Szabó Árpád (szerk.): Isten és ember szolgálatában. Erdő János emlékezete (Kolozsvár, 2007)
Paul Rasor: Postmodernity, Globalization, and the Challenge of Identity in Liberal Theology
such as Transylvanian and Czech Unitarians, were struggling for their very survival. 1rs important that we keep these things in perspective. Today, I believe the realities of postmodernity and globalization are generating another set of circumstances that call us once again to clarify our theological identity. One sign of the importance of identity issues today in the many discussions we keep having about the need to find our theological center. I don't know if this is an ongoing issue everywhere, but it is a very big deal in the United States. I suspect that nearly every planning committee for ministers' retreats or annual district meetings has had this topic suggested at least once during the past five or ten years. Opinions vary widely. Some feel strongly that unless we can clarify our theological center, the centrifugal pressures of our enormous theological diversity will cause us to fly apart. Others feel just as strongly that naming a theological center would be the equivalent of adopting a creed, something contrary to our whole liberal way of being. Behind this debate lie the larger questions of religious identity: Who am I? What is my place in the world? Who are we? What does it mean to be a liberal religious movement? What holds us together? These questions are of critical importance to our worldwide movement, and they lie at the very heart of our gathering this week. Let me begin, then, by looking at some of the tensions around identity that are inherent in religious liberalism, before turning to the ways these tensions are compounded by postmodernity and globalization. Identity Tensions in Liberal Theology One factor that contributes to liberal theology’s identity dilemmas it its mediating stance toward the larger culture. Our openness to science, to the arts, and to other cultural developments is among our greatest strengths. It is what keeps us credible and relevant as a faith in the modern world. At the same time, our connectedness to the larger culture has tended to blur the distinction between religion and culture. This means that liberals are continually in danger of losing our distinctly religious identity. When this happens, liberal religion becomes indistinguishable from liberal politics, and much of our prophetic power is lost. Another factor is our commitment to free inquiry and open-ended approach to religious truth. This is another of liberalism’s great strengths. Our belief that revelation is continuous, that truth is not given just once for all time, means that we are not threatened by new scientific knowledge or new philosophical ideas. But this very openness around truth claims can sometimes cause us to be tentative in our theological commitments, since we are 188
