Bruce Bawer in his “Stealing Jesus” --- Labels like biblical Christian and Bible-believing Christian, which many conservative Christians attach to themselves, wrongly suggest that there is something unbiblical about the faith of liberal Christians. We might speak of "exclusionists" and "inclusionists," because conservative Christians, unlike liberal Christians, tend to define the word Christian in such a way as to exclude others -- including, in most cases, a large number of their fellow conservative Christians. But it seems to me that the difference between conservative and liberal Christianity may be most succinctly summed up by the difference between two key scriptural concepts: law and love. Simply stated, conservative Christianity focuses primarily on law, doctrine, and authority; liberal Christianity focuses on love, spiritual experience, and what Baptists call the priesthood of the believer. If conservative Christians emphasize the Great Commission -- the resurrected Christ's injunction, at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, to "go to all nations and make them my disciples" -- liberal Christians place more emphasis on the Great Commandment, which in Luke's Gospel reads as follows: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
* The Church of Law holds that God loves only the "saved” and that they alone are truly his children; the Church of Love holds that God loves all human beings and that all are his children.
* The Church of Law sees Satan as a real creature, a tempter and deceiver from whom true Christians are defended by their faith but by whom atheists, members of other religions, and "false Christians" are deceived, and whose instruments they can become; for the Church of Love Satan is a metaphor for the potential for evil that exists in each person, Christian or otherwise, and that must be recognized and resisted.
* The Church of Law believes that individuals should be wary of trusting their own minds and emotions, for these can be manipulated by Satan, and that questions and doubts are to be resisted as the work of the Devil; the Church of Love believes that the mind is a gift of God and that God wants us to think for ourselves, to follow our consciences, to ask questions, and to listen for his still, small voice.
* The Church of Law sees "truth" as something established in the Bible and known for sure by true Christians; the Church of Love sees truth as something known wholly only by God toward which the belief statements of religions can only attempt to point the way.
* The Church of Law reads the Bible literally and considers it the ultimate source of truth; the Church of Love insists that the Bible must be read critically, intelligently, and with an understanding of its historical and cultural contexts.
* The Church of Law encourages a suspicion of aesthetic values and a literalistic mentality that tends to thwart spiritual experience; the Church of Love encourages a recognition of mystery and beauty as attributes of the holy.
