In the past two centuries, Christianity has undergone a schism unseen since the Reformation almost 500 years ago. This schism not been over practice or leadership. The turmoil and challenge Christianity has experienced concerned the very fundamentals of the faith and the person of Jesus. The rise of Christian Modernism (Modernists) transformed the church and western society for it broadly supplanted the orthodox faith in the public sphere. Often described as liberal, Modernists redefined Christianity to align with humanist and naturalist worldviews and while doing so made the key elements of the faith (grace, redemption and salvation) superfluous to its practice. In American churches, the push was to ignore sin, reject historical creeds, and defer to secularism on any question beyond scheduling a social gathering. Many Christians resisted this cultural tide, some by withdrawing and some by publicly challenging the new interpretations.
In the 19th century, Europe and its overseas off-shoots such as the United States were overwhelmingly Christian in culture and thought. In fact, it is impossible to accurately describe European and American society in the period without reference to Christianity. Period examples abound from the highest philosophical discussions (abolition for instance) to samples of personal correspondence. While not every person was a Christian, society was intertwined with the Christian worldview and all were influenced by this prevailing culture. The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment planted the seeds that began the process of change. The Scientific Revolution’s impact was largely unintentional for the early scientists were mostly committed Christians. These individuals sought to understand the order and mechanisms of the natural world. The Enlightenment philosophers, however, sought to better understand the nature of existence and in doing so questioned the concept of knowledge itself. The existence of Truth itself became a debatable point and only that which was empirically verifiable was deemed trustworthy. Any aspect of life which could not be observed and measured was challenged, especially culture, tradition, philosophy and religion which shape the great intangibles of life (morals, meaning, etc.)
Social relationships (political and economic) were the first to be challenged, but scrutiny of other institutions quickly followed specifically the Church and the faith itself. Having understood how the cosmic watch functioned, the “rationalists” began to question the need for a watchmaker.
In the United States, the impulse to adapt new ways of thinking was perhaps stronger than in more tradition bound societies. The nation was founded on challenging the “old ways” and shaped people who sought to make a different life for themselves. As American education developed and grew, the desire for new ideas and new teachers grew as well. The American church was caught in a conundrum between a society that embraced change and its core religion that was founded on events two-thousand-year-old. Many Americans resisted the challenge to traditional Christianity but some, the Modernists, embraced it whole-heartedly as progressive and keeping with the changing times.
In 1912, Benjamin Warfield (Princeton Theological Seminary) provided an excellent overview of contemporary positions held by the modernist, i.e. liberal, strand of Christianity. Aptly titling his article, “Christless Christianity”, Warfield demonstrated the extreme divergent views from the orthodox among the liberal community of believers. He focused almost exclusively on work of German academics which is understandable considering the leading role of German scholarship at that time. In summary, the liberal position rejected Jesus in one manner or another. For some, Jesus’ existence was denied; he was a construct of several religious conmen. For others, Jesus was simply irrelevant. Jesus’ words and deeds were lost in the past and can never be recovered with certainty. Therefore, he has nothing to offer the present. This view was a prevailing attitude among Enlightenment thinkers such as Emmanuel Kant had a powerful influence throughout the 19th century.[1] In this view, the concept of historical “knowledge” was nonsense and any appeal to the past was an irrational exercise in futility. Christianity which looks to the person and work of Jesus is therefore irrational when it infers lessons from the life of Christ.
Other liberal churchmen allowed that Christ lived (maybe) and his message was knowable (again, maybe) but that point was of little consequence. Christianity by the 19th century had outgrown its founder and the person of Jesus, albeit interesting, was unnecessary for the religion. In fact, Warfield highlighted how several of these scholars argued that it was even desirable to have faith apart from Jesus.[2] Christianity might be better served without an emphasis on Jesus.
Warfield challenged these views and the inherent danger in pursuing such heresy. He refuted the notion that that the past has no meaning in the present and the rejection of historical knowledge. Writing “experience does not cease to be experience with the passage of time”, Warfield argued that an event still has value and influence even after the moment has passed.[3] He also passionately defended the person of Jesus who is the foci of the faith and without whom there is no religion. The apostle Paul famously made the same point stating that if Jesus had not risen from the dead, “your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!”[4] Paul’s argument is to the fact and knowability of Christ and his work. Both Paul and Warfield would agree that the modernists were essentially creating their own religion by stripping away those elements of Christianity they found objectionable.
Interestingly, Warfield noted the reluctance and, in some cases, outright refusal of church leadership to refute these views. Their lack of willingness to defend the person of Christ appears almost an act of hubris. One gets the impression that a sense of security and permanence abounded because of the central role Christianity held in Western Civilization. Western Civilization would need a cultural lobotomy in order to jettison the Christian influence from society which, of course, is precisely what occurred during the 20th century. The beginning was with the academics; they controlled the information and education, so they shaped the future generations. Faithfull Christians found themselves overwhelmed and intellectually ill-equipped. In a vacuum of competing ideas, the laymen were forced to accept what Herr Professor preached over Herr pastor.
[1] Benjamin B. Warfield, “Christless Christianity,” The Harvard Theological Review, 5, no. 4 (October 1912), 431, PDF. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1507229?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. [2] Christless Christianity, 426. [3] Ibid., 451. [4] 1 Corinthians 5:12 – 19 (NKJV)
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