ABSTRACT

American Presbyterian controversialist and New Testament scholar. John Gresham Machen was born July 28, 1881, the son of a prominent Baltimore family. In the 1920s he emerged as the foremost critic of LIBERAL PROTESTANTISM. In popular works such as Christianity and Liberalism (1923) and What Is Faith? (1925) he argued that liberalism abandoned the central tenets of historic Christianity. What is more, Machen contended that liberal views about Christ, the BIBLE, SIN, and SALVATION reflected the general intellectual decline of American CULTURE and EDUCATION. On this basis he called for a separation of conservative and liberal Protestants.