REVISITING MACHEN’S ‘CHRISTIANITY VS LIBERALISM:’ It was a century ago this year that Professor J. Gresham Macen of Princeton Seminary wrote what in many respects remains the most authoritative explanation for how and why orthodox Christianity and modern liberal theology have a lot of words in common but very little in the way of principled faith. Over at PJ Media today, Chris Queen notes how much of Machen’s work reads as if it was just composed yesterday.

“One of the most powerful points in the book is when Machen points out how liberal Christians cherry-pick certain things from the Bible to hold up as examples of how to live while ignoring others. The phenomenon of the ‘Red-Letter Christians’ who say we should only live by the direct quotes of Jesus and then twist those words to fit a leftist agenda, is a prime modern example,” Queen writes.

And as one of many examples of Machen’s prescience, Queen cites this paragraph:

“Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.” Queen’s excellent analysis of Machen’s classic will hopefully help spark a renewal of reading of and appreciation for a man who foresaw so many of the destructive consequences of the continuing power of the theology of liberalism.