How Liberal Protestant Church Historians Helped Turn "Christianity" into a Good White Protestant American Religion in the Twentieth Century
From the three historians of early Christianity whose lives and careers Elizabeth Clark discusses in The Fathers Refounded - Arthur Cushman McGiffert of Union Theological Seminary in New York, George LaPiana at Harvard Divinity School, and Shirley Jackson Case from the University of Chicago Divinity...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2020
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| In: |
Church history
Year: 2020, Volume: 89, Issue: 2, Pages: 395-398 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | From the three historians of early Christianity whose lives and careers Elizabeth Clark discusses in The Fathers Refounded - Arthur Cushman McGiffert of Union Theological Seminary in New York, George LaPiana at Harvard Divinity School, and Shirley Jackson Case from the University of Chicago Divinity School - there breathes a palpable air of white, upper-middle-class liberal Protestant complacency and intellectual superiority. Modernists all, they know they are on the winning side of truth because they are confident that they are on the winning side of time. Summarizing McGiffert's distinction between ancient and contemporary Christianity, Clark writes: "Only in modernity, when God's immanence was championed, was the dualism between human and divine in Christ overcome." "Christ, if he was human," McGiffert believed, "must be divine, as all men are." McGiffert's historiography shimmers with Emersonian confidence and ebullience. In his assumption - his assertion - of "only in," we hear the ringing sound of modernity's triumphant temporality. |
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| ISSN: | 1755-2613 |
| Reference: | Kritik in "Liberals, Modernists, and Others (2020)"
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0009640720001237 |