Subjectivism in Liberalism and Evangelicalism
Doug Wilson has wise things to say about the similarity between liberalism and evangelicalism:
The similarities between modern evangelicalism and liberalism are striking. Both emphasize an experience with Christ over the truth about Christ. Throughout history, some of course have made the opposite error, that of holding to bare propositions instead of holding rightly to the truth — but in our century few have gone in that direction. Our tendency is to exalt personal experience over dogma. Indeed, I at first hesitated to use the word dogma because in today’s climate, it is a dirty word. Taking all this together, I like to tell people that Christianity is not a relationship; it is a religion. Of course it is a religion with a covenant relationship at the heart of it. God promises to be our God, and we will be His people. But the liberal (and modern evangelical) emphasis is on what we are pleased to call a personal relationship (meaning private relationship) — and not the biblical notion of a public covenant relationship. When the relationship becomes “personal,” the truth that undergirds it becomes equally “personal.”
Second, both liberalism and modern evangelicalism seek to accommodate unbelieving culture. The only real difference here is that liberals pursued high culture, while the modern evangelicals pursue low culture. The result of this is that the liberals maintained what we might call residual standards longer. The modern evangelical pursuit of unbelieving low culture includes the pragmatism of church growth techniques and the slavish imitation of pop culture in worship. Those who desire another example need only wait a few months.
Third, both liberalism and modern evangelicalism utilize the ecclesiastical equivalent of Lenin’s useful idiots. When the modernists captured the current backwater Presbyterian church, that church was still overwhelmingly dominated by conservative evangelicals. They wouldn’t fight, but they had conservative evangelical hearts. Both heresies effectively use those who personally hold to the truth, but who for various reasons tolerate those who do not hold to it.
Both have highly-developed social agendas which are divorced from the Bible….