Hi Pastor,
I'm really enjoying this thread. Do you believe in hell? Why or why not? Normally I would just assume the answer to be yes, but you seem pretty open to a lot of ideas that many Christians would have big problems with.
Do the majority of liberal Christians believe in hell/damnation as a real place/state of being?
Thanks!
I'm going to take these in reverse order. The idea of liberal Christianity is fairly new. There have been students of mythology and historical Jesus studies working in theology really since the enlightenment, but these were often, like the founding fathers, people who did not really engage in a life of faith. Many liberal Christinas are still trying to define what it means to be a liberal Christian engaged in the religious life of the church. (Jefferson didn't pray, but I sure do.) I'm actually fairly orthodox in my views, so many liberals view me as backwards because I accept the virgin birth (and no, this doesn't actually contradict an earlier post) and an emmanent trinity, and many conservatives think I'm a heretic because I don't think the gays are driving us all to perdition. Many practicing liberal Christians, fo instance, are highly biblically illiterate because they believe that the bible says all those things conservatives say it says, which it doesn't. So, most liberal Christians believe in Hell in the abstract, probably, but try not to think about it. Like I said, we're still trying to figure out who we are. Many Christians simply don't understand there are alternatives to the type of Christianity they grew up with. My congregation is fairly conservative, although far from close-minded, but they take an almost Baptist approach to salvation. I recently baptized a woman who had been told all her life that when she was saved, she'd know it. There would be a real born-again experience. I've never had such an experience, and neither did John Welsey, the founder of Methodism. It really opened her eyes to see that there were alternatives to what Grandpa (who is, in fact, one of the kindest and most loving people I have ever met) had always taught her. I know you were probably hoping with more of a yes or no answer, but neither answer is sufficient. If you'd like a really interesting examiniation of belief in hell, there's a great This American Life from a couple years back about it.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1273So, I can answer your first question briefly by saying no. I can't reconcile a loving God with eternal punishment. Doesn't matter if we reject God. Still, God doesn't allow us to say no. One of my favorite theological ideas, first suggested I think by Tillich, is that God turns our "nos" into his "yesses", which is too cute by half but still a nice thought. Although, to be honest, I don't really believe in an afterlife at all, but I never believed in Hell. In fact, this isn't all that uncommon. It's just that the public face of Christianity has been so conservative for so long that many people, even Christians, began to believe that was normative for Christians.
I hope this made sense. It does in my head, but I'm not always good at expressing myself.
