Conservativism and Liberalism are such generic terms that you can shape them to mean just about anything that you want.  Still, I was recently considering...

With most social institutions, the tendency is for those with "conservative" viewpoints to be the bastions of "the old ways or original ways of doing things" -- and if any group comes along with more "liberal" or "progressive" viewpoints, they ultimately tend to form some kind of break-away group.  Eventually, that break-away group may become the more dominant group, thus setting itself up for a repeat of the process when even more "progressive" groups break away from the institution that has become too steeped in its own hegemony.  But this is the typical patterns with social institutions, is it not?  At least this seems to be the case with most businesses, governments, political parties, families, academic groups, and most other sorts of institutions.

But with Christian churches, for whatever reason, this process often seems to be the opposite.  Ever since the Protestant Reformation, the break-away groups have typically been those with "conservative" viewpoints, trying to escape what they see as the pollution, corruption, or "liberalization" of the institution.  I'm guessing that most of the denominational splits over the past 500 years have involved a group of "conservatives" parting ways with the institution who had allegedly forgotten "the old ways or original ways of doing things."

I don't know if this distinction is necessarily good or bad.  But it is unusual.  Why do you think the lines of "conservative" and "liberal" tend to be drawn so differently in Christian churches?