History of the Church II: Week 16

The Church in the 20 th century  The Progressive Movement of the late 19 th and early 20 th century was the end product of the Enlightenment movement of the 17 th and 18 th centuries.  The Progressives had all the answers before WWI.  The Industrial Revolution had increased production to unimaginable wealth.  Evolution and science had become the new religion.  Democracy had freed more people and given more rights to more people than at anytime in all of human history.

The Church in the 20 th century  Then WWI struck all the progress down.  Totalitarian governments replaced democracies in the 1920’s.  World wide depression hit in the 1930’s.  The greatest loss of life in all of history occurred during WWII.  The Church, still reeling from the blows of the late 19 th century, retreated into itself.  It withdraw from culture and became irrelevant in the 1920’s.

The Church in the 20 th century  However, two things happened in the 1930’s that revived the Church.  The radio had been developed right after WWI and it became very popular in the 1920’s.  In the 1930’s with the Depression, programming was expanded to help keep people’s mind off their suffering.  Preachers like Charles Fuller who broadcast The Old Time Revival Hour began to get huge followings.  The Great Depression itself was the other factor which drew Americans back to religion.

The Church in the 20 th century  When WWII was at its darkest hour in Europe, the English government put a little known Oxford professor on the radio.  C.S. Lewis gave a series of messages on the radio which were later made into the best known apologetic book of the 20 th century: Mere Christianity.  The Church made a resurgence after WWII with the modern day revivals of Billy Graham and the emergence of TV evangelists.  The 1950’s found more people going to church than at anytime in American history.  The warning clouds were on the horizon as churches were mere social gatherings that lacked theological depth.

The Church in the 20 th century  The 1960’s exposed the lack of theological depth of the church as young people searched for answers to life but religion could provide answers.  Mainstream liberal churches moved to accept the social norms of the culture instead of fight against culture.  Out of the abyss of culture grew the modern evangelical movement.  By the 1990’s, the liberal churches had lost up to ½ of their congregations while conservative evangelical churches grew by 150%.  The evangelical movement affected American politics as well as they tended to vote Republican.

The Church in the 20 th century  It looked like the Church may be on its way back to influencing culture.  Although overall church attendance was down among the American public in the 1990’s, religion was having an impact in certain areas of life.  However that optimism proved to be short lived as post-modernism hit with a vengeance in the late 1990’s.  The world change drastically in the 21 st century.