The following is a book review of The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism, by William R. Hutchison (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992). I wrote it awhile back as a graduate student, so beware, it has much academese. It was written for my own study purposes, so much of it is a summary, which is why I thought it might be helpful to post. Liberalism is not new. And it has changed over time and will continue to do so. The book and so the review concentrate on the period from the 1870s to the 1930s.

In this landmark volume, Hutchison describes the development of Protestant modernism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. By giving attention to many individual thinkers involved in the movement, he provides a much needed survey of the actors and thoughts behind this crucial period of the Protestant liberal tradition.

Because terms such as “modernism” and “liberalism” are not used consistently among scholars, Hutchison sets out his own usage explicitly (2-5). “Protestant liberalism” is a movement identified by doctrinal modification extending from the early nineteenth century through to the present. The manner of such modification has not always been consistent, but from the 1870’s to the 1930’s, it was in large measure determined by the “modernist impulse.” Hutchison identifies three significant themes in modernism which, in turn, typify Protestant liberalism in this era: (1) “the conscious, intended adaptation of religious ideas to modern culture”; (2) “the idea that God is immanent in human cultural development and revealed through it”; and (3) “a belief that human society is moving toward realization…of the Kingdom of God.”

The first two chapters set out the early developments of modernist themes that prepare the way, so to speak, for a flourishing modernist liberalism later in the nineteenth century. First, successive stages of the Unitarian movement are credited with advancing modernist themes: William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), beginning in the 1820’s, provided a turn to contemporary culture as a source for positive theological insights; the more radical Transcendentalist or romantic Unitarianism of Emerson and James Marsh made acceptable an openness to contemporary philosophical currents, particularly Idealism; even more radical was the immanentism in the “religion of humanity” promulgated by mid-century figures such as Cyrus Bartol and especially O.B. Frothingham, who entrusted religion to “the spirit of the age” and gave much greater weight to science than the Transcendentalists had done. This radical Unitarianism, sometimes self-consciously beyond Christianity, had an exalted view of humanity and viewed a universal religious consciousness of humanity as a source for knowledge of the divine (hence, beginnings of comparative religion). Even if such movements were not the most prominent and did not have a direct impact on Protestant liberalism, they removed the shock value of radical, public departures from traditional Christianity.

Closer to mainstream Protestantism were the liberal developments within the evangelical communities themselves, most notably seen in the figures of Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) and David Swing, respectively. Among Bushnell’s contributions were his desire to bring the certain conclusions of science into Christianity (Darwinism was not one of them), to view creeds as poetic in language rather than literal, and to have marked confidence in the “redemptive potentialities” in the “world.” His efforts at serious revisions of Christian doctrine represent a turning point within evangelical Christianity, a move to rethink significant points of Christian doctrine without being altogether dismissive of the tradition. The other major preparatory event within evangelical Protestantism was the 1874 trial of the Presbyterian David Swing. Swing was, along with Henry Ward Beecher, one of the first true modernists within evangelical Protestantism. He rejected the timeless validity of the language of both the Scriptures and the creeds, explicitly appealed to the spirit of the age, and had confidence that a moral Christianity could bring progress to society. His views on scripture and creeds brought him to a heresy trial, which he won against Francis Patton, the prosecutor whose strict Princetonian dogmatism clearly no longer enjoyed its former dominance.

In the later 70’s and 80’s, the modernist advance picked up speed and was more widely applied by figures such as Newman Smyth, due in no small part to influences from English theologians like Maurice and German theologians like Dorner. Newman advocated scientific verification for theology, primarily through a Schliermachian emphasis on the universality of religious sentiment. Charles A. Briggs taught that theology was “the divine science,” and he worked against “bibliolatry” by emphasizing the need to give attention to the contextual nature of the biblical writings, and by making clear distinctions between the relative authority of scripture, creeds, and tradition, respectively. In the 1880’s, Theodore Munger presented the agenda of the New Theology by emphasizng the wider role of reason in theology, rejecting the “excessive individualism” and cold assessment of human nature in traditional theology, emphasizing morality and somewhat cautiously setting forth a vision in which the world was becoming the Kingdom of God (Beecher was more confident). In this period, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, this notion of the advancing Kingdom of God on earth – with its appropriation of the spirit of the age and its continuing critical stance on the age’s insufficiencies – was gaining ascendancy to the point of provoking significant protest. Modernistic liberalism had moved beyond the tendency of a few and had become a significant movement by the mid-1880’s.

Liberals made wide gains in the 1890’s, through popularization efforts of Washington Gladden and Lyman Abbot, and through the systematization efforts of William Newton Clarke and William Adams Brown. But by so emphasizing “a God-infused natural and cultural order” (113), the liberals left themselves in the position of having to argue for the uniqueness of Christianity. Largely, the response had to do with the demonstrable moral force of Christianity, its recognition of human worth, and the supremacy of the teachings of Jesus Christ to that end. This notion took shape on the continent in the Ritschlian school, and in the States in response to the question of the basis for missionary efforts.

According to Hutchison, a sense of impending crisis enters liberal literature early in the twentieth century. There were several forms of potential crisis, with several solutions offered to match them. There was a “pause” for reflection regarding missions, provoked by the paradoxical mix of confident missionary expansionism of cultural Christianity on the one hand, and a growing sense of the social ills of American society on the other. George A. Coe’s adoption of secular educational techniques into a sweeping reform effort for Christian education attempted to respond to a crisis in Christian nurture. The Social Gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch was a response to the perception of looming social crisis. Rauschenbusch did not share the exuberant optimism of the late nineteenth century, but he was definitely a modernist. He was able to find in his contemporary culture a situation uniquely in need of and conducive to the flourishing of the original form of Christianity: social salvation and the hope of the kingdom of God. Another sense of crisis, that of Christian disunity, was met by Newman Smyth and others who worked to promote a radical Christian unity; the sense of crisis in disunity was made all the more dire by the fact that Protestants seemed no longer to be defining the American ethos.

More strident and systematic criticisms were made, however, by those inside and outside the movement, and they began before the thorough rethinking associated with the post-war confusion. From outside the movement, the conservatives offered up the Fundamentals in 1910-1915, arguing that biblical Christianity was the orthodoxy handed down and not the New Theology or other aberrations. More thorough in their critique of liberalism, though, were the authors of reviews and articles in the theological journals published by Princeton Seminary. The Princetonians’ chief argument was one that would be the centerpiece of Machen’s later critique, namely that liberalism may be a fine thing for a decent person to follow, but it was not Christianity. An either/or was demanded: supernatural Christianity or the spirit of the age. From within the liberal camp came further critiques, such as Borden P. Bowne’s personalism, which rejected the idealism behind much of liberalism, and Eugene Lyman’s pragmatism, which took Bowne’s program a step further. The functional interpretation of religion by George B. Foster, and the 1913 criticisms by William Wallace of Harvard – liberalism had too high an estimate of human nature and lacked integrity with its use of traditional Christian language – marked a significant trend in self-criticism prior to the War.

But the War did, of course, sharpen and deepen the critiques. Liberals widely held, as did Shailer Matthews and Harry Emerson Fosdick, that earlier liberal progressivism was off-base and was in need of significant modification. Most liberals did embrace the war efforts, though a majority of them were guarded about America’s motivations and did not embrace much of the war propaganda; this was a sort of “critical loyalism” and was the dominant position.

In addition, liberalism faced strengthening critiques from unlikely allies: fundamentalism and secular humanism. Figures such as J. Gresham Machen of Princeton and humanist Walter Lippmann, though they disagreed on their respective proposals, were both agreed that Protestant liberalism was not Christianity and should not masquerade as such. The choice, for both, ought to be between supernatural (i.e. traditional/orthodox) Christianity and humanism; attempts at mixing the two yielded an aberration that had, in any case, proved itself unable to solve the problems it was formulated to solve. Fosdick and Matthews were not, however, convinced by such proposals, and they continued to set forth the liberal Christian position. They modified their positions by dethroning liberalism’s earlier progressivism, by asserting conservatism’s inability to meet the demands presented by contemporary American society, and by accusing Lippmann of being, attitudinally, a secular fundamentalist. Liberalism was changing to meet the new age, as its own methodology required, but their stress on the immanence of God and this need to adapt to the age persisted.

The 1930’s found liberalism assaulted by the powerful force of neorthodoxy, set forth by figures such as the Niebuhr brothers. This response emphasized points they found absent in modernist liberalism: the authority of the Word and greater certainty in our knowledge of God; the real divine-human discontinuities and the necessity for choice; God’s transcendence; and human sinfulness. The liberal response to neoorthodoxy was a mixed one, but it is clear that they were not entirely defeated. Rather, they accused the neorthodox of over-reaction based on a particular cultural condition (post-war pessimism) in much the same way that the neo-orthodox accused the liberals of a culture-accommodating pre-war optimism. Further, while liberals did indeed continue to discard some aspects of modernism, namely the optimistic progressivism and confidence in human nature that they had previously held to, they continued to insist on the basic modernist disposition of accommodating to the spirit of the age, and they continued to stress God’s immanence. In this manner, a modified modernism persisted in Protestant liberalism well into mid-century, and Hutchison argues that they continue to be the permanent contribution of liberalism to mainstream Protestantism.

Hutchison’s massive achievement is due the praise it has received. He has chronicled the roots of modernism, its flourishing in Protestant liberalism, and its subsequent modification and ongoing viability. By focusing on individual figures rather than making sweeping generalizations, Hutchison gives us a real sense of the personal development of modernism and its particular expression by numerous different thinkers. Despite his confessed predilection for the liberal side of things, his narrative comes off as disinterested and his treatment of the conservative responses is fair. Also balanced is his assessment of the rise and demise of modernism, in that he sees it as a matter of degrees rather than an either/or. He at least points to the prevalence of some aspects of modernism in evangelicalism before its widespread endorsement in the 1880’s, and he points to the self-critical stance of liberals prior to WWI.

One would appreciate more clarity in identifying just what Protestant liberalism is, a clarity that is not lacking in his description of modernism. It is clear that Hutchison does not identify modernism with liberalism, as when he say that because “Swing won his case, his ordeal and triumph served to announce the existence not only of liberalism but of a modernist version thereof within the great body of American evangelical Protestantism” (13). Or, later, he says that liberalism was “transformed in spirit….in large part [due] to the decline in modernism” (299). Liberalism persists even when modernism declines. While the book is about modernism not about liberalism per se, one would like to know what was the liberalism that prepared the way for Swing’s trial triumph, a triumph that Hutchison thinks announces the presence of modernistic liberalism, one that presupposes a previous liberal tradition in the Presbyterian church.

Other possible shortcomings are his over-attention to particular thinkers without identifying broader trends, perhaps along denominational lines. It also seems as though Hutchison paints too many individual thinkers with the same liberal brush. Charles A. Briggs is a good example: one does not hear from Hutchison that he adamantly insisted on the virgin birth and the historicity of the resurrection, despite the fact that others surrounding him in the narrative would not have fought the same battles. A figure such as Briggs points to the ongoing importance of traditional doctrines even to those mostly remembered for their modernist disposition.

It is likely, however, that such shortcomings are a result of the chosen method of the book, rather than any short-sightedness on Hutchison’s part. The Modernist Impulse is bold in its stated aims and delivers what it promises: “to trace not the entire history of Protestant liberalism but rather the development and demise of a cluster of liberal ideas that usually was called – after a prominent roman Catholic example – Protestant modernism” (2).