Liberalism and the Modern Mind Produced a

Liberalism and the modern mind produced a profound effect upon church culture as it was manifested at the turn of the 20th century. The impact of liberalism and many of the concerns of modern man from this epoch also greatly affect the perception of church culture and Christianity today. The effect of liberalism on the church at this time is important, because it occurred when "Western missionary expansion" (Noll, 2012, p. 263) was becoming a global phenomenon.

Protestant Liberalism largely arose from the need of Christians to contend with some of the most pressing issues of the late 1800's and early 1900's, which included various aspects of science and history, and zeitgeists such as Romanticism. A close look at the various ramifications of these concerns reveals that liberalism and the modern mind ultimately was responsible for a reshaping of values within the Christian Church, in which orthodox principles were readily displaced with a greater valuation for Christian experience.

The scientific principle most closely associated with Protestant Liberalism was the growing evolutionary movement which became largely popularized due to the work of Charles Darwin. The central way in which this science relates to Christianity is that it effectively replaces the notion of a divine creator with the tenet that existence is achieved through an evolutionary process in which slow transformations start small and grow over time. Those who embraced orthodox views of Christianity believed that such a principle was contradictory to faith in God.

Many Protestant Liberals, however, incorporated this principle into their faith as a way of modernizing Christianity and making it more accountable to some of the modern concepts at the time (Ostrander, 1996, p. 44). Instead of rejecting Darwin and other propagators of evolutionary theory, these liberals believed that such an idea was simply a way for God to enlighten his believers more about his true nature (Shelley, 2008, p. 397) and that of the world itself.

In this way, science helped to shift the values of Christianity from a mere belief in notions (such as faith) that were already established to one which involved the notions of reason that were gaining traction at that time. Another discipline that directly relates to modernism and the liberal mind and the way these concepts impacted the church culture is history. This discipline was evinced most saliently in regards to the concept of Biblical criticism, which emerged around the same time frame that evolutionary theory did as well.

Biblical criticism is a term that refers to an analysis of the Bible as a historical text. As such, various facets of its passages are scrutinized relating to authors, intentions, and references to uncover as much of the original meaning of the original authors as possible. Such a deconstruction of the Bible and its meaning from a strictly academic standpoint greatly contrasted with the orthodox view of the Bible and its usage -- which was that as an authoritative, "divine" (Newton, 2010, p.

330) text that functioned as the precept for law in some cases. Protestant Liberals, however, did not oppose this notion the way that adherents to orthodox Christianity did. Instead, the former embraced this idea and used it to their advantage by figuratively distancing themselves from some of the more violent or unpleasant passages in this work (Shelley, 2008, p. 399) and emphasizing those that reinforced some of the more benign, spiritual interpretations of the scriptures.

They did so under the context that by incorporating this modern viewpoint, they were simply unveiling more of God's way and message about how religion should be practiced. Thus, a historical approach to the Bible helped to transition Christian values from one in which the scriptures were absolute authorities to one in which modern values of reason and analysis were incorporated.

Still, it appears as though the facet of Protestant Liberalism and the modern mind that was most influential to church culture in both the 20th century and in contemporary times is that which is related to the Romantic movement of the 19th century. Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that emphasized sensation and feeling.

Its impact on Christianity was most demonstrable in what is regarded as the Christian experience, which is the idea that one of the most important aspects of faith is how an individual is able to relate to God and Jesus on a personal level. There is a parallel between Christian experience and the latter day Charismatic Movement, as both "placed more emphasis on subjective experience" (Gilley, no date).There were a couple of highly noted proponents for this notion of Christian experience, most notably Freidrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl.

These men and others posited the viewpoint that one of the most important aspects of faith during the time Protestant Liberalism was emerging was one's own personal connection to God. In fact, this facet of the Christian Experience appeared to supersede the other values of science and history.

While science and history produced the effect of obfuscating some of the core principles of Christianity (such as notions of God's role in creation and who exactly Jesus Christ was), emphasis on Christian experience engendered the opposite effect, one in which "Belief in the divinity of Jesus…rests… on the fact that he is the source of a value-creating movement…Jesus's life was the embodiment.