Wednesday 3 February 2016

Is it possible to tolerate liberal views?

Did that title grab your attention? This is an argument for saying that it is structurally impossible to tolerate a less rigorous (‘liberal’) practice within a more rigorous (‘conservative’) set-up. Or at least it is a thought experiment; thinking out loud. I use three questions on which one might distinguish a more ‘liberal’ and a more ‘conservative’ view within the church. The argument applies to any polity, of course, but my interest is in the church.

Is it possible to enter marriage only once while a (former) marriage partner is still alive or are there circumstances in which it is possible to enter into a second marriage while one’s former spouse is still alive? A church that officially holds the more rigorous view may be able to tolerate that some members  hold a more liberal view but it cannot condone practice grounded in the more permissive view. Once actions grounded in a less rigorous view, i.e. the remarriage of divorcees while a former partner is still alive, are permitted, the institution has adopted the more liberal view. In this case the question is no longer whether to tolerate the more liberal view but whether the more rigorous view can be tolerated. It should not be too difficult to do so, as long as those views are not considered in and of themselves obnoxious. It is even possible to accommodate conservative practice, which is simply a refusal to engage in the additional act, alongside liberal practice, as long as one finds a way to ensure that whether a couple can or cannot get married does not become a postcode lottery.[1]

Is the ordination to the priesthood only possible for men or also for women? As long as a church holds the narrower view, it cannot allow for the ordination of women, even if it allows for people arguing in its favour. Once the more liberal practice is adopted, the church may be able to tolerate those who hold the narrower view and maybe even make concessions to those with a more tender conscience, as long as these do not threaten the overall consensus.[2] The greatest difficulty here may be the harmonious ministry of clergy alongside other clergy whom some consider not to be clergy at all or to be clergy wrongfully.

Does marriage require a diversity of sexes or not? A church that teaches that a marriage covenant must involve both a man and a woman might refuse to excommunicate those who disagree with this teaching but it cannot approve of marriages in which both partners are of the same sex. Once it does this, it has abandoned the conservative teaching. A set-up in which marriages are allowed between any two consenting partners of whichever sex might tolerate people who hold the more traditional view and even try to accommodate clergy who refuse to conduct certain marriages. In such a case the church might well struggle to allow for clergy that refuse to recognise certain people as ‘married’ because they are in a covenant relationship in which there is no diversity of sexes. It would certainly seem impossible for a church to allow for both the approval (blessing) of sexual activity within such covenantal partnerships and the condemnation of such activity as immoral.

The short thought experiment shows that it is difficult but arguably not necessarily impossible for conservatives to tolerate liberal views and for liberals to tolerate conservative views. But as far as practice is concerned, while churches which allow a wider practice may be able to accommodate members who favour a narrower practice, it is structurally impossible to hold a conservative view and allow liberal practices, not without the charge of hypocrisy becoming appropriate.

In sum, agreeing to disagree is not much of an option when it comes to deciding which practices are permissible. The only possibility for permitting two different, contradictory practices in the examples above is to adopt the less rigorous practice as the official stance and find ways of accommodating / tolerating those with more rigorous views.




[1] Because this could be read as a comment on the Church of England, it should be pointed out that, strictly speaking, the practice of the Church of England seems to have been more rigorous for many years than its official teaching required which means the situation is more complex than the illustration above.
[2] Again the situation with the Church of England is more complicated than this, especially since the ordination of women to the episcopate which makes it harder for conservatives to avoid women clergy but ways have been found to accommodate people who hold the narrower view and practice.