This war between "conservative" and "liberal" in Christianity goes all the way back to Jesus. He lived in a society where the Pharisees had basically appointed themselves the conservative police. They watched people's clothing, food, who they hung out with, what they did on Sabbath, and enforced the Talmudic law. The Saducees were the elite, wealthy conservatives. Jesus was a flaming liberal who threw their conservatism right back in their faces. He taught that what we do, we should do for others, not for God; he broke their Sabbath laws; he broke their food laws; he pulled the law out of the mire it was in and showed that it was fluid. Later, the apostles had to deal with Christians who tried to impose Judaic rules regarding clean and unclean meat, circumcision, and so forth. Eventually Christianity was overtaken by the conservatives and what ensued was the Dark Ages. With the liberal enlightenment of the Rennaisance came the birth of protestantism, which was quickly hijacked by some like Savonarolla and Calvin. Never have religious conservatives been able to establish or rule a successful society. It wasn't until brighter, progressive minds won out in Geneva that Switzerland turned from the iron fisted Calvinist conservatives and became a shining light. William the Silent crushed conservative rule in Holland, freed it from religious law, and made it the only country in Europe with true freedom of religion, and the home of some of the greatest minds, because they could operate in freedom from the conservative religious oppression that crushed progress everywhere else.