Modernity brings more
change
Chapter 12
Challenges to Tradition
 Advances in scientific technique and theory began
throwing religion into a different, often more
critical light
 Geology and the advent of carbon-dating
discovered that the earth was older than the
5,850 years archbishop James Ussher had
determined based on the chronology of the Bible
 The biggest shock to Christian tradition was the
publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the
Species, which posited that all “living entiti[es]”
come from some original form that was different
from their current state (rather than the idea of
creation ex nihilo as was often posited from
Christian sources)
Re-interpreting the Bible
 Historico-biblical criticism also migrated over from
Europe (primarily Germany) to America
 “criticism denotes sustained, careful analysis”, in
this case, of the scriptures, the ultimate goal
being the uncovering of the original wording,
meaning and intent of the biblical authors (173)
 Modernism, or liberal thought, was commonly the
umbrella term under which Darwinism and biblical
criticism fell
The Bible as Battleground
 Some, like Asa Gray, saw no discrepancy between evolutionary
and critical theories of the Bible, believing that all the new
information simply provided a means of seeing God’s
Providence at work
 Others, like Charles Hodge and Benjamin Breckenridge
Warfield felt that such techniques actually limited God’s
sovereignty and his work in history; or worse, that it corrupted
the inerrant word of the Bible
 Charles Briggs on the other hand, a Presbyterian like Hodge,
had come to see “religious development, both in history and in
individual experience, as a process of evolutionary growth”
(175)
 For his views, Briggs went on trial for heresy, though his point of view
would continue to “liberalize” across denominational lines and schools of
divinity (i.e Shailer Matthews)
Fundamentalism
 Against the growing modernist impulse in churches and the
academy various forces coalesced representing a conservative
backlash
 The revivalism of Billy Sunday, the continued development
of premillennial dispensationalist views and the “Princeton
Theology” that, among other things, put forward a view of
the Bible as literal and inerrant, would come together to
become what was eventually called fundamentalism
 Fundamentalism got its name from several pamphlets entitled
The Fundamentals, intended to clearly illustrate the essence
of the Christian faith
 The Fundamentals were: Christ’s Virgin Birth, the truth of Christ’s
miracles, Christ’s substitutionary atonement, Christ’s imminent return
and the literalism and inerrancy of the Bible
“Shall the Fundamentalists
Win?”
 As Fundamentalism grew in strength, those with more
modernist inclinations went on the offensive
 In 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick preached the above mentioned
sermon intent on awakening his congregation (and American
Christians) to what he saw as the intolerance and
perniciousness of Fundamentalism making inroads in American
churches
 In 1925, the Scopes trial occurred over the teaching of
evolution in schools, but what was really put on the stand was
Fundamentalism; Clarence Darrow famously pummeled William
Jennings Bryan on the stand on issues related to religious
belief and, not necessarily the case
 Following the trial, the assumption was that Fundamentalism was
defeated, though as we now know, this view was mistaken
Belief and Society
 Social Darwinism, a sociological outgrowth of
Darwin’s biological theory, drew on the idea of the
“survival of the fittest” but in relation to
capitalism; the rich and successful were seen as the
fit whereas the poor and downtrodden were the
weak)
 The Gospel of Wealth, which was “a bit more
humane than Social Darwinism” (179) put forward
the idea every person, based on their God-given
abilities, had the capacity to achieve great wealth
and prestige; proponents Andrew Carnegie and
Russell Conwell preached the symbiosis of
Christianity and capitalism
Pragmatism and Humanism
 Pragmatism, as delineated by Charles Sanders
Pierce and William James, was concerned with the
results or experience of religion by individual
personalities, rather than religious content;
religion’s function became paramount
 John Dewey, influenced by the pragmatists, saw
religious institutions were valuable for the teaching
of correct morality and the fostering of community
 He in turn saw the ultimate “aim of belief” as the
realization of “one’s potential as a human being in the
present” (181); thus anything that occluded such an end
was considered evil
Pentecostalism
 Charles Fox Parham, Agnes Ozman and William J. Seymour (for
more on each see pp. 182-3) were all founding agents of a
movement in Christianity focused on religious experience that
arose during the early years of the 20th century
 What set Pentecostalism apart from the other experiments in
Protestantism during this time was its focus on spiritual gifts,
including speaking in tongues and healing, which were
understood as granted by the Holy Spirit
 Under the guidance of Seymour, Pentecostalism was also
seen as a paragon of diversity, bringing together people of
all races and ethnicities to experience revival
 Several denominations grew out of this, namely the Church of
God (out of which came the Church of God in Prophecy), the
Church of God in Christ and the Assemblies of God