Liberal Theology and Transformative Pedagogy

The topic of this chapter is the contribution of liberal theology to a transformative pedagogy for our time. More broadly I am interested in exploring the connection between liberal theology and liberal education. Liberal theology is generally thought to be dead, the product of modernity, displaced by 'postliberal theology' or no theology at all in the age of 'postmodernity'. Similar claims do not seem to be made about liberal education or liberal arts. Perhaps we are moving into an age of 'post-liberal education'. ¹ but if so it is scarcely something to be welcomed, as some people have welcomed the advent of postliberal theology. While I believe that significant connections exist between liberal education and liberal theology, my argument is not that the latter might be resuscitated through association with the former. Rather my first premise is that liberal theology is not in fact dead. It has survived in and through the transition from modernity to postmodernity and the critiques of neo-orthodoxy, dialectical theology, and postliberal theology. Of course it has not remained unchanged in this process; one of its qualities is its openness to change. Its characteristic marks must be revisioned for the twenty-first century. What I am advocating is a revisionary, postmodern liberal theology as opposed to a postliberal, countermodern theology. I am not exactly an 'impenitent liberal', as Alec Vidler remarked when he retired in 1967, ² for I think that penitence is something that the liberal traditions must practise just as profoundly as any other human intellectual effort, but I do believe that there remains a great resource of truth and insight in these traditions that should not be lost, and I happen to believe that the term 'liberal' is wonderfully appropriate.