I liked this post from Rachel Held Evans in which she rebuts critics who say that those who propose revisions to traditional church teachings are merely trying to “conform to the world.” She points out that many of the calls for change on matters like gender roles, the relationship between science and the Bible, and sexuality are coming from inside the church, from Christians reflecting on their experience and on new information about the world.
Nonetheless, I’d like to lodge one small disagreement (or maybe just a difference of emphasis). I think RHE*, implicitly at least, may be conceding too much ground to her critics.
In principle, there’s no reason to think that new insights (into morality, for example) must come from within the church. On the assumption that morality arises from reflection on human nature and that reason is a faculty shared by people of every faith (and none),** we should expect that new knowledge would often come from outside the Christian community. The church doesn’t have a monopoly on truth, and when truths are discovered outside its purview, Christians ought to be willing to recognize that.
Christian ethicist Nigel Biggar, in his book Behaving in Public, puts this point well:
If [Christians] believe in human creatureliness and sinfulness and in the eschatological futurity of perfect understanding, and if they believe in these seriously—that is, as applying to themselves—then Christians will come to public discussion with the virtue of docility. They will come ready to listen, perhaps to learn, maybe even to change their mind.
This point doesn’t by itself, of course, resolve any particular moral debate. Christians still have to sift and test proposed new truths, see if they’re consistent with core beliefs they already hold, and consider how much they would have to revise their existing beliefs if they adopt the new ones. But they should be prepared to admit that, sometimes, “the world” is right. In the particular cases RHE is writing about, “the world” is already ahead of most churches (or so I would argue, anyway).
Christianity doesn’t provide us with a ready-made answer to every moral, philosophical, political, or scientific question. The churches seem still to have a bit of a hangover from the days when they were society’s presumed moral guardian—when moral instruction was a one-way street, with the churches lecturing everyone else on right and wrong. But all too often the church obscured or resisted new truth, particularly when it came from outside the church’s boundaries. In our “post-Christendom” setting, “docility” in Biggar’s sense is a virtue well worth cultivating.
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*Referring to her as “Evans” seems rather brusque, but “Ms. Evans” seems too formal, and “Rachel” presumptuous, since I don’t know her personally. So I’m going with “RHE.”
**I realize this kind of minimalist “natural law” position is controversial in some circles and is somewhat unfashionable in recent theology, but it has a long pedigree in the Christian tradition.
A Thinking Reed 
Yeah, one of the messages of Vatican 2 was that the church can learn from the world … not so often paid attention to, though.