The tendency to assess politics through the binary lens of the left-right divide is the cause of much unnecessary conflict in our times.
For example, when highlighting problems with conservatism, it is sometimes automatically assumed that one is “left leaning” and vice-versa. Apparently, you are either always for the tribe otherwise you belong to the enemy (however conceived).
Not unlike conservatism, progressivism has significant problems when viewed through the Biblical Christian prism. I use the word progressivism here rather than “liberalism” because in South Africa, unlike in the US and the UK, there is a distinct difference between the two.
Liberalism in South Africa is associated with limited or no government intervention in private affairs. Ironically, in the US the exact opposite is the case, where this policy bent is normally the chief characteristic of conservatism.
Thus in South Africa, because of its political past that has conferred a legacy of race-tinged economic inequality, liberalism, when followed to its logical conclusion implies the preservation of historical asymmetries. This is because its purists generally frown on remedial government intervention to address these economic asymmetries because of their supposed inconsistency with liberal ideals.
This is why the South African version of liberalism is located on the right of the ideological spectrum.
The discussion here deals specifically with progressivism and its limitations in light of biblical scrutiny.
This presents a difficulty because there is much about the progressive agenda that is admirable and overlaps with the teachings of Christ[1].
In many parts of the world the poor, socially excluded and downtrodden tend to feel much safer with progressives, as they did with Jesus. Unsurprisingly, because progressivism is known for its strong emphasis on social justice.
In a world that is driven by the general pursuit of narrow self or group interests, justice is too often “trampled on the street[2]”, leaving the poor, socially excluded and downtrodden at the mercy of a harsh and brutal structural economic environment that is skewed against them.
Progressivism has therefore served as a compassionate voice for the disenfranchised, many times with vicious opposition from their polar political counterparts. (Many times opportunistically!)
It might be tempting therefore, to suppose that progressivism is amenable to the message of Christ. Upon closer examination, the picture is no more flattering than that of conservatism.
Societal progress, as progressivism promises, implies moving from a state of relative social and moral undesirability towards some form of societal ideal characterised by perfect social justice or societal moral rectitude.
In principle it is difficult to contend with these ideals until it is inquired who has the power to decide what the ideal society looks like, how to get there and how it will be known when it has been achieved or arrived at.
After all, progress means moving forward. Presumably from bad to good.
This is no facetious question, precisely because the age-old and ubiquitous problem of human conflict is defined by our inability to agree about what constitutes good and evil.
So it can be reasonably inquired: Which segment of humanity is conferred with the right to decide for the rest and by whom has that right been bestowed?
Is it the poor? The rich? The educated? The working class? The religious? The non-religious? The majority? The minority? Americans? Russians? Men? Women? Africans? Europeans?
Or is it the Progressives themselves, as they seem to believe?
The difficulty to answer this question without degenerating into one or the other form of despotism underlines the difficulties with progressivism, despite its commendable idealism. After all the Soviet Union and the French Revolution began with soaring idealism only to plummet to the depths of the murderous Gulags and the macabre guillotine.
The irony is that both progressives and conservatives are deeply concerned about morality, even though in dissimilar ways. The latter tend to be more concerned about personal morality (At least before the age of Trump!) while the former usually restrict their purview to societal morality.
Ultimately both conservatism and progressivism fall short of the glory of God because both reserve for themselves the right to define what is good and what is evil. Usually through myopic lenses tinged by personal or cultural preferences, biases or agendas, consciously or otherwise. Thus their concern is inevitably about the things of man rather than the things of God[3].
There is no difference, both feast from the same tree of the knowledge of good and evil that has transformed the world from an idyll to a dystopia.
[2] Isaiah 59:14 Justice is turned back, and righteousness
stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
