The Gathering Storm in the Church
by R Albert Mohler:
By the end of the twentieth century, the impact of theological liberalism was seen in almost every denomination. The demands for an updated theology and morality—for Christianity to be redefined for a secular age—were reshaping seminaries, congregations, Christian schools, and denominations. Most of the old mainline denominations had capitulated by the 1970s. Tellingly, even as the prophets of theological liberalism had promised that liberalism would save their churches, it was actually liberal theology that led to the evacuation of those churches and denominations. Their membership and attendance plummeted. As recently as 2018, one liberal denomination in Canada predicted that by 2040 it would have “no members, no attendees, no givers.” No problem? This was even the truth in the Southern Baptist Convention until conservatives were able to redirect the denomination in the last years of the twentieth century.
As the present century dawned, secular trends in the society were well documented and a general religious decline marked many denominations of the culture. Conservative, biblically committed Christians faced a new set of challenges.
J. Gresham Machen, the great Presbyterian theologian from the early decades of the twentieth century, brilliantly assessed the state of modern Christianity and the rise of Protestant liberalism. Rather than seeing liberal theology as a variant of the Christian faith, Machen labeled it as a totally new religion that merely poses as Christianity. For Machen, nothing unified orthodox Christianity with Protestant liberalism—the former pursued theological fidelity to the God of the Bible, while the latter morphed into an entirely new religion. He titled his famous book Christianity and Liberalism, and made it clear that liberalism was an entirely new and separate religion altogether.
Liberal Protestantism and secularization have merged, creating a new and dangerous context for biblically committed Christians. This new context will reveal the true followers of Christ—and they may well be revealed by the fact that they are the last in our culture to remember what authentic Christianity is. The fusion of secularization with liberal Protestantism made liberal theology more normal in the eyes of the culture, for a secular culture does not even need a secular theology. They want no theology at all. But because of secularization’s effect, liberal theology sometimes even infiltrates churches that think themselves to be committed to theological orthodoxy. Secularism has desensitized many people sitting in the pews of faithful, gospel-preaching churches, leading them to unwittingly hold even heretical doctrines. It is frightening to realize that some people can be so effectively secularized, even when regularly attending church. How? The fact is that many Christians will be hard-pressed to define faithful Christianity or to live and define central and eternal doctrines.
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