Evangelical Conservatives and Progressives

“Woe to those who enact evil statues, and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice, and to rob the poor of My people of their rights.” Isaiah 10:1-2a

“And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?” Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Congress Calling for a National Day of Prayer and Fasting (April 1863)

When Lincoln asked Congress to declare a national day of prayer and fasting, he recognized that the on-going bloodshed of the Civil War was part of the retributive justice of God to the U.S. for preserving the institution of slavery. As Lincoln noted, “Every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid with another drawn by the sword.” Lincoln was not so naïve as to believe that the slave owner would seek to act individually from conscience enmasse as a means of ending the institution of slavery. As note in his famous “A House Divided” speech Lincoln (quoting Christ) noted that the nation could not endure half slave and half free. Either the laws of the land must permit slavery as an institution or it must be abolished.

One issue that separates evangelical conservatives from evangelical progressives (a term I use in the historic sense of the word) is the issue of sin and society. As evangelicals almost all agree that the reason for trouble and discord in the world is sin. Drawing on the historical reality of the Genesis 3 account of the entry of sin into the world, the creation God proclaimed as good (Gen 1:31) was corrupted by the entry of sin into the world. Consequently, the more sin in the world the more corruption of the good ensues. In terms of societies, the more a society tolerates sin and allows sin to flourish the more perverse and morally weak the society will become. The result of this the proliferation of sin, as the Bible reports in many cases throughout the Old Testament, is the judgment and destruction of the society. Inversely, if you want a society to flourish (or at least avoid the judgment of God) there must be repentance of sin and turning to God (as was the case of Nineveh in the book of Jonah). The less sin in a society means the less corruption of the good. On this almost all evangelicals agree.

Where evangelical conservative and progressives disagree is on the nature of repentance. Conservatives, who tend to emphasize free moral choice and personal accountability, see sin and repentance as an individual issue. If individuals sin it increases the amount of total sin in the world and, therefore, the society gets more perverse—increasing the likelihood of divine judgment. The solution, therefore, is to get individuals to sin less. If people stop sinning the sum total of sin in the world is reduced and the society ameliorated.
This leads conservatives to engage in legislative morality—in most cases to provide significant disincentives to individuals so that they will not sin. For example, strong sentencing laws for crimes will cause people to think twice about a crime and therefore (it is hoped) decrease propensity to do the crime. For many in the society this approach to morality is seen as harsh and lacking in compassion. George W. Bush sought the Presidency in 2000 he proclaimed himself a “compassionate conservative” in order to dispel this widely held view of conservatives. Evangelical conservatives (generally) tend to view such harsh measures as, in fact, compassionate. If strong medicine helps the individual to avoid sin and helps the nation avoid the judgment of God, the medicine becomes justified.

Generally, evangelical progressives note that freewill and personal accountability are important but not sufficient to explain social sin and its consequences. Like Lincoln, it is naïve and insufficient to simply expect people individually to stop sinning because the legality of some sin allows it to continue in a way that erodes at the moral health of the nation. To progressives, sinful people create sinful institutions and laws which embed sin in their very practices. Thus, one can experience the negative consequences of sin, can suffer adversely from its social, physical, psychological or spiritual effects and never have actually performed the sin. Thus, as the prophet Isaiah records, God declares the robbing of social justice to the poor and needy not the result of their own sin but from the institutions and laws of the powerful developed to protect their positions of power and privilege.

The result of this institutionalized sin is twofold. First, as sin becomes normal (i.e., legal) to the point where a person can engage in sin without seeing it as sin. In many cases, slavery being an example, the church may actually defend the sinful institution and use Scripture to defend it. In practice this can produce institutions and policies in economics, education, health care, environmental stewardship, military spending, etc. which may be treated as value neutral by conservatives (despite the claims of their worldview theology) but which, in fact, are spiritually and morally imbued. For progressives the amount spend on the military, how resources are allocated, who receives health care (and how much) are questions that demonstrate the spiritual heart and soul of a nation.

Second, people can be effected by sin without engaging in the practice of the sin themselves. For example, blacks in apartheid South Africa were subject to social, economic, political, and educational injustices (to name a few) solely because they were black. Whites, on the other hand, were awarded benefits in all of these areas (and many others) simply upon the basis of being white. Neither group had to actively engage in the sin of racism to experience these effects. Simply, they experienced benefit or injustice by the social institutions of a society that were designed to protect power and privilege at the expense of another group.

As a result, for evangelical progressives, not only must individual sin be dealt with but there must also be active consideration and addressing of sin embedded into the institutions and practices of the society. For progressive evangelicals all aspects of society, from personal conduct to social policy are moral issues. The family budget and the federal budget all show the spiritual priorities of those who establish that budget—and the departure of either from the priorities of God is of moral concern and in need of being addressed. For the nation, just as it is with the individual, “where your treasure is, there will your heart also be” (Mt. 6:21).