Because this is true, the church can ask a question about the church, but it cannot answer it. Depth seems to be the one dimension that is strangely absent from the lives of the current generation. It is only at this point that the most disturbing aspect of the crisis emerges.
But it is clear that even the most ardent enemies of the Church appeared during the eighteenth. It must be regarded as the most concrete representative of the crisis of religion within Christianity itself. And this brings us to the discussion of the second reason why modernism is helpless in the current crisis of religion.
The Church Against the World by H
Richard Niebuhr, Wilhelm Pauck and Francis P. Miller
American Protestantism and the Christian Faith, by Francis P
Miller
CHRISTIAN FAITH AND HUMAN CULTURE
That the Creator God is revealed in the divine drama of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Rather, that reality is entirely independent of the evolution or destiny of particular nations or races. This does not mean that the form through which the meaning of the Christian cross is interpreted or the form through which its truth is embodied in the life of each age is not conditioned by the culture of that age.
On the contrary, that form will be deeply influenced by the character of the prevailing culture. It is the content of faith and not the form of its expression that is independent of the character of a changing human society. The reality that the cross symbolizes is obviously part of the content of the Christian faith.
Rather, they are part of the grain of the universe as God created it. The content of the Christian faith is provided by the character of God and the nature of his world. This is due to the nature of man himself, as well as the difference between the nature of God's realm and the nature of the world that science describes.
However imperfect the statement of a man of faith may be, the reality about which his statement is made remains completely independent of that imperfection. The form is, of course, partly determined by the character of the eternal reality which it symbolizes and bears witness to.
CAN THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES SURVIVE AS RELIABLE WITNESSES TO CHRISTIAN
And we call that part of the City that confronts us in the here and now, Christianity. Because in the great days of the Protestant movement, the Protestant churches lived within the framework of Christianity. It is derived from the common value that almost all the Protestant churches attached to the Bible.
In addition, it arose from the fact that all Protestant churches were rooted in the soil of a common culture -- the culture of Western Europe. 1. However great the value of the Bible, it is inconceivable that it can ever again provide Protestantism with the universal frame of reference that a reliable witness needs. All over the world, it is the fate of a nation that sets the pace for the human caravan.
This exploitation of culture by the nation-state is the defining fact of the world we live in. But when examined, these claims have no merit in social life. Over a period of more than twenty years I have observed this trend in the life of the Protestant student movements affiliated with the World's Student Christian Federation.
It cannot always be relied upon for accurate interpretation of the present, but as a hint for the future. An even more striking proof of the prevalence of this trend is the increasing lack of understanding between British and American.
IS AMERICAN RELIGION CHRISTIAN?
And the traditions born of the experience of creating a new world ultimately proved distant. There are, of course, parts of the Protestant church in the United States that are relatively immune to the influences of our evolving national religion. This seems to be a very adequate description of Professor Dewey's idea of the incarnation.
It will have this effect because an appeal to the imagination of natural man in the real world of 1935 means an appeal to national culture as the ultimate frame of reference. To the extent that this has happened, the Protestant churches of various countries are no longer reliable witnesses to the truth of the Christian religion. Secondary interests include all those interests related to the fulfillment of the particular purposes of our American national culture.
But for the Christian as a Christian, the realization of the goals of national culture is not his first concern. It is not his first concern because it belongs to the realm of connection and temporality. It is the duty of the Church to remind its members that for them the ultimate frame of reference is not the aspirations of national culture, but the obligations of Christendom.
The primary task of the American Protestant Church is to restore among its members faith in the reality of Christendom. If they choose the latter, they lose their right to speak in the name of the Christian faith.
Toward the Independence of the Church, by H. Richard Niebuhr
THE CAPTIVE CHURCH
Therefore nature, love, life, truth, beauty and justice are exploited or made servants of the higher economic good. However, the church has become entangled with capitalist civilization to the extent that it has compromised with capitalist faith and morals and has become the servant of the world. Some have attributed the origin of capitalism to Protestantism, while others have seen in the latter the child of the former.
The church's slavery to nationalism has been more visible than its slavery to capitalism, partly because nationalism is so clearly a religion, partly because it manifests itself in the dramatic sacrifices of war. The antithesis between church faith and nationalistic idolatry has always been self-evident. The messianic career of Jesus developed in opposition to the nationalisms of Judaism and Rome.
The close relationship of church and state in some cases, the participation of the church in political life in other cases, has been accompanied by a syncretism of nationalism and Christianity. It may be called modernism, but one can certainly live in the modern world, accepting its science and dealing with its work, without falling into the idolatry of modernity. Growing from the success of science and technology in understanding and modifying certain conditions.
The church's compromise with anthropocentrism has come almost imperceptibly in the course of its collaboration in cultural work. Rather, it is the realization of the prevailing situation and the preparation for the next task.
THE REVOLT IN THE CHURCH
Some of the rebels remain romantics trying to build "a kingdom of God" by secular means. Sometimes it concentrates itself against some particular feature of secular civilization that seems especially representative of it. Perhaps the crusade against the liquor trade owed part of its power to the troubled conscience of a church which was able to treat this particular phase of the "world" as the symbol and.
However, the confusion of the rebellion in the church is not only evident in its emotionality, but also in its. This confusion implies dangers and temptations that can lead to disaster or to the continued captivity of the church. The "social gospel," insofar as it is the identification of the gospel with a certain temporal order, is no recent American invention.
But in each case the result was a new tyranny, a new disaster, and a new dependence of the church. Church rebellion faces another danger, which results from the tendency to identify Christianity with resistant secular movements. Multitudes of Christians who have become aware of the tension between the gospel and the world, but are also aware.
The identification of the protest against slavery with the interests of the Northern states drove many Christians in the South to the defense of the "peculiar institution", made the Civil War inevitable and contributed to the continuation of the race problem. The danger facing the world in the midst of its idolatry and lusts is too real, the message of the Church too imperative, the misery of men too current to allow for calm.
TOWARD THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH
The crisis of modern humanity is like the crisis of the prophets, the crisis of the Roman Empire in the days of Augustine, and that of the medieval world in the days of the. It is an appeal not only to the grim reality of the murderer who judges and destroys the self-aggrandizing classes and nations and people. In its rebellion it becomes aware of the truth it has forgotten or that it has hidden in symbols and myths.
Without this beginning in loyalty to God and to Jesus Christ, no new beginning of the church's life is possible. The insurgents in the church teach that without a Christian theory or theology the Christian movement must lose itself in emotions and sentiments or rush into action which will be premature and futile because it is not based on a clear analysis of the situation. The theory of the Christian revolution begins to unfold itself again as the theory of a divine determinism, of the inevitable divine judgment, and of the.
But whatever the content of the theory, a clear understanding of it is necessary for the work of emancipation, reorganization and aggression in the Christian. It cannot flee into asceticism nor seek shelter again in the inner life of the spirit. How to be in the world and yet not of the world has always been the problem of the church.
How to preserve dualism without sacrificing the main revolutionary interest is one of the important ones. Our intention is not to deny the many elements in Marxist analysis: the reality of class struggle, the destructive self-contradiction in modern capitalism, the effect of capitalism on government, true, established religion.
