Church History in Plain Language

by Bruce L. Shelley

The crux of the Social Gospel was the belief that God’s saving work included corporate structures as well as personal lives.

the twentieth century marked the displacement of the great world religions by three post-Christian ideologies: nationalism, communism, and individualism.

Propaganda and control of the media, along with the regulation of the economy, are aimed at producing a new type of people utterly lacking any hunger for personal freedoms. That is the totalitarian way.

The natural theologian might use some phenomena of nature to prove that God exists or to observe some good quality in nature (such as creativity) and to conclude that God must be its source. Barth rejected natural theology completely.

fundamentalists, the militant right wing churchmen who opposed all accommodation to contemporary culture,

Historian George M. Marsden of Notre Dame compares Evangelicals in twentieth-century America to rootless immigrants in a new land. Only in this case Evangelicals never crossed the ocean to experience the shock of a new land. They simply held their ground while the rest of the country changed.

many conservatives withdrew from the social arena. Evangelical historian Timothy Smith describes this as the Great Reversal.

Its name, dispensationalism, is not very suggestive, but the last three dispensations (ages) before eternity are crucial to its classical version.

While increased attention both to the end times and to personal Christian living had firm biblical roots, it also gave traditional Evangelicals a way of maintaining their faith in a culture over which they were steadily losing control. If they could not shape the affairs of men, they could find comfort in the world of the Spirit.

They believed that the modernists were surrendering the fundamentals of the gospel: the sinful nature of man, his inability to be saved apart from God’s grace, the centrality of Jesus’ death for the regeneration of the individual and the renewal of society, and the authoritative revelation of the Bible. This group was the first to apply the name fundamentalist to itself.

All the hallmarks of liberal theology are here: (1) the evolutionary philosophy applied to religion; (2) the optimistic view of man centering in his religious experience; and (3) the moralistic conception of God, who can so readily be “found” by man.

Here, too, are the marks of early fundamentalism: (1) a supernatural Jesus attested by his resurrection from the dead; (2) a trustworthy Bible, the fountain of the Christian faith; and (3) the need of men to have “a new face upon life.”

Brent was more conscious of the doctrinal differences that separated the churches. He saw Anglicanism as the bridge that might span these differences.

Söderblom, therefore, did not expect to find Christian unity by doctrinal agreement, as Brent hoped, but by history. Each Christian group, he said, should respect the others and share with the others their doctrinal differences and gradually the one revelation to the human race would unfold through the successive ages of man.

The World Council did not claim to be a super-church. According to its constitution it could not legislate for its member churches. Its aim was understanding and cooperation among its members and Christian unity wherever possible.

The 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization, meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, gave clear evidence of a new maturity in evangelical views of Christian unity.

As a result of the Lausanne Congress, a forty-eight-member Continuation Committee for World Evangelization was created.

Vatican II was the first council not called to combat heresy, pronounce new dogmas, or marshal the Church against hostile forces.

Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

The “third blessing” approach acknowledged the first blessing of conversion and a second blessing whereby the believers were stirred and moved to sanctification or holiness (the emphasis that evolved from Wesley). Additionally, they acknowledged a third blessing, which was Spirit baptism.

Anabaptists argue that an informal Christendom exists in America. Even though no particular brand of Christianity or Church is named by the government of the United States (disestablishment), Christians still see their nation as Christian in some sense and see the church as obligated to serve the state, much like a chaplain.

cessationism, which argued that the time for miracles and charismatic gifts had ceased.

Liberation theologians claim that Jesus sought liberty from oppressive economic systems. These theologians read the Bible as addressing social injustice and call for Christians to practice justice rather than merely proclaiming it.

The Global South is often rooted in this victory motif called “Christus Victor.”

“Back to Jerusalem” movement,

As the only surviving link with the Roman past, the Church of Rome mobilized Benedictine monks and deployed them as missionary ambassadors to the German people.