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137-Then Away

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Content provided by Lance Ralston. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Lance Ralston or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

We look at Theological Liberalism and the Social Gospel, as well as a brief glance at the reaction to it of Fundamentalism.


In this 137th episode of CS, titled “Then Away,” we give a brief account of the rise of Theological Liberalism.

In the previous episodes we charted the revivals that marked the 18th & 19th Cs. Social transformation is a mark of such revivals. But not all those engaged in the betterment of society were motivated by a passion to serve God by serving their fellow man. At the same time that revival swept though many churches, others stood aloof and held back from being carried away into what they deemed as religious fanaticism.

As Enlightenment ideas moved into and through the religious community, several theologians moved to accommodate what had become the darling ideas of the academic community, to the Gospel. Instead of becoming outright agnostics, they morphed rationalism to Christian Theology and arrived at an amalgam we’ll call Theological Liberalism.

Not to be outdone by the Revivalists who were transforming culture through the power of a transformed life & the conviction they were to be salt & light in a dark and decaying world, Liberalism developed what came to be called The Social Gospel; a defining of the faith that emphasized doing as much, if not more than, believing.

The name most associated with the Social Gospel is Walter Rauschenbusch. He began pastoring a Baptist church in New York in 1886. It was there that he came face to face with the desperate condition of the poor. He joined the faculty of Colgate-Rochester Theological Seminary, where over the course of 10 years he wrote 3 books that were hugely influential in promoting the Social Gospel.

“Hold on, Lance” someone might say at this point, “You’ve used that phrase a few times now. Just what is ‘The Social Gospel’?”

I’m glad you asked. >> The Social Gospel was a movement among Protestant denominations in the early 20th C, mainly in the United States & Canada, but also had a limited flurry in Europe. It addressed social problems with Christians ethics. It’s main targets were issues of social justice like poverty, addiction, crime, racism, pollution, child labor, and war. Advocates of the Social Gospel sought to implement that line in the Lord’s Prayer that says, “Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

They were most often post-millennialists who believed the Second Coming would not occur unless humanity rid itself of injustice & vice. The leaders of the movement were largely connected to the liberal wing of the Progressive Movement.

The Social Gospel movement peaked in the early 20th C. It began to decline due to the trauma brought about by WWI, when the Ideals of the movement were so badly abused by world events. A couple of the under-pinnings of theological liberalism are the Brotherhood of Man and the innate goodness of human beings. WWI conspired to prove the lie to both those assumptions & create doubt in the minds of millions that man was good or could be a brotherhood.

Though Rauschenbusch’s early theology included a belief in original sin and the need for personal salvation, by the time he’d written his last tome, he regarded sin as an impersonal social ill and taught that reform would arrive with the demise of capitalism, the advance of socialism, and the establishment of the Kingdom of God by human effort. His views were accepted by such prominent spokesmen as Shailer Matthews and Shirley Jackson Case, of the University of Chicago.

Rauschenbusch’s impact has to be combined to other developments in liberalism during the 19th C. Unitarianism had made deep inroads into mainline denominations under the leadership of people like William Ellery Channing and Theodore Parker. Channing’s sermon “Unitarian Christianity” in 1819, deserves credit for launching the Unitarianism movement.

Another influential figure of the 19th C was Horace Bushnell. He published “Christian Nurture” in 1847, arguing that a child ought to grow up in covenant with God, never knowing he was anything but a Christian. This was contrary to the Pietist emphasis on having a datable conversion experience. Bushnell’s ideas of growing a child up from birth in a covenant of grace had a huge impact on Christian educators for generations.

In addition to Theodore Parker’s support of Unitarianism, he introduced German biblical criticism into American Christianity. By doing so, the way was opened for Darwinian evolution and the ideas of Julius Wellhausen. Wellhausen was one of the originators of the Documentary Hypothesis, which forms the core of much of modern liberal scholarship on the Bible to this day.

These influences led to a creeping theological liberalism based on the twin postulates of the evolution of religion and a denial of the supernatural. In their place emerged the idea of the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, & the establishment of God’s Kingdom as a natural outcome of evolution.

Three German scholars were also central to the development of Theological liberalism: Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Harnack.

Friedrich Schleiermacher adapted the ideas of Existentialism to Christianity & said that the core of faith wasn’t what one believed so much as what one FELT, what we experience. Religion, he urged, involved a feeling of absolute dependence on God. For Schleiermacher, doctrine hung on experience, not the other way around. Today, a mature Christian might tell counsel a neophyte, saying something like, “Don’t; let feelings control you.” Or, “We need to evaluate our experiences by God’s Word, not the other way around.” Schleiermacher would disagree with that. Experience VALIDATES doctrine. Feels are key. A Faith that isn’t felt is no faith at all.

Albert Ritschl claimed Christ’s death had nothing to do with the payment of a penalty for sin. He said it resulted from loyalty to His calling of bringing about the Kingdom of God on Earth, and that it was by His death that He could share his experience of Sonship with all people, who would then become the vehicle and means by which the Kingdom could be constructed. The practice of a communal religion was of vital importance to Ritschl because Christ best shared Himself through the community of the Church. Ritschl’s impact on other scholars was great.

Probably the MOST affected by Ritschl’s works was Adolf Harnack. Harnack regarded the contributions of the Apostle Paul to the Gospel as a Greek intrusion on the Christian Faith. His goal was to get back to a more primitive and Jewish emphasis that centered on ethical imperatives as opposed to doctrine. As a professor in Berlin in 1901 he published his influential What Is Christianity? This focused on Jesus’ human qualities, who preached not about Himself but about the Father; the Kingdom and the Fatherhood of God; a higher righteousness; and the command to love.

The views of these 3 German scholars came ashore in America to further the liberal ideas of already underway.

If Theological Liberalism with its Social Gospel were a reaction to the Revivals of the 18th & 19th Cs, those who’d been revived were not going to sit idly by as that liberalism grew. They responded with a movement of their own.

Charles Briggs, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, was put on trial before the Presbytery of New York and suspended from ministry in 1893 for promulgating liberal ideas. Henry Smith of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati was likewise defrocked by that same year, as was AC McGiffert for holding and teaching similar views. Other denominations had heresy trials and dismissed or disciplined offenders. The most famous conflict of the 20th C concerned Harry Emerson Fosdick, who in 1925 was removed as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of New York City to became an influential spokesman for liberalism as the pastor of Riverside Church.

Roman Catholicism wasn’t immune to the impact of theological liberalism and reacted strongly against it. Alfred Loisy, founded Roman Catholic Modernism in France, but was dismissed in 1893 from his professorship at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He was then excommunicated in 1908. The English Jesuit George Tyrrell was demoted in 1899 and died out of fellowship with the church. Liberalism invaded American Roman Catholicism. To silence the threat, Pope Pius X issued the decree Lamentabili in 1907, and in 1910 he imposed an antimodernist oath on the clergy.

In contest with Liberalism, Evangelicals had a number of able scholars during the latter part of the 19th & early part of the 20th Cs. Charles Hodge defended a supernaturally inspired Bible during his long tenure as professor of biblical literature and theology at Princeton. AA. Hodge carried on his father’s work at Princeton. In 1887, BB Warfield followed the Hodges as professor of theology. Fluent in Hebrew, Greek, modern languages, theology, and biblical criticism, Warfield staunchly defended the inerrancy of Scripture and basic evangelical doctrines in a score of books and numerous pamphlets. In 1900, the scholarly Robert Dick Wilson joined the Princeton faculty, and J. Gresham Machen arrived shortly after. In 1929, when a liberal realignment occurred at Princeton, Machen and Wilson joined Oswald Allis, Cornelius Van Til, and others in founding Westminster Theological Seminary. Of course other scholars could be mentioned, but these were some of the most prestigious.

This movement came to be known as Fundamentalism; a word with a largely negative connotation today as it conjures up the idea of wild-eyed religious fanatics who advocate violence as a means of defending and promulgating their beliefs. Christian Fundamentalism was simply a theologically conservative movement that sought to preserve and articulate classic, orthodox beliefs on the Fundamentals of the Christians Faith. They were called Fundamentals because they were regarded as those doctrines that were essential to the integrity of the Gospel message; things that had to be believed in order to be saved.

Fundamentalism was fundamentally a reaction to Theological Liberalism which appeared to many concerned Evangelicals, to be taking over the colleges and seminaries. Liberalism wasn’t popular among the populace; but it was among academics and those in charge of training the clergy. It was understood by evangelical leaders that what began in the classroom would soon be preached in the pulpits and then duplicated in the pews. So they began a counter-movement called Fundamentalism.

Since Theological Liberals had already managed to co-opt the chairs of many institutions of higher learning, they managed to cast their Fundamentalist opponents as uneducated & unsophisticated no-bodies. Knuckle-dragging Theological Neanderthals who didn’t really know or understand the complexities of higher criticism and the latest in theological research. That image has for many, become part & parcel of the connotative meaning of the word Fundamentalist. And it’s grossly unfair since those early Evangelical scholars who shaped the Fundamentalist movement were some of the brightest, best educated, & most erudite people of the day.

It hurts to hear the word Fundamentalist used as a pejorative today when you know it marks the career and work of someone like BB Warfield, Charles Hodge, & J. Gresham Machen.

  continue reading

182 episodes

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iconShare
 

Archived series ("HTTP Redirect" status)

Replaced by: The History of the Christian Church

When? This feed was archived on October 13, 2017 08:04 (6+ y ago). Last successful fetch was on October 12, 2017 07:03 (6+ y ago)

Why? HTTP Redirect status. The feed permanently redirected to another series.

What now? If you were subscribed to this series when it was replaced, you will now be subscribed to the replacement series. This series will no longer be checked for updates. If you believe this to be in error, please check if the publisher's feed link below is valid and contact support to request the feed be restored or if you have any other concerns about this.

Manage episode 150246826 series 105913
Content provided by Lance Ralston. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Lance Ralston or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

We look at Theological Liberalism and the Social Gospel, as well as a brief glance at the reaction to it of Fundamentalism.


In this 137th episode of CS, titled “Then Away,” we give a brief account of the rise of Theological Liberalism.

In the previous episodes we charted the revivals that marked the 18th & 19th Cs. Social transformation is a mark of such revivals. But not all those engaged in the betterment of society were motivated by a passion to serve God by serving their fellow man. At the same time that revival swept though many churches, others stood aloof and held back from being carried away into what they deemed as religious fanaticism.

As Enlightenment ideas moved into and through the religious community, several theologians moved to accommodate what had become the darling ideas of the academic community, to the Gospel. Instead of becoming outright agnostics, they morphed rationalism to Christian Theology and arrived at an amalgam we’ll call Theological Liberalism.

Not to be outdone by the Revivalists who were transforming culture through the power of a transformed life & the conviction they were to be salt & light in a dark and decaying world, Liberalism developed what came to be called The Social Gospel; a defining of the faith that emphasized doing as much, if not more than, believing.

The name most associated with the Social Gospel is Walter Rauschenbusch. He began pastoring a Baptist church in New York in 1886. It was there that he came face to face with the desperate condition of the poor. He joined the faculty of Colgate-Rochester Theological Seminary, where over the course of 10 years he wrote 3 books that were hugely influential in promoting the Social Gospel.

“Hold on, Lance” someone might say at this point, “You’ve used that phrase a few times now. Just what is ‘The Social Gospel’?”

I’m glad you asked. >> The Social Gospel was a movement among Protestant denominations in the early 20th C, mainly in the United States & Canada, but also had a limited flurry in Europe. It addressed social problems with Christians ethics. It’s main targets were issues of social justice like poverty, addiction, crime, racism, pollution, child labor, and war. Advocates of the Social Gospel sought to implement that line in the Lord’s Prayer that says, “Your Kingdom Come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

They were most often post-millennialists who believed the Second Coming would not occur unless humanity rid itself of injustice & vice. The leaders of the movement were largely connected to the liberal wing of the Progressive Movement.

The Social Gospel movement peaked in the early 20th C. It began to decline due to the trauma brought about by WWI, when the Ideals of the movement were so badly abused by world events. A couple of the under-pinnings of theological liberalism are the Brotherhood of Man and the innate goodness of human beings. WWI conspired to prove the lie to both those assumptions & create doubt in the minds of millions that man was good or could be a brotherhood.

Though Rauschenbusch’s early theology included a belief in original sin and the need for personal salvation, by the time he’d written his last tome, he regarded sin as an impersonal social ill and taught that reform would arrive with the demise of capitalism, the advance of socialism, and the establishment of the Kingdom of God by human effort. His views were accepted by such prominent spokesmen as Shailer Matthews and Shirley Jackson Case, of the University of Chicago.

Rauschenbusch’s impact has to be combined to other developments in liberalism during the 19th C. Unitarianism had made deep inroads into mainline denominations under the leadership of people like William Ellery Channing and Theodore Parker. Channing’s sermon “Unitarian Christianity” in 1819, deserves credit for launching the Unitarianism movement.

Another influential figure of the 19th C was Horace Bushnell. He published “Christian Nurture” in 1847, arguing that a child ought to grow up in covenant with God, never knowing he was anything but a Christian. This was contrary to the Pietist emphasis on having a datable conversion experience. Bushnell’s ideas of growing a child up from birth in a covenant of grace had a huge impact on Christian educators for generations.

In addition to Theodore Parker’s support of Unitarianism, he introduced German biblical criticism into American Christianity. By doing so, the way was opened for Darwinian evolution and the ideas of Julius Wellhausen. Wellhausen was one of the originators of the Documentary Hypothesis, which forms the core of much of modern liberal scholarship on the Bible to this day.

These influences led to a creeping theological liberalism based on the twin postulates of the evolution of religion and a denial of the supernatural. In their place emerged the idea of the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, & the establishment of God’s Kingdom as a natural outcome of evolution.

Three German scholars were also central to the development of Theological liberalism: Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Harnack.

Friedrich Schleiermacher adapted the ideas of Existentialism to Christianity & said that the core of faith wasn’t what one believed so much as what one FELT, what we experience. Religion, he urged, involved a feeling of absolute dependence on God. For Schleiermacher, doctrine hung on experience, not the other way around. Today, a mature Christian might tell counsel a neophyte, saying something like, “Don’t; let feelings control you.” Or, “We need to evaluate our experiences by God’s Word, not the other way around.” Schleiermacher would disagree with that. Experience VALIDATES doctrine. Feels are key. A Faith that isn’t felt is no faith at all.

Albert Ritschl claimed Christ’s death had nothing to do with the payment of a penalty for sin. He said it resulted from loyalty to His calling of bringing about the Kingdom of God on Earth, and that it was by His death that He could share his experience of Sonship with all people, who would then become the vehicle and means by which the Kingdom could be constructed. The practice of a communal religion was of vital importance to Ritschl because Christ best shared Himself through the community of the Church. Ritschl’s impact on other scholars was great.

Probably the MOST affected by Ritschl’s works was Adolf Harnack. Harnack regarded the contributions of the Apostle Paul to the Gospel as a Greek intrusion on the Christian Faith. His goal was to get back to a more primitive and Jewish emphasis that centered on ethical imperatives as opposed to doctrine. As a professor in Berlin in 1901 he published his influential What Is Christianity? This focused on Jesus’ human qualities, who preached not about Himself but about the Father; the Kingdom and the Fatherhood of God; a higher righteousness; and the command to love.

The views of these 3 German scholars came ashore in America to further the liberal ideas of already underway.

If Theological Liberalism with its Social Gospel were a reaction to the Revivals of the 18th & 19th Cs, those who’d been revived were not going to sit idly by as that liberalism grew. They responded with a movement of their own.

Charles Briggs, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, was put on trial before the Presbytery of New York and suspended from ministry in 1893 for promulgating liberal ideas. Henry Smith of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati was likewise defrocked by that same year, as was AC McGiffert for holding and teaching similar views. Other denominations had heresy trials and dismissed or disciplined offenders. The most famous conflict of the 20th C concerned Harry Emerson Fosdick, who in 1925 was removed as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of New York City to became an influential spokesman for liberalism as the pastor of Riverside Church.

Roman Catholicism wasn’t immune to the impact of theological liberalism and reacted strongly against it. Alfred Loisy, founded Roman Catholic Modernism in France, but was dismissed in 1893 from his professorship at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He was then excommunicated in 1908. The English Jesuit George Tyrrell was demoted in 1899 and died out of fellowship with the church. Liberalism invaded American Roman Catholicism. To silence the threat, Pope Pius X issued the decree Lamentabili in 1907, and in 1910 he imposed an antimodernist oath on the clergy.

In contest with Liberalism, Evangelicals had a number of able scholars during the latter part of the 19th & early part of the 20th Cs. Charles Hodge defended a supernaturally inspired Bible during his long tenure as professor of biblical literature and theology at Princeton. AA. Hodge carried on his father’s work at Princeton. In 1887, BB Warfield followed the Hodges as professor of theology. Fluent in Hebrew, Greek, modern languages, theology, and biblical criticism, Warfield staunchly defended the inerrancy of Scripture and basic evangelical doctrines in a score of books and numerous pamphlets. In 1900, the scholarly Robert Dick Wilson joined the Princeton faculty, and J. Gresham Machen arrived shortly after. In 1929, when a liberal realignment occurred at Princeton, Machen and Wilson joined Oswald Allis, Cornelius Van Til, and others in founding Westminster Theological Seminary. Of course other scholars could be mentioned, but these were some of the most prestigious.

This movement came to be known as Fundamentalism; a word with a largely negative connotation today as it conjures up the idea of wild-eyed religious fanatics who advocate violence as a means of defending and promulgating their beliefs. Christian Fundamentalism was simply a theologically conservative movement that sought to preserve and articulate classic, orthodox beliefs on the Fundamentals of the Christians Faith. They were called Fundamentals because they were regarded as those doctrines that were essential to the integrity of the Gospel message; things that had to be believed in order to be saved.

Fundamentalism was fundamentally a reaction to Theological Liberalism which appeared to many concerned Evangelicals, to be taking over the colleges and seminaries. Liberalism wasn’t popular among the populace; but it was among academics and those in charge of training the clergy. It was understood by evangelical leaders that what began in the classroom would soon be preached in the pulpits and then duplicated in the pews. So they began a counter-movement called Fundamentalism.

Since Theological Liberals had already managed to co-opt the chairs of many institutions of higher learning, they managed to cast their Fundamentalist opponents as uneducated & unsophisticated no-bodies. Knuckle-dragging Theological Neanderthals who didn’t really know or understand the complexities of higher criticism and the latest in theological research. That image has for many, become part & parcel of the connotative meaning of the word Fundamentalist. And it’s grossly unfair since those early Evangelical scholars who shaped the Fundamentalist movement were some of the brightest, best educated, & most erudite people of the day.

It hurts to hear the word Fundamentalist used as a pejorative today when you know it marks the career and work of someone like BB Warfield, Charles Hodge, & J. Gresham Machen.

  continue reading

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