The classic Christian doctrine of sin is that human beings, made in the image of God, have rebelled against God, forfeited a primeval innocence and inherited a sin nature, which reproduces itself through natural human generation. Now part of the genetic code, the sin nature colors every human action and interaction, including every structure of human organization. Hence the classic understanding of sin illuminates not only the traditional psychological problem of personal guilt, but also the manifold conceptions of social or systemic evil. The root of the problem is human flesh and blood. That root feeds the entire trunk, every branch, and every leaf.

The contemporary doctrine of sin, by contrast, is purely symbolic and reductionist. It declares the classic concept to be obsolete, along with its broader theology, while spokesmen siphon off the authority of the historic doctrine onto their own latest conjectures. With this objective assorted counter-culturists and malcontents have crashed the gates of professional ministry since the 1970's. The prestige of historic orthodoxy is a prize worth stealing.

Today's reconstruction of the doctrine prejudices the diagnosis of the sin problem. Sin is no longer a personal problem except insofar as the individual is affected by a diseased social organism. Because sin is no longer personal, it is no longer concretely anything. It is now pure abstraction. Even if I admit personal responsibility for my own evil actions, the source of the evil is outside of me. My admission of guilt becomes a ritual of passing blame. I may be a sinner, but this is usually guilt by association with a group that shames or embarrasses me. Thus our systems of origin -- family, nation or race -- become scapegoats for us as sinners in the hands of an angry God. But the guilt feelings never leave. The sin is still present. The scapegoat keeps finding his way back into camp.

The irony is plain. We have severed the connection between sin and self and gone into full-scale denial. At the same time we continue to squirm under the burden of guilt that betrays our awareness of sin and its anticipated outcome: judgment. This is the dilemma of contemporary American liberalism, both in the church and society at large.

In the West the radical counter-culture of an earlier era has become the dominant culture. Confrontation and righteous indignation are the common dialect of counter-culture. The feeling of offended righteousness has become the antidote to the psychological problem of guilt. Controversy is the ritual wherein feelings of righteousness can be custom-made. Like all rituals this one fails to touch the deeper problem of sin. Feelings may reveal a problem, but they never solve it. Hence the ritual must be endlessly repeated. A feeling of hopelessness is added to the deeper realization of unresolved guilt. The response is predictable: increase the pressure of confrontation so that the feeling of indignation can be made to stand out. If yesterday's radicalism has become today's conformity, then maybe today's insanity can become tomorrow's prophecy. Prophets, as we know, are always righteous.

The progressive social agenda is driven by a craving to save souls. While the salvation of the official victims of systemic evil are the purported target, it is really their own souls that activists are trying to save. But because they have gutted the theology of sin, no one is saved -- not themselves, nor their intended beneficiaries. What drives today's progressives is the feeling of guilt, which even a "higher" doctrine of sin cannot hide. But sin is denied and guilt is not recognized. Both are projected outward onto the victims of society's oppression, who now become victims of the activists' need to save themselves.

Here a strange innocence comes to light. Activists truly want to effect the changes they have identified but are powerless to do so. They are committed, albeit unconsciously, to a prior agenda. It is this other agenda, and the concealed intent underlying it, that explains the results of their actions. If solving the problems of society were the real objective, then the problems would be solved and we would all move on.

The real objective is not liberating the oppressed but managing them. It's simply not possible, with all the money, energy and creativity poured into improving society, with the countless industries spawned in the name of social improvement, that society could be failing to improve. Too many experts have vested interests in managing social dysfunction, and the entrepreneurs of discontent are legion. Maintaining the status quo -- or perhaps even expanding it -- must be the real objective. A diseased society is, after all, a field white for harvest!

The new religion, and the liberal social doctrine of which it is the expression, fails to acknowledge its own deep spiritual and psychological motivation. This primary failure undermines the social program of the liberal church. While it sets out to liberate the oppressed, it only liberates insofar as it solves the prior problem of relieving liberal guilt.

Worst of all, while liberals are driven deeply and unconsciously by the need all people have to return to God and be saved, through the projection of their sin into the abyss of social abstraction they undermine their own ability to turn to God. Nothing could be more practically beneficial to the broken lives they set out to restore through Christian service than their own personal salvation.

The classic doctrine of sin has numerous and profound advantages. First among them, it happens to be God's own doctrine, based as it is on His word, the Holy Scriptures, and certified through His living Word, Jesus the Son of God, who died for our sins and rose again. The main "advantage" of the classic doctrine is that it happens to be true.

The second great advantage is the manner in which the correct theory of sin makes possible an approach to action that might actually accomplish something. The message of salvation from sin neutralizes the deeply rooted feelings of guilt which, among other things, sabotage our outreach. Unresolved sin, driven by feelings of guilt, traps us in a never-ending cycle of symbolic gestures of service mainly geared to relieving bad feelings. I pursue peace and justice because it makes me feel better. It may or may not do you any real and lasting good. It may entice you into a never-ending cycle of resentment and dependency. I won't know because I won't be looking that closely at you. That is not the heart of a servant. Classic salvation makes Christian servanthood at least possible.

The increasingly shrill cries for justice, peace and reconciliation in liberal circles are proof that righteous indignation is harder to come by and personal feelings of guilt are closing in. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and progressive Christians are still not saved.

The new religion is, at its deepest level, just like the old -- an attempt to save the soul of the individual. It generally fails to do this, projecting the language of religion outward on to a policy of social renewal. The motivation of a failed religion becomes the primary force determining the effectiveness of its policy. The policy also fails.

The old religion has decided advantages over the new. As Christian conservatives must admit and confess, it may or may not lead to practical Christian service. But at least it makes genuine service possible. It frees the heart of a servant who may then set other captives free.

The old religion flushes out the guilt and calls sin by name. It then gives it to One who is able to take it. There is no more denial, no more pretended solutions that cancel out old oppressions with new resentments. Any guilt, however horrible, however many generations it goes back, however pervasive it is in the community or family system, has an end. It has no further function in the system. New industries of victimization are no longer created with new professional classes dependent upon them. The games can stop. The debt is simply cancelled.

---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline.