Editorial June 15, 1946 Issue

Conservative and Liberal

Paul Stark Seeley

The two words "conservative" and "liberal" are becoming increasingly important in denoting the difference in viewpoint among the peoples of the earth on matters political and religious. The Oxford Dictionary defines "conservative" as meaning "disposed to maintain existing institutions...cautious." "Liberal" it defines as "favourable to democratic reforms and abolition of privilege...open-minded."

Human history abounds in examples of these different viewpoints. Tyndale was strangled, then burned at the stake, by conservatives who insisted that the Bible should not be read by the common people because it had not been in the past. He was willing to sacrifice himself to further the more general distribution of God's Word. Huss, Luther, and Calvin rebelled against "existing institutions," and opened the door to a new religious era in the Reformation. The Barons at Runnymede were the liberals of their time, forcing concessions in law and government from their unwilling and conservative king.

Conservatism serves a high purpose when it defends orderly methods of government—for example, the Constitution of the United States or the Manual of The Mother Church—against fanatical liberalism, which would sometimes tear down what has been tried and proved worthy, without providing aught that gives assurance of being an expression of wisely defined progress.

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