A Necessary Revival of Faith

     Thus by the end of his life in 1921 A. H. Strong, a moderate throughout his career, had sided with the fundamentalists in their dispute with modernism. Lamenting “some common theological trends of our time,” Strong warned: “under the influence of Ritschl [a German theologian, TCP] and his Kantian relativism, many of our teachers and preachers have swung into a practical denial of Christ’s deity and of His atonement. We seem upon the verge of a second Unitarian defection, that will break up churches and compel secessions, in a worse manner than did that of Channing and Ware [leading Unitarians of the early 1800s, TCP] a century ago. American Christianity recovered from that disaster only by vigorously asserting the authority of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures. ... Without a revival of this faith our churches will become secularized, mission enterprise will die out, and the candlestick will be removed out of its place as it was with the seven churches of Asia, and as it has been with the apostate churches of New England..”

[From the preface to A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Valley Forge, PA, Judson Press, 1907) p. ix.]