Christianity and Liberalism

[david_l...@my-deja.com]

From the intoduction to Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham
Machen (1923), originally published by Macmillan it is now in the public
domain: [This is a great little book and what was true about religion
and was true about education in 1923 is still true. Machen was the
Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary at the time.]

"The modern world represents in some aspects an enormous
improvement over the world in which our ancestors lived; but in other
respects it exhibits a lamentable decline. The improvement appears in
the physical conditions of life, but in the spiritual realm there is a
corresponding loss. The loss is clearest, perhaps, in the realm of
art.
Despite the might revolution which has been produced in the external
conditions of life, no great poet is now living to celebrate the change;
humanity has suddenly become dumb. Gone, too, are the great
painters and the great musicians, and the great sculptors. The art that
still subsists is largely imitative, and where it is not imitative it is
usually bizarre. Even the appreciation of the glories of the past is
gradually being lost, under the influence of a utilitarian education
that concerns itself only with the production of physical well-being.
The 'Outline of History' of Mr. H.G. Wells, with it contemptous neglect
of all the higher ranges of human life, is a thoroughly modern book.

This unprecedencted decline in literature and art is only one
manifestation of a more far-reaching phenomenon; it is only one
instance of that narrowing of the range of personality which has been
going on in the modern world. The whole development of modern
society has tended mightily toward the limitation of the realm of
freedomfor the individual man. ... In other words, utilitarianism is
being carried to its logical conclusions; in the interests of physical
well-being the great principles of liberty are being thrown ruthlessly
to the winds.

The result is an unparalleled impoverishment of human life. Personality
can only be developed in the realm of individual state. And that realm,
in the modern state, is being slowly but steadily contracted. The
tendency is making itself felt especially in the sphere of education.
The object of education, it is now assumed, is the production of the
greatest happiness for the greatest number. But the greatest happiness
for the greatest number, it is assumed further, can be defined only by
the will of the majority. Idiosyncasies in education, therefore, it is
said, must be avoided, and the choice of schools must be taken away
from the individual parent and placed in the hands of the state.
...
In the state of Oregon, on Election Day, 1922, a law was passed by a
referendumvote in accordance with which all children in the state are
required to attend the public schools. [DLH Note: This law and others
like it were later made invalid because the US Supreme Court declared
them unconstitutional.]
...
When one considers what the public schools of America in many
places already are -- their materialism, their discouragement of any
sustained intellectual effort, their encouragement of the dangerous
pseudo-scientific fads of experimental psychology--one can only be
appalled by the thought of a commonwealth in which there is no escape
from such a soul-killing system.
...
A public school system, if it means the providing of free education for
those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent aschievement of
modern times; but when once it becomes monpolistic it is the most
perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of
thought was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far
more effective. Place the lives of children in their formative years,
despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of
experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the
higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is
filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how
even the remnants of liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as
it is by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying
human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies
of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword permitted
thought atleast to be free.

The truth is that the materialistic paternalism of the present day, if
allowed to go on unchecked, will rapidly make of America one huge
"Main Street," where spiritual adventure will be discouraged and
democracy will be regarded as consisting in the reduction of all mankind
to the proportions of the narrowest and least gifted of the citizens.
God grant that there may come a reaction, and that the great principles
of Anglo-Saxon liberty may be rediscovered before it is too late! But
whatever solution be found for the educational and social problems of
our own country, a lamentable condition must be detected in the world
at large. It cannot be denied that great men are few or non-existent,
and that there has been a general contracting of the areea of personal
life. Material betterment has gone hand in hand with spiritual decline.

Sucn a condition of the world ought to cause the choice between
modernism and traditionalism, liberalism and conservatism, to be
approached without any of the prejudice which is too often displayed. In
view of the lamentable defects of modern life, a type of religion
certainly should not be commended because it is modern or condemned
because it is old. On the contrary, the condition of mankind is such
that one may well ask what it is that made the men of past generations
so great and the men of the present generation so small. In the midst
of all the material achievements of modern life, one may well ask the
question whether in gaining the whole world we have not lost our own
soul. Are we forever condemned to life the sordid life of
utilitarianism? Or is there some lost secret which if rediscovered will
restore to mankind something of the glories of the past?

Such a secret the writer of this little book would discover in the
Christian religion. But the Christian religion which is meant is
certainly not the religion of the modern liberal Church, but a message
of divine grace, almost forgotten now, as it was in the middle ages,
but destined to burst forth once more in God's good time, in a new
Reformation, and bring light and freedom to mankind."

David L. Hanson
[P.S. It is 76 years later and there still is no "new Reformation" - the
situation has only gotten worse as more churches and denominations have
become apostate. Machen is writing about the fall of the mainline
denominations very early in the 20th century. Many more churches fell
into "New Evangelicalism", which is just plain rank unbelief with a
fancy name, starting in the late 1940's.]

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