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Whatever Happened to Theological Modernism?

Whatever Happened to Theological Modernism?

Last updated on: June 11, 2026 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Whatever Happened to Theological Modernism? 2026-06-07T18:28:10-04:00 Gene Veith

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Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, is a conservative Methodist. He gives an excellent overview of what happened to the theological modernism, the particular brand of “liberal theology” that dominated mainline Protestantism through much of the 20th century but has been fading away in favor of different kinds of “progressive” theology.

In a post for Juicy Ecumenism entitled The Last of the Protestant Modernists, Tooley writes about the Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. He is Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico’s pastor.

Tooley calls Rigby one of the last theological modernists. “Reverend Rigby disputes the historicity of Christ’s resurrection, prefers alternative language to ‘God’ and ‘Lord,’ and stresses political and social action from his pulpit. He is the type of Mainline Protestant pastor who was much more common in the mid-20th century, the zenith of modernist Protestant theology.”

That was the theology of the church body I was raised in. And it was the theology that the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod faced down in the Seminex walkout in 1974. Theological modernism sparked the Fundamentalist reaction against it, the rise of evangelicalism, and the decline of the Protestant mainline.

That true theological modernists are these days hard to find does not mean that the formerly modernist Mainline Protestant denominations have returned to some version of Biblical orthodoxy. Rather, the new theological liberals have replaced theological modernism for theological postmodernism.

Here is Tooley’s description of the old liberalism:

Modernism prevailed in Mainline Protestant seminaries early in the 20th century. It rejected the supernatural, believing it irrational and nonscientific. It rejected or minimized Christ’s Virgin Birth, Resurrection, and miracles, along with other extraordinary events in the Bible. It reinterpreted the Gospel as chiefly a morality tale, filled with metaphors and legends, but illustrating God’s desire for humanity to do good. Jesus was not literally divine, but He reflected divinity through his good works and sacrifice, offering Himself as an example for all.

More broadly, “modernism” is the term for the scientific rationalism and naturalistic materialism that has reigned in Western culture since the Enlightenment. The theological version was an attempt to recast Christianity in light of this dominant world view. “Modern man,” it was said–notice how old-fashioned that sounds already in those days before postmodern feminism–is unable to believe in the supernatural. So for Christianity to survive, it needs to jettison its dependence on miracles, otherworldly dogmas, and a divinely-inspired Bible. The Bible must be studied “scientifically,” like everything else, which means dismissing the miracles it records and interpreting it in purely naturalistic terms. The supernatural “gospel” of salvation for everlasting life must be replaced by a “social gospel” of correcting the evils of this world, thus focusing on the material reality that “modern man” is interested in.

“Modernists assumed they represented the future,” observes Tooley. “After all, they were rational and scientific. And they controlled America’s most influential religious institutions, with their ample funding, prestige, and tens of millions of members.”

But the theological modernists started to decline. Since they, in effect, purged Christianity of its religious aspects, religious Christianity–evangelicalism–rushed into the void. eventually founding new religious institutions. Membership in the Mainline Protestant denominations that went all in for theological modernism began to plummet. Tooley says that Rev. Rigby’s denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (PCUSA) has lost 75% of its members over the last 60 years.

Tooley gives more details about the rise and fall of this movement–read his post–but I was most interested in one factor that led to the decline of theological modernism; namely, the decline of modernism more generally and the rise of postmodernism, with its own anti-orthodox theologies.

Wider cultural forces that had birthed and sustained theological Modernism were also subsiding. Postmodernism, with its focus on narrative and the subjective, was replacing Modernism, which stressed scientific facts and objective rationality.

Postmodernists, on the other hand, reject rationality. This means a certain openness to supernatural mysteries. Tooley notes that James Talarico, unlike his 76-year-old pastor, does believe in Christ’s resurrection. But postmodernist theology still holds to a social gospel, one based on “inclusion,” power reductionism, critical theory, pro-abortion feminism, transgenderism, LGBTQ issues, and the other dogmas of woke progressivism. That is what they think will make Christianity relevant to the various postmodern genders.

In reality, of course, members of the denominations that hold to such things continue to abandon them, either to affiliate with supernatural religions or to become “nones,” since you don’t really need a church in order to believe in nothing.

I have argued that a major reason for the rise of secularism in Western culture is that the churches themselves embraced secularism. This is especially true in Europe, where the state churches suppressed independent conservative church bodies (unlike in the USA), so that when the state churches secularized themselves, Europeans had few other options.

At any rate, postmodernist theology will likely have as little staying power as modernist theology. Once it too fades away, maybe we will enter a “post-secular” age, with churches returning to Jesus Christ, “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Illustration: Descent of the Modernists by E. J. Pace – This image scanned from the book Seven Questions in Dispute by William Jennings Bryan, 1924, New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, inside front cover. Unlike the other cartoons in that book, this one had not previously been published. It was based on a letter that Bryan wrote to the editor of the Sunday School Times magazine in January 1924. That letter is in the Library of Congress. See Edward B. Davis, “Fundamentalist Cartoons, Modernist Pamphlets, and the Religious Image of Science in the Scopes Era,” in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, ed. Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), on pp. 179-180., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2052512

mainline Protestant denominations

theological modernism

theological postmodernism

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