HEART BEAT: So It Will Be

By Felicia Mitchell

Are you liberal?

Originally, according to “The Oxford English Dictionary,” “liberal” was coined to contrast with “servile.” Its usage evolved with the freedom that humans gained to study widely.  We often hear the term associated with colleges that shy away from strict pre-professional training and instead introduce students to a wide range of majors deemed to make persons well rounded as they prepare for careers or additional studies.

The term evolved to mean “free in bestowing; bountiful, generous, open-hearted.” From that, it came to mean, in addition, “abundant” and “bountiful.” Time passed, and the word took on a few more denotations, beginning with “free from narrow prejudice, open-minded, candid” to “favorable to constitutional changes and legal or administrative reforms tending in the direction of freedom or democracy.”

The opposite of freedom is slavery; the opposite of democracy can include all kinds of alternatives, from anarchy to monarchy.  The United States was founded on liberal values, including the idea that “men” are created equal.  While decisions about what defines a man (race, gender, class, etc.) have complicated our history, we have always tried to defend human rights as best we can.

Because “conservative” means “characterized by a tendency to preserve or keep intact or unchanged,” it is possible to be a liberal conservative or a conservative liberal. It’s possible to be a moderate conservative or a liberal moderate or a moderate liberal.  There are so many configurations that I can’t begin to list all of them. 

I can say, though, that the troubled man who targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church for a massacre one Sunday morning when children were putting on a play was led astray by the wrong meaning of the word “liberal” when he pulled the trigger on a liberal congregation.

Unitarian Universalists, who have been around in one form or the other for centuries, believe in simple things:  freedom of religious expression, tolerance of religious ideas, the authority of reason and conscience, the never-ending search for Truth, the unity of experience, the worth and dignity of every human being, and the ethical application of religion.

“Liberal” does not mean unduly radical.  The church proclaims, “All people on earth have an equal claim to life, liberty, and justice—-and no idea, ideal, or philosophy is superior to a single human life.” How radical is that?

Sometimes people need something to blame for their hard times and get lost looking for a scapegoat.  It’s true that the Unitarian Church is liberal, as generous and open-hearted as it can be.  Ironically, the church in Knoxville, the very group the troubled man targeted, would have helped him Jim Adkisson had he asked for help.

This past Sunday, moving on, the church rededicated its sanctuary.  Brian Griffin, director of religious education, is reported to have said, “Beyond the fear that will not subdue us, we reclaim and share this, our worship space. We are safe; we are together; we are loved, and so it will be.”

Liberal is as liberal does.