Liberalism

Rise of Liberalism Evangelicals in time neglected their biblical underpinnings, continuing to feed the hungry but forgetting to do it in the name of Christ. WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH The name most commonly associated with the rise of the Social Gospel is Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918). Pastor of a Baptist church in New York (beginning in 1886), where he came to know human need firsthand, he later joined the faculty of Colgate-Rochester Theological Seminary, where he wrote influential books: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Christianizing the Social Order (1912), and A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917). Though he started out early in life with a belief in original sin and personal salvation, by the time he got to his last book he viewed sin as social and impersonal and taught that social reform would come with the demise of capitalism, the advance of socialism, and the establishment of the kingdom of God. Rauschenbusch’s views found ready acceptance by such spokesmen as Shailer Matthews and Shirley Jackson Case, both at the University of Chicago. PROTESTANT REACTION Charles A. Briggs, professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, was put on trial before the Presbytery of New York and suspended from the ministry in 1893. Henry P. Smith of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati was likewise defrocked by the Presbyterian church in 1893. In the same year A. C. McGiffert was dismissed from Lane for his liberal views. Other denominations also had heresy trials and dismissed or disciplined offending persons. Probably the most famous conflict of the twentieth century concerned Harry Emerson Fosdick, who in 1925 was forced out of the pastorate of First Presbyterian Church of New York City and became an influential spokesman for liberalism from the pulpit of the Riverside Church of New York until his retirement in 1946. ROMAN CATHOLIC REACTION Roman Catholicism likewise suffered the inroads of liberalism and reacted strongly against it. Alfred Loisy, founder of Roman Catholic modernism in France, was dismissed in 1893 from his professorship at the Institut Catholique in Paris and excommunicated in 1908. The English Jesuit George Tyrrell was demoted in 1899 and died out of fellowship with the church. Liberalism also invaded American Roman Catholicism. To silence the threat worldwide, Pope Pius X issued the decree Lamentabili in 1907, and in 1910 he imposed an antimodernist oath on the clergy. EVANGELICAL EFFORTS In contesting with rising liberalism, evangelicalism had a number of able scholars during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. Charles Hodge defended a supernaturally inspired Bible during his long tenure as professor of biblical literature and later of theology at Princeton Seminary (1820–1878). A. A. Hodge ably succeeded his father at Princeton (1877–1886). In 1887 B. B. Warfield followed Hodge as professor of theology at Princeton. At home in Hebrew, Greek, modern languages, theology, and biblical criticism, he staunchly defended an inerrant Scripture and cardinal 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 came to the faculty in 1906. In 1929, when a liberal realignment occurred at Princeton, Machen and Wilson joined Oswald T. 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 vocal and the most prestigious. While some evangelical scholars were standing for the faith in academic circles, a large number of faith missions came into existence to propagate the gospel on foreign fields. Exploring church history  electronic ed., Logos Library System, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson) 1997, c1994 by Howard F. Vos.