There Never Has Been
A Conservative Biblical Prophet
A response to a comment on the statement
[Text in blue italics is the comment]
The terms conservative and liberal are modern political and cultural categories.
Absolutely. Never the less, we can apply those terms as we examine them for our prospective. Afterall, we claim that Christianity is a li9ving faith, therefore the core message of the prophets applies to our situation today.
But if you define conservatism as a desire to preserve or return to divine law and tradition, then many prophets were deeply conservative.
Your phrase is exactly how I do not understand the prophetic message.
Micah, for example, challenged the tradition of Hebrew worship. God, he says, does not want. Sacrifice or rote worship, but just and merciful actions, all wrapped in compassionate humility.
Jeremiah writes, Thus says the LORD: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.
Yes, the prophets call them back to God, but they do so in radical ways, as you say, “revolutionary.” In our modern culture such thinking is liberal thinking.
A call to return to divine law and tradition.
No, not to tradition – that was the fatted calves, etc., but to a radical way of living out their faith. To return to tradition, would indeed be conservative in today’s meaning of the word. Likewise, to live radically, would be liberal in today’s meaning of the word.
If we are to follow the traditional definitions of “conservatism” and “liberalism” then yes, we could say that the prophets were conservative. What the prophets are calling for is indeed a return to “timeless moral principles.”
Unfortunately, in today’s culture we have flipped the meaning. Conservatism is a reluctance, or refusal, to chance, not a call to live liberally, that is, large and generously – which is what the prophets are calling for. By modern political definition, the biblical Jews reluctance to live liberally (that is, according to the words of the prophets) is being “conservative.” To live liberally (according to the words of the prophets and Jesus) is Liberal, “Woke,” etc.
My cover statement speaks to that—to our day, And the word “conservative” is used in the modern context.
Frank A. Mills
Sheffield Lake, OH
July 31, 2025
