ABSTRACT
The previous two chapters described the social and cultural changes which provided both the opportunity and the need for the widespread adoption of liberal Protestantism. At various times in the history of the Christian Church, there have been movements which have promoted some element of what is now termed ‘liberal Protestantism’. In one sense, there is a cyclical pattern to the rise and fall of heresies; universalism, for example, is not new. As the cultural anthropology of scholars such as Eliade (1971) has demonstrated, there are only a limited number of possibilities in the religious lexicon. What is at issue in charting cultural change is not the invention or the occurrence of deviant perspectives and heretical opinions; the same ones eternally return. What is important is the relative popularity of such alternatives. An obvious point is that periods of religious enthusiasm tend to alternate with periods of moderation. In the Scottish Church the Secession followed one period of stagnation, the Disruption another. In the Anglican Church, the parlous spiritual condition of much of early nineteenth-century church-manship was followed by the High Church and evangelical revivals. Although there is a general pattern of alternation, modern liberal Protestantism does seem qualitatively different to other turns of the wheel. In the second half of the nineteenth, and in the twentieth, century various strands coalesced and achieved sufficient popularity to amount to a major shift in Protestant thinking which can be described most simply as the triumph of relativism. The two main differences between the present position of the major Protestant denominations and that of, say, the moderates of the Church of Scotland of the 1760s, are (a) that, rather than advocating a new theology, the latter were largely indifferent to theological disputes, being more concerned to maintain the appearance of cohesion; and (b) that the extent of theological disagreement within the Kirk was considerably less than the variation now permitted by most major Protestant churches. The theologians of the present ecumenical movement are tolerant of diversity, not because it makes for an easy life, but because they believe that diversity is itself a ‘good thing’, and they accept a far wider range of conflicting views. Where most Church of Scotland moderates were reluctant and foot-dragging in accommodating to the cultural standards of their age, one has the sense that modern liberals are enthusiastic pioneers of the ‘post-Christian’ age.
