There have been some posts spawned by N.T. Wrong’s recent list of bibliobloggers, which sorts various biblioblogs based on specialization and rates them on the liberal/conservative scale. So, I thought I’d speculate on our label: “Fairly Conservative.”
As others have already done for their respective labels, I immediately began speculating as to what we have written that could have garnered The Floppy Hat to be labeled “fairly conservative.” My initial reaction was to be affronted, as “conservative” has very negative baggage attached to it in my mind. But as Jay already mentioned, labels are subjective. I rather like to think of myself as falling somewhere in a nice middle location (perhaps the conservative liberal?). Of course, who doesn’t want to believe that they fall in the middle?
So, after my knee-jerk reaction, I realized that perhaps the very fact that we call ourselves Christians, affirm the Apostle’s Creed, and believe that Scripture is sacred places us more on the conservative side. If those are the criteria, I can’t disagree. However, I know of many, especially within the circles in which we run, who would disagree with the assertion that we are conservative. I would say I have a “high view of Scripture,” which Calvin says is a rather ambiguous statement, to which I say…exactly! Which, in my mind, makes me a little less conservative and a little more liberal. On the other hand, the very fact that I can still worm my way into saying that, to many others, makes me conservative. (Or maybe it’s just that we go to a conservative seminary.)
This just goes to show that labels, in the long run, are really mostly useless except to those who already share your definitions, as they are all in the eye of the beholder.