When this short article was published in Adventist Today, the editors felt it necessary to explain to their readers what I was actually saying. I'll assume that readers of this page have the reading ability and intelligence to understand what I am saying in plane English and thus spare you the "explanation."

Confessions of a Trueborn Liberal

Timothy G. Standish

Published in Adventist Today 11(5):19

I’m a liberal. I realize that publicly “outing” myself like this could mean that I will be labeled and marginalized by conservatives, but I can’t help it - I was born this way. I’m incapable of leaving the prevailing dogma unquestioned; I’m skeptical of the pronouncements of leaders and, frankly, hope that they are wrong.

Being a true liberal means that I am frustrated by conservatives who masquerade as liberals, I call them pseudo-liberals. These pseudo-liberals give us real liberals a bad name. The problem with pseudo-liberals is that they live in very small ponds. Within the pond, a different orthodoxy may be held than in the big bad ocean. Pseudo-liberals think they are being true liberals when questioning the orthodoxy in the little pond by simply presenting the orthodoxy out in the “ocean.” In other words, they are not questioning the real orthodoxy; they are piling on against the unorthodox little pond view. A true liberal honors little pond views. That does not mean accepting every detail, but it does mean embracing the fact that differing views exist and should be respected as a challenge to any hegemony of the real majority. Pseudo-liberals are simply devious bullies when they cloak themselves in the garment of a minority while fighting to impose the majority view on real minorities.  

While proudly wearing the liberal badge, pseudo-liberals may argue enthusiastically, and sometimes incoherently, for trendy ideas in both science and theology. How is this liberal? In the context of science, there is little doubt that evolution is the prevailing orthodoxy.  In addition, the minority who question this orthodoxy out in the “ocean” may be subject to withering hyperbole, find their employment and social status threatened and – even worse – they may be labeled as conservatives!  It seems strange to hear people calling themselves “liberals” while kowtowing to the majority and attacking free thinking about evolution.  

I am a scientist who is open to questioning current scientific dogma; thus I am a true liberal. The same would be true of liberal theologians; they would be willing to question popular ideas in theology: things like the higher critical approach to understanding scripture or the flawed idea of theistic evolution. It is pseudo-liberal theologians who simply embrace these currently popular views and act as if they are introducing new ideas for those of us in the little pond of Seventh-day Adventism to embrace. It is embarrassing to see pseudo-liberal theologians join hands with their close cousins, the pseudo-intellectuals, contorting their theology in an effort to cloak fuzzy thinking in the weighty mantle of modern science. This wholesale surrender of one academic discipline, theology, to another, science, is both humiliating and unwarranted.  

The Adventist Church needs more liberals like me and you -- if you are willing to join me -- liberals who embrace different ideas because they are better; liberals who reject conservative pseudo-liberal parroting of old ideas trawled from the great big intellectual ocean. Those ideas were long ago evaluated and rejected. Imagine the positive change our church would see if there were more real liberals, people with the intellectual confidence to question prevailing ideas in the fallen world where we live and work. I believe that it will be a fully liberal church that sees the ultimate liberal, Jesus Christ, returning in clouds of glory.