The Protestant Prophet: J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism at 100

Jan 12, 2024 by Dave Doveton

By Joshua Pauling, Public Discourse.

In 1923, a short book entitled Christianity and Liberalism, written by the Presbyterian J. Gresham Machen, hit the market. At the time, Machen was a professor of New Testament Studies at the Princeton Theological Seminary. He wrote the book in response to the liberal theology that he saw spreading in many church bodies and seminaries, including his own.

When Machen wrote, America was rapidly undergoing urbanization, industrialization, and immigration, while rising global conflicts and economic booms and busts loomed on the horizon. The world was changing, modernizing. Young people were moving away from farms to burgeoning cities. Women were challenging social conventions. Men were finding themselves more distant from their own families and more beholden to the workplace. Scientific, medical, and technological advancements were increasing life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. Nature, red in tooth and claw, was getting a manicure.

Where was this new world headed? And what role would Christianity play in such a world where humanity seemed to be getting better and better, and death no longer seemed imminently threatening? It was the age of progress, after all. Did Christianity need to adapt to the times and get a manicure, too? Or would the sharp edges of sin and grace, death and life, crucifixion and resurrection still form the structure and core of the Christian message?

It was in this context that Machen contended that Christianity still hangs on Jesus Christ, the God-Man who reconciles mankind to the Father. If Christianity focused on earth-bound goals like alleviating poverty or initiating social improvement while overlooking core Christian doctrine as summarized in the Creed, it served no real purpose. If Jesus was just window-dressing for political or cultural change, why remain faithful to him? Hence, Machen argued, modernist approaches to Christianity were a completely different religion. For Machen, what makes Christianity relevant in changing times is that it doesn’t change.

The century-old thesis advanced in Christianity and Liberalism still has purchase for Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, since the temptations of the liberal Christianity of Machen’s day continually resurface under various guises.

Read here.