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, .. "broadminded" meant their views were correct, and those refusing to agree with them were usually forced out of the seminaries and denominations. The --- gross neglect of the traditional doctrines of the Bible led eventually to thei:r' virtual abandonment. As a result of this drift, the men who had "crept in unawares soon became masters of the house."
THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW THEOLOGY
With the capture of the major theological seminaries by the liberals, a new theology emerged on the American scene. First, the proponents of this theology tried to dispose of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and replace it with a sentimental relationship between God and man, emphasizing the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. The idea of man .as a child of God was flattering, but man as a sinner under the judgment of God was repulsive. In addition to these changes, they remodeled Christ, call- ing him the "Jesus of history." They saw Him only as a human being, thus fitting Him into the mold they had made for Him. The term "rediscovery of Jesus," became common in their vocabulary. Finally, they adopted an ideal- istic doctrine which presented Jesus as a man full of divinity to which all men are capable of attaining. To them conversion was a gradual process rathe then the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, this new theo- logy represented a hundred-and-eighty degree turn from historic Protestant- ism in America. The acceptance of this new theology required a spirit of accommodation on the part of its adherents. Rev. Harry Errunerson Fosdick, an avowed liberal wrote in 1937, "Modernism started by taking the intellectual culture of a particular period as its criterion and then adjusting Christianity to that standard." In stating the opposite view, a writer of the same era said of liberalism, "It becomes over sentimental and naively optomistic. . It accom- modates itself too much to contemporary culture and paved the way for
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