In 1923, a middle-aged professor of New Testomony at Princeton Seminary, J. Gresham Machen, produced a ebook that asserted liberal Protestantism was not merely a faulty model of Christianity however a special faith altogether. Discuss provocative. Was Machen trolling liberal Protestants? 100 years later, white conservative Protestants within the US spent chunk of final 12 months commemorating Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism. The explanations will not be onerous to think about. Right here was a scholar of the Bible who was fed up with what non secular and political Progressivism was doing to American church buildings and society. Machen breached the manners and ethos of elite society to say that America’s largest church buildings had been Christian in title solely. If in the present day’s post-liberal Christian Nationalists needed a historic determine to emulate in their very own frustrations with up to date America, Machen is an apparent candidate.
The issue is that the Princeton professor was a number of lanes faraway from the concept that America was a Christian nation. His criticism about liberal Protestantism was primarily theological. He conceded that liberals had some extent concerning the issue of science-following trendy folks believing within the miracles that got here with the Bible. The virgin start (a subject about which Machen wrote a prolonged ebook) and the resurrection of Christ had been onerous beliefs to keep up amongst college-educated People. The issue, as Machen identified, was that eradicating the supernatural elements of Jesus turned Christianity into a special faith. Within the phrases of H. L. Mencken, who wrote a positive obituary of Machen (who died in 1937), liberal Protestants had turned Christianity into effete “nursery rhymes,” a “sequence of candy attitudes, attainable to anybody not really in jail for felony.”
As interesting as Machen could also be to in the present day’s Protestant conservatives, his politics don’t present help for many who wish to substitute John Locke with John Calvin. Machen was a lifelong Democrat from the Free State (Maryland) who landed within the states’ rights, small authorities wing of the Get together’s coalition. Christianity and Liberalism tried to hook readers bored by church controversy by mentioning what Progressivism was doing to america. The rise of nationalism (or Americanism) after World Struggle I used to be answerable for state laws to limit public faculty instruction in international languages. This was one instance of the Progressive and ecumenical Protestant drive for a unified nation that turned cultural variety right into a peril. As such, Machen defended the liberal custom of American authorities—in its federal, republican, and constitutional expressions—even whereas he opposed liberalism in theology. For some readers, reminiscent of Walter Lippmann, Machen’s technique in framing the ebook—in protection of liberal politics, in opposition to liberal Christianity—was successful. In A Preface to Morals (1929), Lippmann judged Machen’s ebook to be the perfect argument produced by both facet within the so-called fundamentalist controversy.
Machen was far faraway from Christian Americanism and mocked Progressives for figuring out america (understood right here as a redeemer nation) with the Kingdom of God.
Right now, Machen’s politics—a libertarian, small-government Democrat—don’t map simply onto Blue-State-Purple-State debates even whereas his theology and biblical scholarship nonetheless resonate amongst conservative Protestants. A large variety of Protestants, from Baptists to Lutherans, have run conferences, chosen themes for magazines, and recorded episodes of podcasts on Machen’s ebook. That is curious if solely as a result of when the ebook turned fifty and seventy-five, these magical anniversaries divisible by twenty-five, Protestants paid scant consideration to Christianity and Liberalism. However in the present day, readers have selections for which one centesimal anniversary version to purchase, the one revealed by the seminary Machen based (Westminster) or the favored theological ministry, Ligonier. Maybe World journal’s naming Christianity and Liberalism the ebook of the 12 months for 2023 gave Protestants room to commemorate Machen’s ebook.
Machen’s attraction to up to date Protestants could have a significance that few have seen. For all the commentary, blended with alarm, about blurring the traces of faith and American politics usually and the risks of Christian nationalism particularly, the large and numerous viewers for Christianity and Liberalism reveals that Protestant conservatives are motivated extra by religion than by politics. Machen was far faraway from Christian Americanism and mocked Progressives for figuring out america (understood right here as a redeemer nation) with the Kingdom of God. In the same approach, politics have been distant from the commemorations of his ebook. Right now’s Protestants are drawn to Machen’s understanding of salvation and the church.
This appropriation of Machen signifies that a thirst for severe Christianity exists unbiased from tradition conflict epithets or requires a political strongman. Strange Protestants appear merely to need sincere and rigorous dialogue of the Bible and its message of redemption. That was what Machen was attempting to do 100 years in the past. He noticed a church in full help of humanitarianism and uplift that had overlooked Scripture’s instructing. In response, Machen referred to as for the church to be the church and to step apart from politics. That model of an apolitical church explains once more why Machen’s political theology has restricted attraction in the present day although it echoes the purpose some school are making that universities shouldn’t subject statements on political controversies however do what they had been designed to do—foster debate and inquiry. With out Christians (or different idealists) sticking their righteous causes within the political course of, the give and take of a various and free society might play out considerably orderly because of constitutional provisions.
If extra folks seen all of the Protestants studying Machen in 2023, those self same observers may rethink the alleged hazard that historic Christianity poses to the American Republic.
