A Personal Reflection on Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism
I rediscovered J. Gresham Machen after a period of profound personal and spiritual upheaval. As a former priest in the Episcopal Church, I had spent years navigating the delicate balance of preaching what I believed to be biblical truth while avoiding the sharp edges of controversy. Then I got involved with Redeemed Zoomer’s Operation Reconquista. I tried to help his nascent online movement get an institutional toehold in the real-life Episcopal Church.
I introduced him to fellow like-minded conservative clergy and paid for him and several others from his Episcopal Discord server to attend a meeting of the Communion Partners, the dwindling network of conservative bishops of the Episcopal Church, in Dallas in 2023. For this I was rewarded with a “Title IV”—the Episcopal Church’s disciplinary canon—by an anonymous transgendered seminarian. An investigative journalist from The Living Church magazine tracked down the seminarian and published an expose of his weaponization of church discipline against me and four other members of the clergy involved with Operation Reconquista. However, I was the only clergyman to go on record for the article. The reticence of my former colleagues brings me to Machen and his book, Christianity and Liberalism.
Machen’s words, written over a century ago, cut through the carefully constructed facade of “low visibility” faith that I and many other conservative mainline clergy have been forced to adopt. His critique of modernism and liberal Christianity, delivered with unflinching clarity, forced me to confront the ways in which I had softened the Gospel’s demands to avoid conflict. This essay is both a personal reflection on my journey and an exploration of Machen’s arguments, particularly his diagnosis of the “conflict averse church” and its consequences for the soul of contemporary Christianity.
Machen’s Call to Clarity
Published in 1923, Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism was a searing indictment of the theological drift that Machen saw overtaking the mainline Protestant churches of his day.
Born in 1881 in Baltimore, Maryland, Machen was a product of the “Old Princeton” theology and seminary, a bastion of Reformed thought rooted in the teachings of John Calvin. Theologians like Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield represent the best of that Old Princeton tradition. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), he became a fierce opponent of modernism—the intellectual movement that sought to reconcile Christianity with the scientific and cultural currents of the early 20th century. His opposition led him to break with the PCUSA and to help found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and Westminster Theological Seminary.
Machen’s purpose was clear: to demonstrate that liberal Christianity, far from being a modernized version of the historic faith, was an entirely different religion. He argued that in five essential doctrines—man, Scripture, Christ, salvation, and the Church—liberal theology diverged irreconcilably from biblical Christianity. In his introduction, Machen wrote that his goal was not to resolve the religious debates of his time but to “present [them] as sharply and clearly as possible.”
This commitment to clarity struck me deeply. As an Episcopal priest, I had mastered the art of ambiguous third-wayism, crafting sermons that sounded orthodox but avoided direct confrontation with the cultural idols of my congregation. Machen’s words were a rebuke: “Presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular business at the present time.”
My Own Low Visibility Faith
I can speak personally to the temptation of avoiding conflict. In my years as an Episcopal priest, I prided myself on preaching biblical sermons, but I now see how I pulled my punches. I recall a young man who sat in the front pew of my church, week after week, often wearing a Planned Parenthood t-shirt. I never addressed his attire or the underlying issue of abortion directly. I told myself that my preaching was sufficient, that the Gospel would convict him in time. But in truth, I was afraid—afraid of alienating him, afraid of sparking a confrontation, afraid of being labeled intolerant. My visibility as a Christian witness was so low that I barely registered as a contender for the faith.
This pattern of avoidance came to a head during the Covid lockdowns of 2020. I made it clear to my small congregation that I was willing to break quarantine to pray with them in person or bring them communion. To my surprise, only one person took me up on the offer. The rest, it seemed, were content to follow “the science” and stay home. Then, during the George Floyd protests, some in my congregation expressed disappointment that I hadn’t joined the other clergy leading public demonstrations. I was baffled. How had my preaching produced a congregation that refused to gather as the Body of Christ for worship but eagerly participated in what I saw as a public liturgy of Marxist ideological rage? I realized then that my low visibility faith had failed to equip my flock to discern the Gospel from the spirit of the age.
Machen’s description of people who prefer to “fight their intellectual battles” under conditions of “low visibility” captured my experience perfectly. I had been a typical conflict-averse priest, more concerned with maintaining peace than with presenting the truth sharply. As Machen warned, “The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings, or shrinks from ‘controversial’ matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life.” My ministry, I now saw, had been built on such a religion—one that sounded Christian but lacked the power to transform.
The Rise of Modernism
The conflict Machen described was rooted in the rise of modernism, which he defined as “the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God in connection with the origin of Christianity.” Modernism, or liberal Christianity, adopted the forms and language of the old faith but stripped them of their redemptive purpose. St. Paul’s warning about those who hold “the form of religion but deny the power of it” (2 Timothy 3:5) echoed in Machen’s critique. Liberal Christians, he argued, used traditional terms but redefined them to align with the scientific and cultural assumptions of the early 20th century.
This shift was driven by what Machen called the “knowledge explosion” of the preceding century (1820–1920). Advances in science, industry, and technology led modernists to question the supernatural elements of Christianity. If God’s creative role in the world could be doubted, so too could His redemptive role. Modernists began to separate God from creation, Christ from redemption, sin from salvation, and the Church from any hint of supernaturalism. The most devastating separation, Machen argued, was that of religion and science.
The Separation of Religion and Science
Machen observed that no area of knowledge could escape the “modern lust of scientific conquest.” Theological faculties, once the guardians of Christian doctrine, were forced to defer to new disciplines like zoology, paleontology, and philology. History became the “science of history,” and pastoral care, as with other disciplines and practice, was reframed by the emerging fields of psychology and sociology.
Original sin was viewed through an oedipal or Electra “complex,” while the ordo salutis, the order of salvation—to include such inscrutable divine decrees as redemption, justification, sanctification, and glorification—gave way to the oral, anal, phallic, and latent stages of Freud’s theory of sexual psychological development.
As Machen wrote, “Inevitably, the question arises… whether first-century religion can ever stand in company with twentieth-century science.”
This capitulation to science purged mainline Protestant churches of their supernatural elements. In 1868, Phillips Brooks, the Episcopal rector of Trinity Copley Square, wrote this verse in his hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell.” It smacks of a forced sentimentalism and supernaturalism yet is shorn of the robust faith of earlier centuries.
Compare Brooks’s anemic second stanza: “For Christ is born of Mary; and, gathered all above, while mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wond’ring love” with St. Ambrose’s fourth-century hymn of the Incarnation: “Come, Thou Redeemer of the earth, And manifest Thy virgin birth: Let every age adoring fall; Such birth befits the God of all.” Ambrose’s hymn builds to a manly crescendo, “O equal to the Father, Thou! Gird on Thy fleshly mantle now; The weakness of our mortal state With deathless might invigorate,” while Brooks can only pine, “O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.” Ambrose’s words pulse with theological conviction; Brooks’s, with nostalgic piety.
By the 1860s, the American Protestantism was already fading. Writing in 1859 for the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the General Association of Connecticut’s Congregational churches, the Rev. T. M. Post of St. Louis, Missouri described how the typical son of New England fared once he got out west: “He is no longer anybody in particular, but anybody you please… Such is the ‘Yankee’ fully ‘faded.’” The Yankee was no longer anybody in particular because he had lost his capacity to present his controversies as sharply and clearly as possible. It was only a matter of time before his church faded with him.
The Liberal Rescue Mission
Liberal modernists believed the Christian faith needed rescuing from its supernatural “particularities.” Machen wrote that they sought to preserve the “general principles of religion,” viewing doctrines like the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, and the resurrection as mere symbols.
This approach is evident in Henry Van Dyke’s 1907 hymn “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” Set to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the hymn avoids explicit references to Christ’s redemptive work, instead asking God to “Melt the clouds of sin and sadness” and to “Drive the dark of doubt away.” Its vague universalism contrasts sharply with the robust theology of earlier hymns, even Brooks’s.
The liberal project was one-sided: Christianity had to be reconciled to science, but science was never asked to account for itself in light of Christian truth. Machen argued that in trying to remove everything objectionable to science, liberal apologists abandoned the faith they claimed to defend. Genesis was reinterpreted to accommodate geological discoveries, but geologists were never challenged to explain their findings in light of Scripture. This capitulation ensured that the dialogue always moved in one direction, eroding the Church’s ability to stand firm.
The Spiritual Cost of Conflict Avoidance
The result of this conflict aversion was a profound spiritual decline. Machen worried that the modern liberal Church would not resist the descending darkness of socialism. A century later, his fears seem prophetic. Today, politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeal to a generation of materialists, promising that socialism will address their poverty.
This poverty is one of the soul. When housing prices are artificially inflated and family formation duly delayed, the spirit of a generation dies. They are told that communism is their salvation. Socialism becomes an easy sell.
That is because Machen was right, but his solution proved ineffective. The Church that avoids sharp definitions is a Church that cannot fight to save her members, abandoning them instead to the Devil. But the Church who cuts herself off from her heritage, from her past, from her land, and from her people cedes hard-won ground to the selfsame Devil.
Machen’s project resulted in evangelical, conservative, orthodox, and traditional Christians ceding America’s mainline Protestant churches to modern liberals who were content to trade their Christianity for the establishment, and later to become the one percent. The result is a spiritual sinkhole in the heart of every American village and town.
My own experience reflects this failure. My mainline Protestant congregation’s refusal to gather during Covid and their eagerness to join ideological protests revealed a deeper issue: I had not equipped them to see the world through the lens of the Gospel. My low visibility faith had produced a low visibility church, one that could not withstand the shocks of life. Machen’s warning—that a religion of pious phrases and avoided controversies would crumble—had come true in my own ministry.
The Need for a New Reformation
Machen called for a new Reformation, a rediscovery of the soul of Christianity. He believed the Church needed to reclaim the historic Christian faith, rather than ceding ground to liberalism. His own efforts, however, had mixed results. By founding the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, he preserved a remnant of Reformed orthodoxy, but the mainline Protestant churches were largely lost to liberalism.
Yet Machen’s call remains urgent. In today’s online culture, Generation Z speaks of a “Reconquista”—a reclaiming of lost ground. This voyage of rediscovery requires Protestants to once again embrace conflict, to present the Gospel sharply and clearly, even at the cost of popularity, or more.
I realized that my Christian witness could no longer be “low visibility,” and that my intellectual fights had to escape my study and spill out onto the street. That, or at least, I needed to try to put the “bully” back into the pulpit. The irony of the phrase “bully pulpit” is that too often the bullies are found in the pews, not in the pulpit, a situation the famous Welsh preacher Martin Lloyd Jones warned about. There is a fear that descends on many a preacher as he ascends the steps of his pulpit. That fear can make him take the edge off his applications and keep him from presenting pressing issues sharply.
Nowadays, I pastor one of Connecticut’s ancient “standing order” churches, the 355-year-old First Congregational Church and Ecclesiastical Society of Woodbury. By definition we are a mainline Protestant church, but we predate the United Church of Christ (UCC) to which we belong by 287 years. Indeed, I can clearly see how every trend that Machen fretted about in the 1920s left its mark during the intervening century on my church, from naturalism replacing the Westminster Shorter Catechism in the Sunday School, to the schemes for church union that Machen hated, and which led to our affiliating with the UCC in 1961.
I am teaching through Machen’s book in our Adult Sunday School class and the Shorter Catechism during Bible Study on Wednesday evenings. In reviving the study of the catechism, I am conscious of restoring continuity with the first 250 years of my congregation’s history. But will it be enough to undo one hundred years and more of theological drift?
A Reconquista of America’s mainline Protestant churches, if it is to happen, begs the question of their continued legitimacy. As I’ve asked elsewhere in these pages, are these organizations, which still call themselves churches, fulfilling the intent of their charters and original donors? This is a question it behooves non-members (even non-Christians) to ask, if indeed there is still such a thing as the “public trust” in this country that cares about such things.
Conclusion
Reading Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism is more than an exercise in historical critique; it is a mirror held up to the Church today. My time as an Episcopal priest taught me the cost of conflict aversion: a congregation unprepared for the challenges of the age, a faith that sounded Christian but lacked power. Machen’s diagnosis of modernism’s impact—its separation of religion from science, its denial of the supernatural, its capitulation to cultural trends—remains strikingly relevant. The Church must recover its courage to contend for the faith, to present its controversies sharply, and to stand firm amid the shocks of life. Only then can it offer a generation starving for meaning the true salvation found in Christ.
Image Credit: Unsplash.
