Lesson 6: An Age of Change: The 20th Century

By the end of this lesson, the student should:

(1) Trace the impact of Darwinism and German biblical criticism on twentieth century liberalism.

(2) Recognize the failure of modernist theologies to meet man’s deepest needs.

(3) Understand evangelical responses to modernism.

(4) See the differences between liberal and evangelical approaches to church unity.

(5) Appreciate the worldwide growth of the church during the twentieth century.

People who have hyperopia (farsightedness) see far away objects more clearly than they see nearby objects. Things far away are clear, but nearby objects are blurry. A person with farsightedness can see the leaves on a distant tree more clearly than they can see the print on a book in their hands.

History tends to be a hyperopic subject! It is easier to evaluate the distant past than the recent past. After 1,700 years, it is obvious that Constantine’s Edict of Milan in A.D. 313 was a momentous event in church history. However, it may not have seemed as important in A.D. 315. It is only from a distance that we can fully evaluate the importance of events.

This makes the study of twentieth century church history more difficult than the study of earlier centuries. We do not know which twentieth century events will have the greatest long-term impact on the church. Some things that are important today may not seem important from the perspective of the twenty-third century.

Over time, our view of church history becomes clearer. For example, a history of the church in 1430 might have included something like this:

John Wycliffe attempted to make changes in the church in England. He translated the Bible into English, so the laity could read and interpret Scripture. He criticized the empty rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. However, Wycliffe failed in his efforts. He died before his Bible translation was complete. His writings were banned, and the Council of Constance declared him a heretic. Only a few wandering preachers continue to teach Wycliffe’s doctrines. Wycliffe was a good man, but he failed to accomplish his purpose.

A history of the church written in 1500 would view Wycliffe differently. It would show Wycliffe’s influence on William Tyndale:

John Wycliffe was an inspiring church leader. He died before completing his work, but men like the Lollards and William Tyndale have continued to spread the ideas that Wycliffe promoted. His influence is still present today.

A history of the church written in 1900 would view Wycliffe in light of the Reformation:

John Wycliffe was the “Morningstar of the Reformation.” Although he died before completing his translation, his influence led William Tyndale to complete a modern English translation. Other reformers such as Martin Luther were inspired by Wycliffe’s example. Few people have had a greater impact on the history of the church than John Wycliffe.

It takes time to evaluate history. In this lesson, we will look at a few topics that appear to be important in church history. I may overlook topics that will someday be seen as more important than the topics I have chosen, but the topics I have chosen show some of the trends in the contemporary church.

Perhaps the best way to summarize twentieth century church history is to call it an “Age of Change.” Theologically, both modernism and fundamentalism brought changes to the church. In a time of secularization and doctrinal apostasy, evangelicals continued to have a major influence in many parts of the world. The growth of the church in the Majority World changed the face of Christianity from a largely European/American church to a largely southern and eastern church.

After reading about the revivals and missionary outreach of the early nineteenth century, a student might think that the future of the church would have no dark spots. Unfortunately, in the mid-nineteenth century, two men launched attacks that undermined the faith of many believers. Charles Darwin, a scientist, and Julius Wellhausen, a Bible scholar, proposed theories that denied the truth of Scripture.

Darwin’s theory of evolution and Wellhausen’s “higher criticism” destroyed the faith of many people in the reliability of Scripture. This led to the modernism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The history of the twentieth century church shows the conflict between modernist theologies and evangelicalism. In this lesson, we will look at some of the major theological trends that influenced the twentieth century church.

Liberalism

In the late nineteenth century, two philosophical developments gave rise to liberalism in the church.

In 1859, Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species proposed the theory of evolution. Building on the Enlightenment assumptions that we saw in Lesson 3, this theory proposed a view of biological development in which God was unnecessary. Darwin and his followers argued that life arose from non-living forms through a process of natural selection occurring over millions of years. This theory denied the creation account in Genesis 1-2. For pastors who accepted this theory, Genesis was no longer an authoritative account of creation.

German “higher critics” such as Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) proposed that man’s religious views evolved into the monotheism taught in the Bible. Wellhausen rejected Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. He argued that much of the Bible was written by later authors rather than the authors claimed in Scripture. As with the theory of evolution, this undermined the authority of Scripture. Eventually, liberal critics denied the biblical accounts of miracles, the necessity of the atoning death of Christ, and even the deity of Jesus Christ.

Pastors who accepted these theories could no longer point to the Bible as the inspired, infallible Word of God. Instead, they were left with a fallible book composed by fallible authors. Eventually, pastors trained in liberal seminaries spread these false ideas to laymen in many churches.

As Darwinism and German Higher Criticism spread through the seminaries that train pastors, liberal theologians abandoned an emphasis on biblical truth and proposed a “Social Gospel” dealing with the needs of society while ignoring spiritual issues. Social action replaced the spiritual dimension of the gospel. Men like Walter Rauschenbusch taught that the kingdom of God meant the death of capitalism and the worldwide growth of socialism.

Many liberal pastors taught universalism, with God as the loving “Father of all mankind” who would never send people to hell. They taught humanism, with man as essentially good. Adolph von Harnack, a leading liberal theologian in the early twentieth century, defined the essence of Christi­anity as “the universal fatherhood of God, the universal brotherhood of man, and the infinite value of the soul.” Liberal theology taught that man would continue to improve himself until the world was a perfect place.

In response, some conservative Christians such as D.L. Moody avoided theological debate. Moody wrote, “The world is a wrecked vessel. God has given me a lifeboat and said, ‘Save all you can.’” He avoided all discussions of modern theology. Like some seventeenth century Pietist groups, those who followed this approach determined to preach the Bible and avoid conflict with liberal theologians.

Other conservative Christians sought to develop an academic response to liberalism. In the late nineteenth century, Charles Hodge and B.B. Warfield organized a conference in Niagara, New York, to discuss the fundamentals of biblical orthodoxy. From this conference, a series of essays were published between 1910 and 1915 on five “fundamentals” of the faith:

1. The inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture
2. The deity of Jesus Christ
3. The virgin birth of Jesus Christ
4. The substitutionary death of Jesus Christ
5. The physical resurrection and bodily return of Christ to the earth

Conflict between these two parties (liberalism and fundamentalism) continued into the early twentieth century. By 1914, liberal theology had impacted every major Protestant denomination in some way. 

A leading liberal pastor, Harry Emerson Fosdick, stated his goal: to make it possible “for a man to be both an intelligent modern and a serious Christian.”[1] Fosdick preached a sermon attacking fundamentalist teaching. He insisted that the Bible contained errors, that the doctrine of the virgin birth was unnecessary, and that the doctrine of a bodily Second Coming was absurd. Fosdick defined preaching as “personal counseling for a group.” Liberal theologians no longer expected the gospel to transform the life of a sinner into a saint.

Like the Gnostics in the early church and the heretics of later centuries, liberal theologians believed that they must change the gospel in order to make it “fit” the surrounding world.  However, the gospel needs no apology.

Richard Niebuhr pointed to the failure of liberalism that preached “a God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross.”[2] This is far removed from the gospel of the New Testament. By 1914, the institutional church stood in need of revival.

Neo-Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy is “right doctrine,” doctrine that is faithful to Scripture. In response to the failure of liberalism, Karl Barth (1886-1968), Emil Brunner (1889-1966), and their followers proposed neo-orthodoxy, a “new orthodoxy.” They believed that they could maintain faithfulness to the core teachings of Scripture while accepting the teachings of modern higher criticism.

Barth was committed to liberal theology until he became a pastor. He soon found that liberal theology did not meet the deep needs of the people in his local church. As a result, he turned from the teachings of liberalism and returned to orthodox theology. Unlike liberal theologians, Barth recognized man’s sinfulness and God’s transcendence.

However, Barth and his followers continued to accept liberal views that denied the inerrancy of Scripture. Neo-orthodox theologians argued that the biblical accounts of miracles were “myths” that were intended to teach spiritual truths, even though the historical facts were inaccurate. They tried to separate historical truth from spiritual truth.

Neo-orthodox theologians said that the Bible “contains” God’s Word, but is not truly inspired until the Holy Spirit speaks it to the individual reader. Neo-orthodox theologians confused the Spirit’s ministry of illumination to the reader with the Spirit’s earlier ministry of inspiration of the author.

Liberation Theology

In the late twentieth century, radical theologians denied many essential tenets of the Christian faith. They insisted that God is no longer relevant to the needs of the modern world. Some said, “For modern man, God is dead.”

The most influential radical theology was liberation theology. Liberation theology developed in response to the needs of the poor and oppressed. It was very popular in Latin America. Liberation theology focuses on human efforts, rather than God’s transcendence. Liberation theology is Marxist in its view of human history. Like earlier liberal theology, liberation theology relies on human solutions to man’s needs. Rather than salvation through faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ, liberation theology allowed humanity to attempt to “save” itself through human effort and social programs.

Secularization

Another factor that affected the church in the late nineteenth century was the growth of cities. The “Industrial Revolution” in Europe and America encouraged the growth of factories and large cities. Labor unions and government organizations took over functions that the parish church provided in rural communities. Sunday, the workers’ only day off, was often given to recreation not worship. Some writers have argued that the factory was a more effective enemy of religion than Darwin. Materialism rather than science drove many people from worship.

By the twentieth century, much of the western world accepted a secular viewpoint that assumed that Christianity has no relevance to the modern world. Many people never asked, “Are the claims of Christianity true?” They simply ignored religion as irrelevant to daily life. We call this mindset the secularization of society.

The Enlightenment attacked the intellectual foundations of the Christian faith; secularization attacked its social foundation. The Enlightenment affected intellectuals; secularization affected the working classes. Because of secularization, most people in the west began to live as if Christianity did not matter. Since Constantine’s conversion, Christianity had been the major influence on European culture. In the twentieth century, Christianity was no longer the center of European life. Today, Europe is called “post-Christian” Europe.

► Of the issues listed in this section (liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, liberation theology, and secularism), which are the most influential in your culture? Do these issues affect the churches in your society? If so, how can you respond as an evangelical leader?

[1] Quoted in Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, 3rd edition (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2008), 394-395.

[2] Ibid, 395.

In the early twentieth century, many people believed that evangelical Christianity would disappear. Between modernist theologians, an increasingly secular Europe, and the spread of humanistic ideas in America, it appeared that the day of orthodox Christianity was past.

However, the first half of the twentieth century revealed the weakness of liberal theology. Ten million deaths in World War I and a worldwide economic depression in the 1920s shattered the optimistic assumptions of liberalism. These wars showed that man is not basically good; the world is not “heaven on earth.” By 1930, mainline liberalism was in decline.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 demonstrated the trustworthiness of Scripture. Contrary to liberal critics who claimed that our modern Bible is untrustworthy, the Dead Sea Scrolls showed that modern copies of the Hebrew Bible were almost identical to ancient copies. God had preserved his Word for his people.

Today, modernist theologies have been rejected. The fastest growing churches in the world are evangelical. There are differences between evangelical denominations, but they hold certain principles in common: the authority of Scripture, orthodox Christian doctrine, and the necessity of a personal commitment to Jesus Christ.

Evangelicals in the 1940s began to seek a way to maintain respect for the authority of Scripture while also engaging with the modern world. This led to a period of renewal in which a respect for Scripture was combined with the historic evangelical focus on outreach to the world. In 1941, a group of conservative evangelicals met at Moody Bible Institute to organize the National Association of Evangelicals. This organization was intended to respond to the liberal National Council of Churches. The NAE pursued outreach through:

• The National Religious Broadcasters developed radio and television programs.
• The Chaplains Commission supported outreach to the military.
• The World Relief Commission provided emergency humanitarian assistance to areas that suffered disasters.
• The Mission Exchange encouraged cooperation between missionary organizations.

For much of the world, Billy Graham is the face of evangelical outreach. His evangelistic crusades reached around the world. Carl F. H. Henry, a colleague of Graham, attempted to communicate the historic message of Christianity to the modern world in a new magazine, Christianity Today.[3]

Twentieth century evangelicals sought to relate Scripture to the spiritual, moral, and social needs of the modern world. Just as voluntary societies led social reform and missions outreach in the nineteenth century, para-church organizations led evangelical outreach in the late twentieth century.[1] Along with the crusades of Billy Graham and other evangelists, groups were established to focus on particular types of outreach:

• Campus Crusade was organized by Bill Bright to reach university students.
• Youth for Christ focused on high school age students.
• The Navigators organization was founded by Dawson Trotman to evangelize sailors during World War II.
• Gideons International distributed Bibles in schools, prisons, and hotels.
• Groups such as World Vision International and Samaritan’s Purse spread the gospel through social action.

A primary area of disagreement between modernists and evangelicals was the inerrancy of Scripture. In 1978, 200 evangelical leaders met in Chicago, Illinois, and formed the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. They drafted the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy” to address the doctrine of Scripture. The Chicago Statement:

• Explains why the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture is important for Christians.
• Affirms Scripture as the final authority over individual conscience, tradition, or church teachings.
• States that God worked through human writers without overriding their personalities.
• Shows that only the original manuscripts (not later copies) are without error. However, the Chicago Statement also affirms that no doctrines or elements of Christian belief are affected by the absence of the original manuscripts.
• Denies that Scripture contradicts itself.
• Provides guidelines for interpreting Scripture properly.
• Warns of the dangers to the church and individual believers if inerrancy is rejected.

The Chicago Statement helps pastors and teachers understand important principles of biblical interpretation and give guidance for defending the inerrancy of Scripture.[2]

[1] A parachurch organization is a religious organization established independently of church denominations.

[2] The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is available online at http://www.alliancenet.org/the-chicago-statement-on-biblical-inerrancy (Accessed May 14, 2021)

[3]“The evangelical task primarily is the preaching of the Gospel, in the interest of individual regeneration by the supernatural grace of God, in such a way that divine redemption can be recognized as the best solution of our problems, individual and social.”
- Carl. F. H. Henry

C.S. Lewis shows the transforming power of the gospel. Lewis was born into a Christian family in Ireland. His great-grandfather was a Methodist minister, and his grandfather was an evangelical Anglican. However, Lewis renounced Christianity as a young boy. Like many other people, Lewis failed to reconcile a loving God with the presence of pain and suffering in this world. Lewis’s mother died of cancer when he was only nine years old. Lewis decided that if God existed, he was a cruel God. Within three years, Lewis had declared himself an atheist.

Lewis became a brilliant student of literature at Oxford University. After he graduated, he was elected to a fellowship at Magdalen College and became one of the most popular lecturers at Oxford.

As Lewis continued to study English literature, he realized that Christian authors such as John Milton, Herbert Spenser, George MacDonald, and G.K. Chesterton had a depth that he missed in other literature. In addition, two of Lewis’s best friends on the English faculty at Magdalen, Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien, were Christians. Through discussions with these men and his own readings, Lewis was forced to recognize the intellectual emptiness of atheism. In 1929, Lewis admitted the reality of God’s existence and became “the most reluctant convert in all England.” At this point, Lewis confessed the truth of theism (“God is God”); he had not yet become a Christian.

Two years later, Lewis surrendered to Christ. This time, Lewis had a true change of heart, not just a mental assent to God’s existence. Lewis was no longer a “reluctant convert”; now he was “surprised by joy.”

After his conversion, Lewis poured his energies into his faith. As expected, Lewis’ public profession of his Christian faith came at a cost. Although he was one of the university’s most popular lecturers and the author of respected literary works, Oxford never offered Lewis a full professorship. This was due largely to the opposition of his disbelieving colleagues.

Lewis became one of the most influential Christian writers of the twentieth century. He wrote twenty-five books addressing many aspects of Christian belief. In an age of growing secularism, Lewis was a gifted defender of the Christian faith. Although he was a brilliant scholar, Lewis had the ability to speak to the common listener as effectively as he lectured to Oxford scholars. During World War II, Lewis recorded a series of radio broadcasts in which he explained the Christian faith for a broad non-academic audience. These broadcasts became the basis of Mere Christianity, one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.

Lewis also wrote for children. Sixty years after they were first published, the seven volume Chronicles of Narnia are still some of the best loved children’s literature in the world. These children’s books tell the story of a redeemer (portrayed as the great lion Aslan) who gives his life to rescue a world that is in bondage to the power of evil. Through a beautiful allegory, Lewis shows children the power of redemption.

Lewis’s writing focused on the essential truths of Christianity. In a time when liberals wanted to abandon core doctrines in order to make Christianity appealing to intellectuals, Lewis laid an apologetic foundation by showing that Christian orthodoxy is intellectually defensible. Mere Christianity showed an ecumenism based on orthodoxy, not on the abandonment of biblical truth.

Finally, C.S. Lewis is another example of how true Christian faith is in our relationship to the world around us. Because of his writings, Lewis became quite wealthy. However, he refused to change his simple way of life. Instead, he devoted the royalties from his books to charity. He supported many poor families, provided education for orphans, and gave money to dozens of charities and church organizations. This former atheist was truly transformed by the power of the gospel.

The Rise of Pentecostalism

One of the most controversial aspects of the twentieth century evangelical renewal is the rise of Pentecostalism. This movement began in 1906 with a revival at Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles. Pentecostals claimed the ability to speak in “unknown tongues.” Christians from around the world visited Azusa Street.

Pentecostalism appealed to a broad range of social and economic classes. Pentecostalism attracted the poor and lower social classes with a message of deliverance. It also appealed to people of all economic classes who were drawn to its message of spiritual power.

The Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church are just a few of the denominations that sprang up from this movement. In addition, Pentecostal or “charismatic” groups developed within denominations such as the Lutheran and Presbyterian churches.

During the late twentieth century, Pentecostal churches were the fastest growing churches in Africa and Asia. According to the Atlas of Global Christianity, as many as 614 million people are a part of the Pentecostal movement today.[1] This growth is based on an strong emphasis on evangelism and a message that testifies to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform lives.

[1] While many American Christians relate Pentecostalism primarily with speaking in unknown tongues, this is not the primary identifier in other countries. In a study of Nigerian Pentecostals, Dr. Danny McCain from the University of Jos found that less than half of Pentecostals in Nigeria claimed to speak in tongues.

Prior to the Reformation, to be “Christian” meant to be either Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. In the sixteenth century, to be Protestant meant to be Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, or Anglican. With the rise of denominations following the Peace of Augsburg and the Westminster Assembly, the Christian church divided into an ever-expanding number of groups.[1]

By the early twentieth century, the United States alone had more than 200 Protestant denominations. In response, a series of ecumenical movements attempted to reunite Christians. “Ecumenical” movements were efforts to bring better understanding and unity between different Christian groups. There were two major approaches to this effort: liberal and evangelical.

The Liberal Ecumenical Movement

Beginning in 1846, the Evangelical Alliance attempted to unite European churches. The American Federal Council of Churches, founded in 1908, united thirty-one, mostly liberal, American denominations. The Federal Council of Churches later became the National Council of Churches of Christ.

The largest ecumenical organization, the World Council of Churches grew out of the Edinburgh International Missionary Conference of 1910. Following this conference, four Christian leaders (John R. Mott from America, Charles H. Brent from Canada, Nathan Söderblom from Sweden, and Willem A. Visser’t Hooft from Holland) organized a World Conference on Faith. This conference first met in 1927 and led to the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948.

The first World Council of Churches included 147 denominations from 44 countries. Today, there are 345 member denominations from 110 countries.

Unfortunately, from the beginning, the World Council of Churches was strongly influenced by liberal theology. The World Council was more interested in social, economic, and political causes than in biblical orthodoxy. For instance, at the 1973 World Council conference, “salvation” was defined as “the humanizing of society to free man from oppression and create a new society on earth.” The 1975 World Council conference supported “nonmilitary guerilla revolutions and liberation theology.”[2]

Unity Among Evangelicals

Evangelicals agreed with liberals that Christians should seek unity. However, evangelicals recognized that true biblical unity must be grounded on the authority of Scripture. In the 1940s, the National Association of Evangelicals sought to unite believers who shared a commitment to biblical authority.

For evangelicals, the greatest impetus to church unity was world evangelism. Mass crusades by Billy Graham and Luis Palau continued the evangelistic approach of D.L. Moody. As churches cooperated to organize a crusade, they often gained a greater respect for each other.

Beyond individual evangelistic efforts, a series of conferences on evangelism brought together Christians from many different denominational backgrounds. The 1966 World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin drew 1,200 participants from more than 100 countries.

The 1974 Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization drew 2,500 participants from 150 countries. Led by an American evangelist, Billy Graham, and a British Anglican minister, John R.W. Stott, participants at the Congress signed the “Lausanne Covenant” affirming that “the church’s visible unity in truth is God’s purpose.” The Covenant stated two purposes for church unity:

1. Theologically, the unity of the church reflects the unity of the Trinity. The church’s unity is a gift of God through the Spirit, made possible by the cross of Christ.
2. Practically, the unity of the church enables effective world evangelization.[3]

Unlike conferences of the World Council of Churches, the Lausanne Congress insisted that doctrine is essential for the task of world evangelization. The Congress affirmed the divine inspiration and infallibility of Scripture and dependence on Christ alone for salvation. The conference recognized that the gospel includes both social justice and evangelism.

In 1986, a follow-up conference in Amsterdam drew 8,200 evangelists, mostly from the Majority World. Again, the congress agreed that world evangelization and doctrinal integrity are essential to the unity of the church.

[1] If you have forgotten these terms, review the section in Lesson 2 on “The Thirty Years War and the Rise of Denominations.”

[2] Cited in Earle E. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries, 3rd edition (Michigan: Zondervan, 1996), 476.

[3] Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, 3rd edition (USA: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 449

At the time of the 1910 International Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, there were 200 million Protestants worldwide. One hundred years later, there were approximately 800 million Protestants around the world. Approximately 300 million of these are evangelicals.[1]

[3]

Today, more than 50,000 missionaries from Africa, Asia, and Latin America minister in other nations. Churches in Korea and China are sending thousands of missionaries to other countries. The “Back to Jerusalem” movement in China is committed to taking the gospel to Muslims in central Asia and north Africa. House church leaders have called for 100,000 missionaries to go from China, and predict that 10,000 of these will die as martyrs. By 2025, there may be more foreign missionaries from China than from any other nation in the world.

Meanwhile, Europe, the historic center of Christendom, has become a mission field. Less than 10% of UK citizens attend church on a weekly basis; more than 50% never attend church. In Denmark and Sweden, less than one person in 20 attends church. Twenty-first century Christianity is truly a “world faith,” not a “white man’s religion.”

The following chart shows the change in global Christianity from 1900 to 2005. Six countries listed in the top ten nations in 2005 were not on the list in 1900. Five of the new nations are from Asia and Africa. From 10 million Christians in 1900, Africa now has nearly 500 million professing Christians. It is estimated that five new congregations per day are planted in Africa. Scholars predict that by 2050, eight of the top ten Christian nations will be in Asia and Africa.

Factors that are important in the growth of the evangelical church worldwide include:

A Commitment to Biblical Authority

Mainline churches lost large percentages of their membership during the twentieth century. Between 1925 and 1985, the number of missionaries from liberal denominations decreased from 11,000 to 3,000. By contrast, between 1953 and 1985, the number of evangelical missionaries tripled from 10,000 to more than 35,000. A study of liberal denominations found a pattern like this:

1. Pastors teach that Scripture is not the inspired Word of God, biblical accounts of miracles are myths, and faith in Christ is one of many paths to salvation.
2. The line between belief and unbelief disappears. The church becomes no more than a social institution.
3. People are unwilling to devote their lives to a social organization devoted to a myth. The church shrinks and evangelistic/mission commitment dwindles.[2]

In the same years that liberal denominations were dwindling, conservative denominations grew significantly. To show three examples of many, between 1965 and 1985:

• The Assemblies of God doubled.
• The Church of the Nazarene increased nearly 50 percent.
• The Southern Baptist Convention grew nearly 40 percent.

The church grows when the Bible is preached and applied in the lives of believers. When the authority of Scripture is denied, when pastors fail to preach biblical sermons, and when laymen live in willful disobedience to the principles of Scripture, the church suffers.

[1] Statistics in this lesson come from World Christian Database (2008 version) and Earle E. Cairns, Christianity through the Centuries (1996). In countries such as China, estimates vary widely. The information on the Chinese missionary movement comes from Timothy C. Tennent, Theology in the Context of World Christianity, (Zondervan, 2007).

[2] Vanishing Boundaries. Cited in Timothy Paul Jones, Christian History Made Easy (CA: Rose Publishing, 2009), 167

[3]Image: "Regional Distribution of Christians" from “Global Christianity – A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population” Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. (Dec. 19, 2011) retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/12/19/global-christianity-exec/, free to use with attribution.

It is good to promote the authority of Scripture, but what about people who do not have the Bible in their own language? In 1917, a missionary named Cameron Townsend traveled to Guatemala to minister. He took Spanish Bibles for the people, but discovered that the people in his village did not read Spanish. They spoke Cakchiquel, a language without a Bible.

In 1934, Townsend started a school to train people to translate the Bible. Then, in 1942, he founded Wycliffe Bible Translators for the purpose of providing a Bible translation in every language around the globe.

As of 2013, the entire Bible has been translated into more than 500 languages; the New Testament has been translated into more than 1,800 languages; and at least one book of the Bible is available in more than 2,800 languages. The availability of Scripture in local languages has supported the growth of indigenous churches worldwide.

However, much remains to be done. Approximately 1,900 languages still have no translation of the Bible. There are still millions of people waiting for God’s Word to be spoken in their language. In the words of the evangelical leader, Carl F.H. Henry, “The gospel is good news only if it gets there in time.” What can you do to take God’s Word to new people groups?

A Commitment to Indigenous Leadership

A commitment to indigenous church leadership is not new. In Acts, Paul planted churches that were self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. In the nineteenth century, Henry Venn encouraged the appointment of Samuel Crowther as Anglican bishop of Africa, and William Carey sought to develop an indigenous church in India.

The Chinese church has been a model of indigenous church leadership in the twentieth century. When foreign missionaries were forced out of China due to the Maoist Revolution in 1950, there were approximately 500,000 baptized Protestants in China. By 1996, this had grown to at least 33 million. Many estimates place the number of Chinese Christians today at nearly 100 million.[2]

Another example of indigenous leadership and growth is seen in East Africa. In 1937, missionaries were forced by Mussolini’s invasion to leave the Wallamo tribe in Ethiopia. When they left, there were forty-eight believers in the tribe; when missionaries returned in 1945, they found more than 10,000 believers.

A Passion for Revival

Throughout church history, periods of revival have been essential to the growth of the church. The early twentieth century revivals listed in Lesson 4 laid the foundation for the growth of the church in Korea and China.

A 1935 revival in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania brought thousands of new believers into the evangelical churches. Revival on the Indonesian island of Timor in the mid-sixties saw the churches triple from 100,000 members to more than 300,000. Students of the African church have estimated that 40% of Africans moved from traditional religions to Christianity during the twentieth century.[1]

[1] Peter Jenkins, The Great and Holy War (NY: Harper, 2014), 317

[2]“This past Sunday it is possible that more Christian believers attended church in China than in all of so-called ‘Christian Europe.’ Yet in 1970 there were no legally functioning churches in all of China.”
- Mark Noll

In many ways, the growth of indigenous churches has been one of the great successes of twentieth century Christianity. However, with growth comes new challenges. Challenges facing the global church today include:

Theological Integrity

In the twenty-first century as in the first century, false teachers threaten the truth of the gospel. Peter warned, “There will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed.”[1] Peter’s warning is still valid today. In a time of rapid growth, churches must not abandon biblical truth. The global church today needs pastoral training to develop church leaders with biblical foundations, ethical integrity, and leadership ability.

The Relationship Between the Church and the World

The rise of indigenous churches has raised new challenges similar to those faced by the early church. The early church asked, “Which parts of Gentile culture are morally neutral and which parts are hostile to the gospel?” As the gospel is contextualized, each church must face this question anew. Which of a nation’s cultural practices, customs, holidays, and artistic and musical productions are morally neutral? Which aspects are linked to religious beliefs opposed to the Christian faith?

► What theological issues threaten the integrity of the church in your community? What issues of contextualization are a challenge for believers in your culture?

[1] 2 Peter 2:1-2

Barth, Karl (1886-1968): Neo-orthodox theologian. He rejected liberal German theology, but accepted many of the principles of biblical higher criticism.

Graham, Billy (1918-2018): Best known evangelical evangelist of the twentieth century.

Lewis, C.S. (1898-1963): Leading twentieth century apologist.  He converted from atheism and became a voice for the gospel.

Townsend, Cameron (1896-1982): Founder of Wycliffe Bible translators. 

(1) Take a test on this lesson. The test will include dates from the “Key Events in Church History” timeline (Twentieth Century).

(2) Write a 1-2 page essay in which you respond to one of the challenges listed in this lesson. You may address a theological issue like liberalism or a practical issue like the need for indigenous leadership. Your essay should be in two parts:

• Why this issue is important to your church
• Some ideas for addressing the problem in your church

(1) Darwin’s ________________________________ proposed the theory of biological evolution.

(2) In addition to Darwin, German ________________ contributed to liberalism in the church.

(3) ___________________ was a response to liberalism which held to some aspects of orthodoxy, but did not teach the inerrancy of Scripture.             

(4) The philosophy of ________________ led people to assume that Christianity has no real importance in the modern world.

(5) Because of the decline of Christian influence, 21st century Europe is often called ________________________.

(6) The ________________________________ was established in 1941 in response to the liberal National Council of Churches.

(7) The _________________________ on Biblical Inerrancy summarizes an evangelical doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy.

(8) The fastest growing churches in Africa and Asia during the twentieth century were ______________________ (what doctrine).

(9) C.S. Lewis’ book, ___________________________, summarized the teachings of the Christian faith for a non-academic audience.

(10) The 1974 ________________________________ on World Evangelization stated both a theological and a practical purpose for unity in the church.

(11) List two of the four factors important in the growth of evangelical churches worldwide.

(12) _____________________________ has led in translating portions of the Bible into more than 2,800 languages.