Consequently enough time has passed that the local Church has grown significantly. As a natural part of that growth, more leaders were needed to lead and teach the fledgling Church. What happened in Corinth is the same thing that happens so often today. Church members began to align themselves with different church leaders no doubt claiming that the leader that was teaching them was superior to the others. Some even insisted that they were followers of Paul as though that somehow trumped the claims of all the others. The result was that the Church became divided and Paul was having none of it.

Text Analysis

Paul wastes no time getting to his point in vv. 10-12 when he condemns the divisions within the Church in Corinth that are causing quarrels among them as reported to him by someone from Chloe’s household. When Paul says that he is “appealing” to them in Jesus’ name, he’s not really asking them nicely, he’s not really begging them even though it sounds that way. Instead, he’s warning them because Paul knew the danger that division would cause the Church. However, Paul doesn’t just say that there shouldn’t be division among. Instead, he wants them to be “perfectly united in mind and thought.” Think about the Church today and imagine what it would be like if the Church was perfectly united in mind and thought. Be honest, don’t you read those words and think to yourself, ‘yeah that could never happen today’? In fact, I’ll bet most of you can’t even begin to imagine what that kind of Church would even look like. But Paul knew because he was there when the young Church in Corinth and other cities in the region were first formed. Paul knew the beauty of unity and how it reflected the ideal of the Church that Jesus envisioned as His Bride and that’s why Paul invoked the name of Jesus in his appeal. “Whatever positive growth may have occurred in Corinth after Paul’s departure, Paul encapsulates the problems as ‘divisions’ and ‘quarrels’. The first area of strife centers on the various Christian teachers the Corinthians have encountered. After Paul left Corinth, Apollos, a convert from Alexandria, visited the city and preached there…[The Book of] Acts and Paul’s own letters are in strong agreement, down to the high quality of Apollos’ performance as a public speaker, which would surely play into the tastes of the believers there. Paul and Apollos do not appear to have regarded each other as a rival or to have been on bad terms with one another. The Corinthian Christians, however, fell into their learned behavior of measuring one against the other, arguing over their respective merits and forming factions around their favorite preacher (which may have included Cephas, or Peter, by the time 1 Corinthians was written). Attachment to Paul or to Apollos even provided an opportunity to ‘boast,’ to make a claim to honor and precedence over those who are attached to the ‘inferior’ teacher…These divisions fueled further as the householders of the Christian community sought to enhance their own prestige through claiming the more illustrious Christian orator as their partner or even client. Most itinerant teachers would be glad to accept their patronage and, indeed, would depend on it. Paul’s refusal to accept patronage [in other words, Paul refused to take money for his service to Christ] (and thus enhance the honor of any of the elites within the congregation) would also become a stumbling block in their relationships.”[1]

¹³Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? ¹⁴I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, ¹⁵so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. ¹⁶(Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.)

Let me ask you a question, does v. 13 convict you? Relax, I’m not casting stones because it has served to convict me in the past. There was a time when I was just too lazy to study God’s Word for myself to see if what I was being told by my “favorite” preacher was actually biblical. It was easier to pick a side and stay there. The result was that I expended lots of energy defending my “favorite” preacher instead of defending the truth of God’s Word. It is not by accident that the Church is defined as the Body of Christ which is why Paul asks if “Christ is divided.” It’s pretty obvious that a human body cannot survive if it is divided in some way. I don’t intend to be overly graphic but that’s the point Paul was trying to make. Like a human body cannot survive if it is divided, the Body of Christ cannot survive if it becomes divided.

The beauty of Paul’s ministry is that even though he had to defend his authority at times, he spent most of his time pointing the Church to Christ who should always be the object of their affection and devotion. Paul reminds them that he wasn’t the one who was nailed to a cross for their sins nor was his name invoked when they were baptized. Paul imagined in vv. 14-16 how the divisions could have been worse if he had baptized any more people than he actually did. Paul would have given more people cause to be divided. Don’t misunderstand what Paul is saying in these verses. Paul’s not diminishing the importance of baptism by any means even though he can’t seem to remember the few people he managed to baptize in Corinth. What Paul is trying to convey in these verses is that what’s important is not who performs the baptism but why Christians are baptized. Baptism creates a spotlight; a spotlight not on the one performing the baptism but on the one making a public profession of their faith in Jesus. In addition to being a public profession, baptism pictures the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus—death to sin, burial in the baptismal waters, and resurrection out of the baptismal waters (Col 2:12). As always, Paul wants everything to point to Jesus and baptism is no different. “The fact that Paul did baptize Gaius, Crispus, and the household of Stephanas demonstrates that Paul did not belittle baptism or refuse to baptize converts. In the particular circumstances at Corinth, on the other hand, Paul expresses thankfulness that few, if any, could claim that everything came from our through him. Ministry remains a shared partnership, and points away from itself to that to which it bears witness.”[2]

¹⁷For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

For all of Paul’s qualifications and celebrity, his life has become pretty basic—not simple by any means but basic. For the man who wrote a large portion of the New Testament, we find in v. 17 that the focus of his ministry is really about one thing, preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul knows that the Gospel he preaches, and the lessons he teaches have their origin in God. Paul hasn’t devised some new expository method to get people to believe the message represented by the cross of Christ. Paul knows the cross has the power to convey its message of salvation without the need for some deep and special wisdom conveyed by a supremely gifted and eloquent preacher. Paul wanted the focus to always be on the Gospel message generally and on Jesus more specifically. Paul was loathe to be in the spotlight and expected the same attitude out of other Church leaders. It was just another example of how Christians were supposed to be different than their surrounding culture; an example of how they were supposed to transform the culture. I want you to pay close attention to something I’m about to say in light of many of our modern church experiences. In the larger Corinthian culture, “orators became less concerned about the value of their message than about their approval rating from the audience. To preach the gospel intending to charm and captivate the crowds with clever wordsmithery in order to enhance one’s own prestige only empties the cross of its effect. Preaching the cross…invites derision, not applause. In the cross, God seeks not human ovations but contrition. What is inspired is not the preacher but the word that is preached. Paul finds it contemptible to think that preachers could ever exploit the proclamation of one who was crucified as a means to upgrade their own worldly status…Rhetorical eloquence…subverts the dynamic of the persuasive power of the cross by substituting the dynamic of human rhetorical persuasion…Sophisticated rhetoric was tied to an educational value system that ‘enshrined the beautiful and the strong in a position of social power’. ‘What persuades is speech about what is ordinarily unfit for contemplation, not a life which is cultured, wise, and powerful, but one marked by the worst shame and the lowest possible status. Paul’s rhetoric of the cross thus opposes the cultural values surrounding eloquence.’ Clever rhetoric is superficial. It shortcuts the transformation of listeners by simply gaining their assent. It appeals to emotions without touching the spiritual depths. It may reap numerous baptisms but not many true conversions.”[3]

Application

I’ve spent the week thinking and praying about the deep division in our Church with respect to the differences between those who define themselves as “liberals” and those who define themselves as “conservatives.” Are we listening to pastors who already agree with either our conservative or liberal ideology or are we listening to pastors who teach us what the bible says regardless of ideology. I’m not so naïve as to believe that I have the solution to these divisions but I would like to suggest that perhaps what is needed is a change of perspective. Instead of understanding issues facing the Church from a conservative or liberal perspective, we must attempt to understand them as either biblical or unbiblical. When we define ourselves as conservative or liberal, we approach the biblical text with a predisposed bias and as such find in the text the meaning that supports our particular biases. Additionally, we must resist the temptation to limit our biblical understanding to transform the culture to something Jesus did or didn’t say. There are 66 books in the Protestant Bible. Are we really going to insist that Jesus only had a hand in 4 of those books? The four gospels may contain the actual words of Jesus but the entire bible contains the inspiration of Jesus. This is where our theology of God intersects with our theology of the Trinity. The opening verses of John’s gospel (Jn 1:1-3) as well as some very well known verses from Paul’s letter to the Colossians (Col 1:15-20) are very important in reminding us that Jesus is the God of all the bible! The God we find in the pages of the Old Testament is the same God we find revealed in the person of Jesus in the pages of the New Testament. What does this mean? If it’s in the Bible then it is something that Jesus did or would have done or said or would have said, at that particular point in time. For example, would Jesus have condoned the destruction of an entire race including their infants and even their livestock (1 Sam 15:3)? Yes! In fact, Jesus didn’t only condone it, He issued the instruction to Saul as a member of the Godhead. Why is this important? Because we cannot hide behind our belief or disbelief in something simply on the basis that it didn’t come directly from Jesus even though there is instruction elsewhere in the Bible. Think about this—why does the bible contain 66 books inspired by God Himself if the only books that are supposed to inform are lives are the four gospels of Jesus Christ? There must be a purpose behind the other 62 books of the Bible outside the gospels beyond just basic information. Instead, I believe God is telling us something in all the Bible and it is to our great benefit to figure out what that is—not just so that we can be informed but also so that we can be transformed. Perhaps it is high time Christians begin to approach the Bible with the hope of transformation that comes through understanding as opposed to accumulating ammunition to support pre-conceived biases.

We can’t allow the Church to adopt the same divisions that serve to tear apart the culture outside the Church because those divisions will also tear the Church apart. By adopting the culture’s ideology of conservatism or liberalism, we legitimize division in the Church. Instead of conservative issues or liberal issues, we must begin to address the issues that face the Church from the outside world as either biblical or unbiblical. It won’t be easy but unity is always harder than division. We must begin to find common ground on how to inform and transform the culture that surrounds us and presses in on us. The real question is how? Let me try to give you a couple of examples just to get you to perhaps start thinking differently:

It is not unbiblical to work hard and earn large sums of money. It is unbiblical to horde wealth without caring for those who are struggling.

It is not unbiblical to accept help during times of need. It is unbiblical to demand help when you are perfectly capable of caring for yourself.

It is not unbiblical to have sex within the context of marriage. It is unbiblical to have sex outside of marriage or practice homosexuality.

It is not unbiblical to use creation’s resources for the benefit of humanity. It is unbiblical to use creation’s resources without any thought of the possibility of irreparable damage caused by harvesting, extracting or using those resources.

It is not unbiblical to be assessed and pay taxes in order to support the services we receive from the government. It is unbiblical to use taxation as an instrument to forcibly take money from those who work for it and give it to those who do not work for it. Or to use it in some other unbiblical endeavor.

It is not unbiblical to use birth control in an attempt to mitigate unplanned pregnancies. It is unbiblical to kill an unborn child any time between the time it is conceived and the time it is born.

It is not unbiblical for the government to care for those in need. It is unbiblical for the Church to relinquish its duty to do so in the government’s stead.

It is not unbiblical to insist that all races be treated equally. It is unbiblical to give preferential treatment to certain races.

I obviously haven’t covered everything but only a small sampling of what some of us might face in our daily lives. Some are simple while others are extremely complex. Nevertheless, we should be able to find unity when we place all things within the sphere of whether or not they are biblical as opposed to whether or not they adhere to some prescribe ideology of conservatism or liberalism. We must fight the urge to make the issues facing the Church a matter of “us against them” inside the Church. It’s enough that it’s us, the Church, against them, the world. We will only be salt and light; will only be a transformative power in the world if we are “perfectly united in mind and thought” as Paul instructed the Corinthian Church. The Church can find its unity in the ideology of the belief that the bible can inform and transform all areas of our lives assuming we approach it without the preconceived bias of either conservative or liberal ideology. Otherwise, if we allow the Church to be defined as either conservative or liberal, we are legitimizing division in the Church.

[1] David A. deSilva, An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods & Ministry Formation, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 564.

[2] Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians—The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), p. 140.

[3] David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians—Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), pp. 56-58.