Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 87:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: The New Liberalism: Machen In The Twenty-First Century
Author: Pierce Taylor Hibbs

WTJ 87:1 (Spring 2025) p. 83

The New Liberalism: Machen In The Twenty-First Century

Pierce Taylor Hibbs

Pierce Taylor Hibbs is senior writer and communication specialist at Westminster Theological Seminary. This article is an adaptation of a presentation he gave at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, Bryn Mawr, PA, April 27, 2024.

J. Gresham Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism over a hundred years ago in order to push against the tide of theological liberalism. Additionally, Machen’s work holds new interest today as we confront what can be called “the new liberalism.” After defining theological liberalism in Machen’s day, the author presents the tenets of the new liberalism in the twenty-first century. This probe leads to a definition and explanation of the “therapeutic psychological self.” In addition to outlining the features of this new self, the author looks at a case study in the podcast “The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling.” The documentary podcast examines controversial tweets sent by Rowling concerning the transgender movement. We can understand the dilemma Rowling and others face by accounting for the therapeutic psychological self. The author then offers a practical way to engage people apologetically using what he calls the insider-outsider dynamic. He concludes by arguing that the meanings of words, in Machen’s day and in our own, must always be rooted in the revealed character of God.

Ideologies and value systems are like weather patterns. We can map them and trace their movements, but when we are out in the world, we just see the elements—the rain and the wind, the sun and the clouds, the fog and the frost. The fact that we do not see ideologies or values pulsing with life can make us feel that tracing weather patterns is somewhat of a waste of time. “Let’s just walk through the weather,” we say to ourselves. But that choice can be a very dangerous one.

In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis wrote that we do not often realize how enslaved we are “to the pressure of the ordinary.”1 The everyday sun or rain that strikes our skin can make us forget that there are larger “weather patterns” at play in the world. And they are powerful. They are suggesting and supplanting, shaping and directing. And they do this very effectively precisely because we cannot easily see them.

WTJ 87:1 (Spring 2025) p. 84

But some of us do see them. J. Gresham Machen, for instance, saw the pattern of theological liberalism in his own day, and he wrote Christianity and Liberalism in response. In what follows, I want to show that the liberalism of his day lies beneath the liberalism of our own day, w...