Fosdick was the most prominent liberal Baptist minister of the early 20th Century. He became a central figure in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s. While at First Presbyterian Church, on May 21, 1922, he delivered his famous sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”, in which he defended the modernist position (Evolutionist).
In that sermon, he presented the Bible as a record of the unfolding (Evolving) of God’s will, not as the literal Word of God. He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change (Evolution).
He was immediately hired as pastor of a Baptist church whose most famous member was John D. Rockefeller, Jr., ROckefeller was looking for the Political, and economic justification in Survival of the fittest of Fosdicks evolutionary-religious message. Fosdick's brother Raymond ran the Rockefeller Foundation for three decades and used Rockefellers money from the Rockefeller Foundation much like George Soros is funding liberal causes today. This way he was able to bypass the general American church.
He was opposed by John Greshem Machen.
John Gresham Machen
Machen wrote a book called Christianity and Liberalism It is as relevent as the Rob Bell vs the Biblicists today. (1923) Christianity and Liberalism is another of Machen's books that critiqued theological modernism. The book compared conservative and Protestant Christianity to the rising popularity of Modernist (or "Liberal") theology. He concluded that "the chief modern rival of Christianity is Liberalism".He was the Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary between 1915 and 1929, and led a conservative revolt against modernist theology at Princeton which he lost. This had a profound effect of the development of the development of the 20th century in American life.
So the Liberal Evolving Theology of Rob Bell is not new is is the continuing battle for the minds and hearts of the American People.
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