"It??s all good.?∆
| Marc Mullinax
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?? Asheville bumper sticker
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MARS HILL ?? We turn this week to liberalism, but first an announcement:
During 2006, I would like to be invited to your place of worship (whatever religion or denomination). Then, I will write here about my experiences once a month. I will focus only upon that which will attract others to your outfit. There will be no disrespecting of any faith, tradition, practice or person herein. Contact info at the end of this column. Who wants free publicity?
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To some, ?®liberal?∆ is a bad word. Yet the folks who use it epithetically are ignorant of a large liberal stream tradition that even allows them to call liberal a bad word. Liberalism is the water in which we fish swim.
Liberal arts is a system of education that removes prejudices and frames of reference so that we may see things as bias-free as possible. From their ancient Greek origins, the liberal arts were those sets of skills people needed in order to be good and responsible citizens. That set of skills went unused in (and helped cause) the Dark Ages, until the European Enlightenment.
Most of us are products of that Enlightenment. It is a human- and not church-centered way of organizing all things: politics, culture, education, even religion.
It means things like equal rights, higher education, human rights,
privacy, minority rights, the right to be wrong and the relativity of
truth.
It means newspapers, free flows of information, voting, representative
democracy, organizing into groups based on common interests, gender
equality and the right to due process and privacy. It means free
markets and capitalism.
It means dissent and the ability to be both a dissenter and a citizen.
It means Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Constitution and separation of faith from statecraft.
It means we may calmly consider and discuss various points of view
because the majority and the minorities have a social contract to live
agreeably, even if they disagree.
So, we are liberal in our fundamentals. Religiously, if anyone has
exercised freedom of religious choice, celebrated a self-developed
spirituality, associated with a group of like-minded folks without fear
of persecution or spies or enjoyed a public square free of religiously
inspired graffiti (e.g., religious symbols, the Ten Commandments), then
one has benefited from the liberal urge.
But religious liberals are few. Uncomfortable with religious devotion,
liberals see little need for religious faith or its practice. Indeed,
liberals think they do society a favor by belittling or neglecting the
roles and power of religious systems. They see little attraction in
transcendental beliefs, faith in invisible powers and re-tooling this
world as if the transcendental and invisible were real.
And thus, liberals see religion merely as the breeding ground for
flat-earthers, unthinking emotional fervor and ideological wars. This
is their weakness. In the main, they cannot say ?®yes?∆ to authentic
religion because they do not recognize its possible existence. Thus,
they cannot say ?®no?∆ to inauthentic religion. When nascent
Hitlers and potential threats to the cultural fabric come, liberals
haven??t the resources, tools or discipline to do much better than utter
the mantra, ?®It??s all good?∆ ?Ò hardly the place from which to understand
good choices from bad, and why it is often good to say ?®yes?∆ and ?®no.?∆
This is why liberals ?±?± in the main ?±?± don??t know how to use the Bible
as a resource for reshaping society in their image. They don??t value
religious or spiritual resources as tools for social change. And they
are shy and retiring about speaking of faith in public, giving up the
mic to the very folks they??d rather not hear.
That??s way too bad, because it is the liberals who have most shaped the social environment we live in today.
For them to abandon their birthright means someone else shapes our
legacy, morality and public discourse. And that ?±?± my readers ?±?± is a
return to the Dark Ages.
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Dr. Marc S.
Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion departments at Mars
Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
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