The Liberal Protestant Tradition in America
1. What is Liberalism?
Affirmation of pluralism
Relativizing of classical doctrine and practice
Positive attitudes to culture and science
High valuation of individual conscience
Preference for immanentist theological language
Anthropological and social optimism: world-affirming.
2. The American Origins of the Liberal Protestant Tradition
a. The History of Toleration
Roger Williams (1603-83), founder of Rhode Island and promoter of religious freedom.
Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), Puritan prophet banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony.
b. Arminianism
Jacob Arminius (1560-1609), Dutch Reformed theologian whose views on human freedom were condemned at the Synod of Dort in 1618.
c. Rationalism
Freemasonry.
d. Unitarianism and Universalism
William Ellery Channing (1780- 1842), Congregationalist minister and early Unitarian. A critic of Calvinist doctrines of salvation, Channing's sermon, "Unitarian Christianity," preached at an ordination in Baltimore, was a foundational document for the theological liberalism that became the Unitarian movement. Channing's stress on moral responsibility fueled his interest in social causes, especially the abolition of slavery.
As a denominational movement, Unitarianism consolidated itself from congregations that withdrew from Trinitarian churches between 1820 and 1825 when the American Unitarian association was formed.
Federal Street Church.
Harvard University.
Universalism, loosely constituted and largely popular movement. Rapid expansion between 1820 and 1850. Anti-Calvinist, doctrine of universal salvation, strong commitment to social causes, "rational" approach to Scripture.
Hosea Ballou (1771-1852), popularizer and sysematizer of Universalist ideas. A Treatise on Atonement criticized classical notions of salvation and rejected Trinitarianism.
e. New England Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 1882), philosopher, critic, poet, inspirer and leader of New England Transcendentalism. Left Unitarianism as too restricting. Key statements of his optimistic, cosmic religious philosophy are found in Nature and the "Divinity School Address," given at Harvard.
3. Liberal Protestantism in the late C19th and early C20th
a. World-affirming Liberalism
Russell Herman Conwell (1843- 1925), Baptist minister and preacher of the "Gospel of Wealth." Famous lecture and statement, "Acres of Diamonds." His church in Philadelphia - the Baptist Temple - had 3000 members in 1893.
"Gospel of Wealth," originally promoted by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie (article "Wealth," North American Review, 1889): an economic and social philosophy that justified competition and the overall benefits of social inequality. Poverty is personal failure. "Godliness is in league with riches."
"New Thought," a message of healing and spiritual power: International New Thought Alliance.
Charles and Myrtle Fillmore founders of the Unity School of Christianity.
b. World-affirming and World- transforming Liberalism
Walter Rauschenbusch and the "social gospel."
c. Liberalism in Theology
4. Criticism of Liberal Protestantism
The Fundamentals, a 12 volume series (1910-15) financed by the California businessman Lyman Stewart. A fairly moderate defense of biblical inerrancy and traditional Protestant accounts of sin and salvation. The series provided an ideological focus for the anti-liberal reaction that had begun in the late C19th and eventually became known as Fundamentalism.
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c. Liberalism in Theology
According to the spirit of its cultural affirmation, Liberal Protestantism embraced the methods of contemporary philosophy together with those of the historical, social, and natural sciences as necessary criteria for modern theology. This does not demand that the results and methods of those sciences be understood as beyond criticism or as the sole criteria for theological construction. It does, however, involve the claim that an open dialogue with contemporary sciences and philosophy is a "non-negotiable" requirement for responsible theology. Liberal Protestantism has demanded that theology secure and justify a place within the intellectual sphere, as having, therefore, an earned right to contribute to the scientific debate about humanity and nature . In both the C19th and C20th, this has precipitated severe conflict within all major denominations, especially as historical criticism was applied to Scripture and creeds and confessions were reinterpreted in the light of scientific inquiry.
4. Criticism of Liberal Protestantism
a. The Anti-liberal Reaction: Fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism attacked liberalism's
cultural affirmations within the sphere of theology. It presents,
however, a strange negative image of liberalism in that the Fundamentalist
has implicitly accepted some of Liberal Protestantism's intellectual
criteria. Thus both have placed a strong emphasis on the importance
of "historicity" in relation to the truth of biblical
narratives. The liberal quest for the historical Jesus and the
fundamentalist insistence on the complete historicity of the gospels
share, in this sense, a common presupposition.
b. C20th Critiques of Liberal
Protestant World-affirmation:
a. Neo-orthodoxy and the critique of liberal identification of Christianity and culture.
H. R. Niebuhr composed the famous polemical caricature of liberal theologies: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross," H.R. Niebuhr, in The Kingdom of God in America.
ii. Liberationist theologies and the critique of Western modernity.
Liberation theologies - political, feminist, ethnic - have offered a critique of modernity - of its individualism, concepts of reason, attitudes to progress and science - that attacks even the more prophetic, social-critical forms of liberal Protestantism.