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SOMETHING CONSERVATIVES MUST REMEMBER
A recent conversation with a friend on the abuse of ministers by people within their congregations turned my mind to the significant degree to which conservative religion draws to itself certain types of unbalanced and, often enough, genuinely pathological personalities. Our liberal counterparts are happy enough to point this out to us, particularly if they can manage to identify sick conservatism in their personal histories as part of their justification for departing orthodoxy.

If we who call ourselves conservative or orthodox, however, fail to take full and serious account of this phenomenon, we have failed to recognize the body of Christ for what it is, and to maintain it as we should, by permitting the church to take into itself the idolatries that can hide effectively under the cloak of orthodox religion.

When we allow those who love Jesus so much that they neglect or mistreat their spouses or children or subordinates in his name, or attempt to force their petty and unbiblical legalisms on the church, or glorify Ignorance as the handmaiden rather than the enemy of faith, or who use religion to deny the personhood of others, and the freedom, dignity, and responsibility this entails, or who use church structures, offices, or theological systems to control and manipulate, or who, in pointing out that liberals destroy orthodoxy and its practices in the name of love, reason, and kindness, justify their own defects in these qualities—when these are not properly dealt with by the churches, incalculable damage is done.

I used to think that much of this could be tolerated in the mindset of “erring on the side of conservatism.” But this is wrong, because too much of what passes for conservatism, and gets by with it in self-consciously conservative churches, is in fact evil.

Orthodox Christianity is dogmatic. In the face of every "liberal" attempt to emancipate it from this supposed bond, which in fact is the very form of its constitution, it is conservative in that it resolves to conserve, without change or deviation, the faith once delivered to the saints. There are to be no apologies for this, ever. But our faith cannot be maintained, the body and mind of Christ are not realized among us, unless our object, whatever our proclivities, is not to err at all. This means those of us who are not especially tempted by liberal religion need to be doubly on guard for sins against charity and reason that come among us wearing our dress, fluent in our dialect.

—S. M. Hutchens