Holding the Line

Great article in March Tabletalk: "Holding the Line" by D.G. Hart.
On 20th Century American Protestantism, it clarified for me the RCA's own backstory on its tensions and current issues. Here are some quotes, in italics - my own comments in normal type.

"Not only did Darwin's... natural selection undermine God's role in creation and providence, but new approaches to the study of ancient texts also raised doubt about the divine character of the Bible....

"The modernists attemped to accommodate the new science so that the churches would not look like obstacles to progress and the advance of knowledge.... modernists attempted to naturalize Christianity so that it would not conflict with the new science and the social progress it appeared to beckon. On the other side, fundamentalists dug in their heels (rightly so).... the list of essential doctrines from which fundamentalists took their name, featured the virgin birth, miraculous deeds, vicarious death, and resurrection of Christ, along with affirmations of the inerrancy of the Bible.... the new science drove Protestants into natural and supernatural camps."

"Not until the 1940s, with the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals, would the more conservative side achieve the institutional coherence that characterized the mainline through... the National Council of Churches."

There is a general fit, in the fundamentalist/modernist debates, where the former characterizes the NAE while the latter defines the NCC and mainliners.

"For the sake of greater specificity the case of... the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., will help to illuminate.... In 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick... accused fundamentalists of intolerance and called theri essential doctrines... minor matters.... The Presbytery in New York also added to the conservative alarm when it ordained two men who would not affirm the virgin birth. Conservatives... tried to discipline the Presbyterians in New York. But in several successive General Assemblies, the denomination showed no willingness to be divisive and chose instead administrative solutions that were designed to lessen the tensions. One of these measures involved a study committee whose report blamed conservatives for the contentiousness in the church.... The drive for unity had supplanted a concern for correct doctrine."

This is ringing bells all over the place.

"The ecumenical drive that had dominated Protestant agencies since 1870 had cultivated an organizational ethos that made theological disagreement anathema....

"Liberalism was a valiant but misguided effort to preserve the influence of Christianity within American culture at a time when science and new scholarship threatened to render the Christian faith implausible. But to maintain Christianity's intellectual respectability, liberals also gutted the faith of what was both most offensive and most essential, namely, the person and work of Christ....

"What was at stake in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy was not the secularization of America but the secularization of the church. During the 1920s and 1930s, Protestants faced a choice between retaining either the status of the church or the message of the Gospel. This is a decision that has confronted the church in every age."