Chapter 24: The Birth of Modern European
Thought
Section 3: Christianity and the Church
Under Siege
By Dallin F. Hardy

Christianity Under Attack

19th century

Church


Faced
 Intellectual skepticism
Popular faiths


Protestant
Catholic
Intellectual Skepticism

History and Christianity

David Friedrich Strauss

The Life of Jesus

Questioned the historicity
of the Bible

Science and Christianity

18th-century

Science reaffirmed


Religion
19th-century

Science attacked

Religion

Philosophy and Christianity

Friedrich Nietzsche

Christianity


Glorified weakness
“War and courage have
accomplished more great things
than love of neighbor.”
Conflict Between Church and
State

Church vs. State

Education

Previously


Emerging


Church education
State education
Churches

Feared
 Lack of
religious/moral
teaching in
state schools

Secularization of Education

Britain


Education Act of 1870
France

Catholic Church vs. 3rd French
Republic


Ferry Laws


Constant conflict
Replaced religious education
with civic training
Prussia

“May Laws” of 1873

Kulturkampf


1876
Otto von Bismarck

Removed clergy from
overseeing

Education
Areas of Religious Revival

European Religious Revival

Final great effort to

Christianize Europe
The Roman Catholic Church and
the Modern World

Syllabus of Errors



1864
Pope Pius IX
Church’s stance against

19th-century



Science
Philosophy
Politics

First Vatican Council


1869-1870
Established

Papal infallibility

Opposed by many bishops

Papal Infallibility


Dogma
On matters of


Faith
Morality

Rerum Novarum



1891
Pope Leo XIII
Defended




Private property
Religious education
Religious control of
marriage laws
Condemned


Socialism
Marxism
Islam and Late-19th-Century
European Thought

Christian Missionaries

Blamed Islam



Economic backwardness
Mistreatment of women
Condoning slavery

Salafi

Arab belief system

End imitating the


No contradiction between



West
Science
Islam
Rational reading of the

Qur’ an

Wahhabi


Arabian movement
Rejection of


West
Modern thought