"Latitudinarian conservatives."
Don't neglect to read this important article, especially if you consider yourself an orthodox Anglican. We Anglicans know about the Latitudinarian movement in our own church, and how it eventually morphed into the infidelity of "Anglican" radicalism. David Mills suggests in this article that today's "latcons", who exist primarily in Evangelical circles, have little to keep them from following in our Anglican Latitudinarians' footsteps.
"Latitudinarian Conservatives" . . . are not skeptics or rationalists or unbelievers. They believe the Bible and want to be orthodox Christians. They will call themselves “biblical Christians” or even “traditionalists.” They simply bend much farther than they ought, and not on any articulated principle, but in response to cultural changes and personal temptations.
The Latcon Life
“Latcon” parishes are often the largest and liveliest in their churches. They take more seriously than almost anyone biblical imperatives like evangelism and Bible study, and are often more convinced than “traditionalists” of God’s presence and work today. They must be understood if the future of the church in America is to be understood, and to prevent their obvious sincerity and success from seducing traditional Christians desperate for an effective opposition to increasingly secular churches and society.
As far as I know, the distinctiveness of latitudinarian conservatism has not been recognized before. More traditional Christians dismiss them as liberals, and liberal Christians dismiss them as fundamentalists. Both are wrong, because latitudinarian conservatism is an unstable mixture of traditional Christianity and liberalism, and being unstable can very quickly become more fully one or the other.
A Latitudinarian Conservative is a Christian whose faith is for the most part traditional or conservative in form and content but held emotionally and instinctively. This faith is not exactly classical Christianity because it is undogmatic, both in being unsystematic and imprecise and in having no settled belief in the authority of inherited doctrine and practice. It is not simply liberalism because it includes belief in a definitive revelation and therefore asserts the truth of certain illiberal beliefs.
The Problem with Latcons
The largest group among the consciously biblical in the mainline Churches, the Latcons produce many of the fruits of faith, and with a passion and commitment lacking in many more traditional Christians. They run soup kitchens and food banks and “ex-gay” ministries, pay for missionaries, homes for unwed mothers, and the like, go around the world to build schools or dig irrigation ditches, give up hours of their lives to tell others about the Lord. They convert people and change their lives.
And their numbers will grow, not only because the fruits of their faith are so evident, but because more and more people are searching for a supernatural religion conformable with middle-class society. This is the problem, and the reason they are worth examining. The Latcons succeed because they are orthodox and offer people a life-changing Gospel, and also because they are inconsistently or rather selectively so, and offer that Gospel with some of its costs removed.
Thus their theology is not completely or precisely orthodox, and to some extent their appeal depends upon their not pressing certain discomforting demands. And even were I wrong about this, because they bend much farther than they ought, and not on any articulated principle, they will find it very difficult to hold to Christian orthodoxy in a rapidly secularizing culture, especially when certain orthodox teachings offend the self-interest of their members or the required doctrines of civil society. . . .
Two Sorts of Conservatives
A comparison with the classically orthodox will show the effect of the Latcon’s latitudinarianism upon his witness. Though he shares many commitments with the classically orthodox, the Latcon does not share their “dogmatism” or their submission to the mind of the Church, and finds reasons to accept what has usually been held intolerable, or at least to avoid taking a position.
The classically orthodox Christian accepts not only the orthodox doctrines but also the negations they require, and believes himself bound by the Great Tradition. The other, the Latcon, is happy to be orthodox as long as that will not earn him the label “fundamentalist.” He respects the tradition as a sort of wiser uncle, to be listened to, certainly, but being somewhat old-fashioned and set in his ways, not necessarily to be followed.
His approach to abortion shows how the Latcon defines being orthodox. He is happy to be “prolife” as long as he does not have to be publicly anti-abortion. He will help women with difficult pregnancies, but will rarely say from the pulpit that aborting a child is a sin. Those who say so, no matter how gently, he will tend to call “strident” and be careful not to be seen in their company.
The question of women’s ordination shows how Latcons treat the Tradition. It in particular is a problem for them. Not only does tradition insist on certain now unfashionable practices, but on some issues on which Latcons desire latitude, it is not as malleable as biblical texts taken by themselves. The Tradition says, “Scripture prohibits the ordination of women,” but Scripture never says explicitly, “Women shall not be priests” and therefore can be manipulated into allowing the innovation.
The Latcon will say how important tradition is, but is never clear how authoritative or binding it is. He will declare our need for roots and the wisdom of the past, and the importance of history in forming our communal identity, but will not reject a position merely because it violates the consensus of Christians since the beginning. At this point, he will usually take his stand upon the Bible alone, with perhaps a nod to “our developing understanding” or its “new answers to new problems” or his experience of the innovation being proposed.
He is eager to support the “ministry of women,” and will downgrade the Tradition by pointing to the effects of the clericalism and chauvinism of the past. He will often just say that he does not have a problem with it, and invoke the names of talented women priests he has known. He might grant that the weight of the New Testament seems to be against the innovation, but will treat the ambiguities in the New Testament as allowing it.