The Intellectual Climate and Christian Belief

Ecumenicism, says the author, may be less a victory of love over self-righteousness than a triumph of fatigue and indifference over concern for truth

“Can a truly contemporary person not be an atheist?” asks a witty British bishop in a recent booklet. There is a whole school of “theologians” who seem intent on proving that one can be a Christian without actually believing anything, or that contrariwise, anyone who has in any sense at all any spark of decency in him is, whether he likes it or not, a Christian. A number of self-respecting atheists have protested against this twentieth-century variety of forcible baptism, which will not allow them the right not to be Christians. Clerical alarmists to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not necessary to give up Christian faith because of the electric light. Nevertheless, the bishop’s question still has a point. It is hard for a contemporary person not to be an atheist. The “new theologians” claim that the goal of all their radical reinterpretation is to make the Christian message meaningful to modern man. The sad fact is that even if the “new theology” were the old Christian message in modern dress (which it isn’t), it is still not meaningful to “modern man.” In fact, the chief appeal of the “new theology” is not to non-Christians, but to restless churchmen. The “new theology” is no more successful in cracking the indifference of the merely nominal Christian or the unbeliever than the “new theologians” will admit the Old-Fashioned Revival Hour to be. We should recognize that these would-be evangelists in a new mood are unsuccessful. But we must also face the fact that just as the radicals charge, the older, orthodox theologies really are failing to communicate.

HB

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Harold O. J. Brown

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Ecumenicism, says the author, may be less a victory of love over self-righteousness than a triumph of fatigue and indifference over concern for truth

“Can a truly contemporary person not be an atheist?” asks a witty British bishop in a recent booklet. There is a whole school of “theologians” who seem intent on proving that one can be a Christian without actually believing anything, or that contrariwise, anyone who has in any sense at all any spark of decency in him is, whether he likes it or not, a Christian. A number of self-respecting atheists have protested against this twentieth-century variety of forcible baptism, which will not allow them the right not to be Christians. Clerical alarmists to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not necessary to give up Christian faith because of the electric light. Nevertheless, the bishop’s question still has a point. It is hard for a contemporary person not to be an atheist. The “new theologians” claim that the goal of all their radical reinterpretation is to make the Christian message meaningful to modern man. The sad fact is that even if the “new theology” were the old Christian message in modern dress (which it isn’t), it is still not meaningful to “modern man.” In fact, the chief appeal of the “new theology” is not to non-Christians, but to restless churchmen. The “new theology” is no more successful in cracking the indifference of the merely nominal Christian or the unbeliever than the “new theologians” will admit the Old-Fashioned Revival Hour to be. We should recognize that these would-be evangelists in a new mood are unsuccessful. But we must also face the fact that just as the radicals charge, the older, orthodox theologies really are failing to communicate.