Articles

In the 1920s the fundamentalists abandoned the culture to the modernists and humanist secularizers, and they also lost control of the large mainline churches in the 1930s. The mainline modernist Protestant establishment had won the war with the fundamentalists to be the church’s voice, but they were in the twilight years of their power to set the tone for American culture. The liberal churches’ triumph coincided with the advent of the Great Depression, and they assisted in setting the political course for the nation in those troubled times. In 1908, the highly humanistic and socialistic tenets of the liberal churches’ defunct social gospel movement had been codified in the Social Creed of the Churches by the Federal Council of Churches in Christ in America.[1] Many […]

Between 1870 and 1930, the modernist-liberal Protestant leadership was comfortably entrenched among the elite of American society, but their theological positions which they had readily conformed to the humanistic worldview of the secularizing activists were not representative of the majority of Americans who professed Christianity during that era. Some may suppose that the opponents of liberal Protestants were the original silent majority. But in reality, the conservative leaders of the once dominant populist evangelical churches were not silent but just didn’t have the cultural clout or platform from which to mount significant opposition to the liberal churches and their newly found secularist allies. However, in 1910 twelve small volumes were published which were titled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. The books outlined the […]

We have written of the Protestant hegemony that dominated America life and its institutions up to 1870. But the so-called “common faith” that supposedly blanketed all denominations and their particular characteristics was in reality a weak facade which hid an American Protestantism that was deeply fragmented as they faced the coming assault by the humanistic secularizers between 1870 and 1930. The Protestant church was divided by denominations, geography, race, ethnicity, organizational types and methods, and social class lines. As the Protestant church began to experience loss of social power, cultural authority, and institutional influence, these various differences became polarized around two competing visions of Christianity and resulted in a modernist-fundamentalist split in the late nineteenth century which reached its rancorous end by the late 1920s.[1] […]

The remarkable strength and vitality of the American church from its very beginning with the Pilgrims in 1620 until the mid-nineteenth century can be attributed to its success in resisting Satan’s two-fold attack that has plagued the church throughout its history since its birth 2000 years ago. The first attack comes from within through attempts to corrupt the doctrinal truths of the Bible and undermine unity within the body of Christ. The second attack arises from without through the assimilation and accommodation of worldliness in the church including the contra-biblical relationships between the church and state. The humanistic spirit of the world became a cultural force that swept over the American Beulah Land during the last half of the nineteenth century. The enormous changes that […]

Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it… For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before me from their youth: for the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, saith the LORD. [Jeremiah 32:28, 30. KJV] Industrialization and societal change J. M. Roberts in his definitive The New History of the World described the large-scale industrialization of the Western world that began in the late eighteenth century and lasted through most of the nineteenth century. He wrote that the magnitude of societal change produced by industrialization was […]

America the exceptional John Quincy Adams expressed the sentiments of many of the Founders when he wrote of the importance of the Bible and Christianity in the nation’s founding. The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity…From the day of the Declaration…they (the American people), were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of their Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of conduct.[1] The remarkable strength and vitality of the American church from its very beginning with the Pilgrims in 1620 until the mid-nineteenth century can be attributed to the American church’s success in countering Satan’s twofold attack as […]

To understand the dominant Protestant paradigm and its characteristics that existed in 1870, we must understand the main currents of Christianity in America that began with the Pilgrims and developed through the three Great Awakenings. The first current began with the early Reformation churches planted in America in the early seventeenth century. These were the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians (Anglican), but their religious fervor and commitment cooled as native-born second and third generation colonists replaced their European-born parents during the last half of the 1600s. The second current grew from the stirrings of revival that blossomed within the church during the 1720s. These stirrings became a renewal movement called evangelicalism and birthed the First Great Awakening that began in the 1730s. Evangelical churches emphasized a […]

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah…[Isaiah 62:4. KJV] For all of its history, a principal battle for the Christian church has been the preservation and defense of biblical truth. For centuries the European church fought among themselves and with their respective governments or kings all the while accumulating wealth, power, and worldliness. Following centuries of neglect, compromise, and corruption of the sustaining power of pristine biblical truth, the decline of the church worsened as it came under the influence and eventual domination of eighteenth century Enlightenment thought and its religion of humanism. For many of the faithful, Europe and the state churches had become wicked […]