What's your opinion on Liberal Religion?

[Belacqua]

(if Belacqua also lives in the US)

My passport says I'm American, but I've lived in Japan most of my life.

join a religion in name only, not out of belief but for other 'superficial/social' reasons

This raises important questions -- what is it that religions enjoin us to believe, and whether social reasons are really superficial. That is, are religions primarily their metaphysical theories, or are they practices? 

Famously, the Bible contains very little metaphysics. John 1:1, and a few vague sentences by Paul. "In him we live and move and have our being," has certainly been used by immanentists, for example, but I'm not completely sure Paul meant it metaphysically. Nearly all of what the prophets and the NT urge has to do with how we behave towards one another.

This is why I say that even if most of the science-incompatible claims become untenable, I have no doubt that Christianity would continue. Whether this deserves the label "liberal" or not I'm not sure. Again, much of what we dislike about Christianity has to do with its adoption of bizarre radical politics in the US, and it might thrive without all of that baggage. 

Or perhaps we have a Wittgenstein situation, in which "religion" is not a thing with an essence but is defined only by family resemblance. Whereas one religion, or one person's religion, is a question of metaphysical beliefs, another is simply practice.

Also (as I've mentioned before on this forum), the word "belief" has different meanings, and I think people should be careful about which they're using. In terms of metaphysical claims, we use "belief" to mean "assent to a proposition." As in "I believe in life after death." But in terms of moral issues, we use it as commitment to a principle. As in "I believe in equal rights for women." Obviously the two are different -- almost opposite, since we know that equal rights for women don't exist in the world. I think that most of Christianity is the second type, as in a commitment to principles we attribute to Jesus. 

Commitment to the first type of belief may not be as essential to Christianity as we moderns (especially we Internet atheists) make it out to be.