“Liberal” is a word that can mean many things. In everyday use, the word refers to the opposite of “conservative.” If Republicans are conservative, then Democrats must be liberal. To be conservative socially is to support traditional values and personal responsibility. To be liberal socially is to advocate for personal freedom, self-expression and personal flourishing on all social moral issues. Evangelicals tend to be conservatives in these ways.
.. The more classical use of the word however, in the political tradition of John Locke, J.S. Mill, John Rawls, describes a brand of individualist politics. The goal of this kind of “liberal” is to order a society around the freedom of each to pursue his or her “life, liberty and happiness.” Achieving this goal, in essence, is what it means to “make America great again.”
In the crassest of terms, this version of political liberalism seeks a society that liberates each individual to do whatever he or she wants as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else.
.. Church for evangelicals is a bunch of individuals gathering together to get pumped up to be better individual Christians.
.. We believe the only way to defend our individual Christianity is to vote for a government that will protect us. No matter how disgusting of a misogynist, how overt a racist, or how oppressive of immigrant populations, Trump at least promises a government that protects “me” from all the social forces that might endanger my Christian existence in America.
.. Because our Christianity is such an individual thing, we do not have confidence that God is working in the world. Neither do we see how the church is a way of living together that displays His Kingdom in society.
.. But maybe there is an upside for us evangelicals who have been disgusted by Trump (and there are more than a few of us). Maybe our eyes have been opened to the bankruptcy of our own liberal-individualism?
.. Maybe we can give up being such good liberals and become present in the world with the good news that God is at work in Christ making all things right, reconciling the world to Himself, that Jesus is indeed Lord here and we have nothing to fear in the Kingdom of God.