J. Gresham Machen
A New Testament scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary who argued in Christianity and Liberalism (1923) that liberal theology was a different religion from Christianity and that the two parties in the church should separate.
The title page of Christianity and Liberalism describes Machen as assistant professor of New Testament literature and exegesis in Princeton Theological Seminary, and the preface says the book grew from an address he gave to the ruling elders of Chester Presbytery in November 1921 (Machen, Christianity and Liberalism title page and preface). He set out to show that liberalism was a religion of a different kind from Christianity (Machen, Christianity and Liberalism p. 7). He wrote that he did not presume to say whether any individual liberal was a Christian, but that liberalism was not Christianity and the two ought not to be taught within one organisation (Machen, Christianity and Liberalism p. 160). See the Fundamentals and the Modernist Controversy.
In the timeline
- 1910 to 1925, firm dateThe Fundamentals and the Modernist Controversy
Twelve volumes called The Fundamentals are sent free to Protestant ministers from about 1910. In the 1920s a dispute between Fundamentalists and liberals over the Bible, miracles and modern knowledge divides American churches and reaches a courtroom at Dayton.