Modernism and such

Wisdom cries out in the street;

    in the squares she raises her voice.

21 

At the busiest corner she cries out;

    at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

22 

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing

    and fools hate knowledge?

23 

Give heed to my reproof;

I will pour out my thoughts to you;

    I will make my words known to you.

(Words from Dr. Riley Case) Nearly 100 years ago, in 1921 to be exact, Dr. J. Gresham Machen of Princeton University wrote his classic Christianity and Liberalism. It was written during the height of what was then known as the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy, though Machen himself did not want to use the term “fundamentalist.” Machen’s argument was that Christian faith has been defined by Scripture and tradition and is based on facts and doctrine. Why was it necessary to qualify that faith by adding the descriptive label fundamentalist? What was known as “modernism” or “liberalism” was willing to abandon fact and doctrine in deference to modernity. If that was the trend so be it, but the resulting ideology was better identified by the label “liberalism” and not “Christian.” 

The modernists believed, of course,  they were on the “right side of history.” Within five years after Machen’s writing, the Christian Century declared that the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy was over; “fundamentalism” had lost; modernism had won; it was time to leave behind the old battles and work toward creating the brave new world. 

Of course the Methodists back in the “cricks and hollows” didn’t know the theological battle was over yet, but programs of re-education and institutional flag-waving would bring these common folk into conformity and acceptance of modernism. Methodism, once a populist movement, would now be led by the mediating elite of the sophisticated ruling class. All across the land “fundamentalism” was so berated that it became a derogatory label. By the late 1920s every single seminary of the Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church and the M.E. Church South, had declared themselves for modernism (the situation in the Evangelical Church and United Brethren Church seminaries was a bit more complicated). Methodism’s social conscience was turned over to an unofficial self-appointed elitist group, the Methodist Federation for Social Action, which had an affinity, at least for a while, for economic socialism. 

Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism is still relevant. 

The question should still be asked: Is there a point at which a religious ideology is so far afield from the faith "seemingly" (my insertion) defined by Scripture and tradition that if it has integrity, it should no longer label itself as Christianity? The modernism of Machen’s day has morphed and reconstructed itself and faded away and resurrected itself as something different so many times–process theology and liberation theology and neo-orthodoxy and existentialism and feminist theology and womanist theology and Sophia worship and progressive theology– that one struggles at times to understand how it pretends to call itself Christian.

Well, it seems to me that the greater question, for which I have no ready answer, is who determines what Scripture and tradition means?

When we all get together, all this high muckity mucks and such and us little folk, maybe we can settle all this.

I don't think there's a meeting scheduled....