7. The Twentieth Century.
In the twentieth century
two World Wars, centered at the heart of
European
Christendom, shook the earth and made history more
dynamic.
Christianity was faced by organized systems
such as Communism and Nazism,
which constituted
a more powerful threat to it, and cleared away more
of the traditional fabric of society, than anything hith-
erto known. The acceleration of scientific progress,
the
resulting change in one's notions of the physical uni-
verse, the great power that man had acquired over
nature, the enormous advances of educational systems
that were essentially
secular, and the influence of the
popular press, radio, and television in
the dissemination
of a new world view—all these produced a
greater
intellectual challenge than religion of any sort had ever
had
to meet before. Now, also, the ethical ideas of
society, though so many of
them still carried the marks
of Christian influence, came to conflict in an
unprece-
dented way with some of the
longest and most consist-
ent traditions of
the churches. The fact that the
churches had so often been engaged in a
rearguard
action—sometimes against liberty, sometimes
against
science itself—became a disadvantage, since it left
(as
an additional obstruction to the hearing of the Gospel)
a
resentment in intelligent people, even a fear lest the
Church should ever
recover its power. In other conti-
nents, the
great missionary endeavor (in which man
may sometimes have tried
unthinkingly to tie Christi-
anity to the values and the manners of Western civili-
zation) came to be charged
understandably, but un-
justly, with having
sought to provide cover for
imperialist purposes.
The resulting issues are as momentous as in the days
when the faith of the
first disciples had to confront
the culture of the Greco-Roman world, and
it is not
easy to say what will be the long-term effects of the
new
situation on the intellectualization of the faith and
the attempt to run it
into a new world view. The actual
experiences of the human race, as it
develops the
implications of its current systems, may affect the
story;
and it is not clear that Christianity may not have to
confront
a world somewhat similar to the one which
the early Church had to face in
the Roman Empire—a
hostile world, but suffering strange
nostalgias and
harassed by competing forms of faith.
In some respects the churches may have drawn in
upon themselves as though
determined not to lose
anything essential in their ancient heritage. A
liberal-
ism which, before and after the
First World War, may
have been too directly rationalistic, soon came to
ap-
pear “dated,” and
even Protestants—even noncon-
formists—became somewhat more interested in their
tradition. The situation of the world may help to ex-
plain why Karl Barth in 1918 began to present the
“theology of Crisis,” directly attacking liberalism
and
reviving some of the profounder aspects of early
Lutheranism. But
historiography raised radical prob-
lems,
especially when from 1919 the teachers of
Formgeschichte examined the shape which the early
Church had given to the packets of oral tradition that
lay behind the
Gospels. History emerged again as a
crucial issue for an
“historical religion” in the much
controverted work
of Rudolf Bultmann. He called for
“de-mythologizing”
and presented existentialist ideas
which threw light on some aspects of
Christianity if
not also on history itself.
The Bible retained its influence even amongst people
(including Roman
Catholics) who had accepted the
kind of criticism that could be described
as central.
In the United States the churches retained their high
membership and remarkable vigor for further decades,
the country acquiring
a recognized leadership in the
Protestant world. But, even amid
technological
progress and booming prosperity, influential teachers
issued their moral challenges, took their stand on the
Bible, and
reasserted the pessimistic view of human
nature. The spectacular scandals
and crimes in certain
sections of society did not nullify that compassion
and
that American idealism which owed so much to an
ultimate Christian
influence.
It was natural that, in the new situation, the various
sects and
denominations should lose much of their
former fanaticism and hostility, and should come to
feel one
another as allies against a world of hostile
forces. To a considerable
degree it was coming to be
the case that, within Protestantism, the
differences
between the liberals and the conservatives in the vari-
ous churches were deeper than the
differences between
one denomination and another. Even in the decades
after 1914, it became an important consideration that
the work of foreign
missions was being hampered by
the divisions within Christianity. Unions
between de-
nominations and cooperation
for special objects,
though not unknown before, now became much more
frequent and significant. The Ecumenical movement
was a natural development
of this and a typical feature
of it was the preparation in 1938, and the
official
constitution at Amsterdam in 1940, of the plan for a
World
Council of Churches. The work of Pope John
XXIII and the Second Vatican
Council of 1962-65
stand as one of the most remarkable features of the
twentieth-century story—a significant change in the
relations
between Catholic and Protestant, who (in
spite of rivalries and
hostilities) had never, throughout
the centuries, quite ceased to exert a
beneficent influ-
ence on one another.
Lord Acton once remarked that he saw Providence
in general history (saw it
in the march of “progress,”
as he explicitly stated
on a number of occasions); but
he added that he did not detect it in the
history of
the Church. His attitude is understandable, for ecclesi-
astical systems have not been
exempted from scandals
and crimes; and (at least in those tangible things
which
the secular historian has chiefly in mind) they would
seem to
have been subject to the laws which govern
other religions, including that
of the Old Testament.
Acton may have been misled because he tended to
be
interested in the kind of history that deals with
“public
affairs” and perhaps saw the historical
Church too
much as a politico-religious institution. All the same,
he
must have known in his heart that its essence lay
in the spiritual life
which presumed the immediacy of
divine activity, though it might be
unrelated to
“progress”—a spiritual life
which might be at least as
profound in the fifth or the fifteenth century
as in the
twentieth. He was prepared also to see all history as
the
development of the scope and the quality of the
human conscience, this
conscience being a key to
progress itself and the effective dynamic behind
even
modern revolution, in his view. The enlarged scope
for the
individual conscience had been achieved by the
influence of Christianity,
making the great contrast
with classical antiquity where, he said, man's
duty had
been prescribed to him by the state.
Mazzini regarded the French Revolution as the cli-
max and fulfilment of Christianity which, by making
every human being a value incommensurate with any-
thing else in the created universe, could be regarded
as working throughout the centuries for the principle
of
“individualism,” working for it at times even when
ecclesiastical systems were resisting it. On this view
a Christian
civilization operates (as Acton believed) to
produce a regime of freedom,
and the effect of its
advance is to bring about a greater differentiation
in
personalities, a world in which each man decides the
object he will
work for and the God whom he will
serve. Mazzini was not content with this,
however, and
insisted that a new stage had been reached—a
stage
at which the individual ought to give way to the “or-
ganic People.” And this is perhaps
the great issue;
whether men shall be organized, and even herded like
cattle, to carry out a single all-consuming purpose that
is imposed on
everybody.
There are elements or patterns of Christian thought
that appear in a more or
less secularized form in a
Voltaire, a Rousseau, a Hegel, a Mazzini, a
Ranke, and
a Marx; and perhaps they come to an end there. From
the
middle of the twentieth century, the world moves
on its own momentum to new
patterns of thought, new
notions of the enterprise of living, new realms
of
human experience. Behind the technological age and
the attempt to
explore the outer universe, and behind
the permissive society are elements
which were part
of the Christian outlook, but which, having become
autonomous, have moved far forward on their own
account. Perhaps the great
compassionateness now
visible in contemporary society will stand as the
most
palpable result of fifteen hundred years of Christian
predominance in Europe. And now, perhaps, for the
first time during those
fifteen hundred years, Christi-
anity
returns to something like its original state—a
world in which it
cannot be objected that, for the great
majority of people, things are
unfairly disposed in favor
of conventional or habitual or hereditary
belief.
