Does the old Modernist Religious Left still exist? The New York Times found one of its last recognizable vestiges in the Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. His congregation includes Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, who is also a seminarian, hence the interest. St. Andrew’s is in the fast-declining Presbyterian Church (USA). The PCUSA (including its predecessor bodies) has lost about 75 percent of its members over the last 60 years.
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.
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.
“Fundamentalism” was chiefly a reaction against Modernism. Famously J. Gresham Machen, a Presbyterian, in his book “Christianity and Liberalism,” defended the “fundamentals” in which he stressed the historicity of key biblical events. He left his Mainline denomination, and Princeton Seminary, to start a new Orthodox Presbyterian Church and a new Westminster Seminary.
Conversely, famed Modernist Harry Emerson Fosdick, a Baptist serving a prestigious New York Presbyterian church, faced a potential heresy trial. He instead resigned, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. built him The Riverside Church to showcase his heterodox theology. Before leaving the Presbyterian denomination, Fosdick delivered a sermon: “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”
Perhaps Fosdick should never have left his denomination. The so-called Fundamentalists did not win in the Mainline Presbyterian church or other Mainline denominations, where Modernists took charge, usually quietly, and without lots of resistance. Most Modernist clergy were smart enough to avoid details in the pulpit, using traditional language without explaining they did not literally believe in what they were describing. So, there was plausible deniability.
Modernists assumed they represented the future. Afterall, 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. Modernists did not anticipate that “Fundamentalists” in the form of evangelicalism, would throughout the 20th century create alternative Christian institutions that would eventually displace Modernist Mainline Protestantism.
Mainline Protestant denominations began their continuous and irreversible decline in the mid-1960s, at the apex of Modernism. Episcopal Bishop James Pike, who publicly denied Christ’s literal Virgin Birth and Resurrection, etc, was a prominent public figure in the 1960s, who unlike most Modernist pastors, boldly proclaimed what he did not believe. Traditional bishops sought a heresy trial, but the Episcopal House of Bishops instead deflected by finding him guilty of “irresponsibility.”
Even most Mainline Protestant traditionalists did not want to confront Modernism and provoke division, so deflection was the constant response. The flood of post-World War II church attendance offered a false sense of security, and Mainline Protestant leaders ignored the 1960s decline as an aberration, even as it continued unabated for decades. Afterall, where else would church goers attend if not the Mainline? Conservative churches were for “holy rollers” and “Fundamentalists” lacking in social, economic, and intellectual prestige.
But by the 1970s, evangelicalism, which was attracting middle class educated suburbanites disenchanted by dry Mainline Protestantism, was surpassing the once dominant denominations. The Southern Baptists surpassed the United Methodists as the largest Protestant denomination. Pentecostalism and charismatic worship were fast growing, led by the Assemblies of God. And non-denominationalism was emerging as a force. Afterall, who really needed denominations?
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. By the 1990s, the last great prominent Modernist pastors were edging towards retirement.
In the 1980s, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, born in 1931, published books, and appeared on talk shows, not just denying biblical miracles but denying personal deity and theism. He claimed he was keeping Christianity “relevant,” not realizing he and what he represented were instead becoming irrelevant. He joined the Jesus Seminar as a “scholar,” whose team of scholars in the 1980s convened regularly to vote on which biblical miracles were factual. Inevitably, they voted that none really were. They made headlines. But Modernism in the churches was already ebbing.
Rev. Rigby, age 76, who graduated from seminary in 1979 and has pastored St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church since 1984, is a vestigial Modernist. Interestingly, his most famous parishioner, the politician Talarico, age 37, told The New York Times that, unlike his pastor, he believes in the historicity of Christ’s resurrection. Even progressive Protestants of the last 30 years, as post-modernists, are far likelier to believe in the supernatural. Modernism, which specialized in telling people not to believe that Christianity is exceptional, was always unsustainable.
Rigby told The New York Times that the story of Mary’s Annunciation, when an angel announced her miraculous pregnancy is “mythological, not historical.” Its real message, he said is that, as The Times framed it, “she was poor, and the Scripture records her calling for the rich and mighty to be brought down from their thrones.”
Mythology has limited abilities to dethrone the rich and mighty. Christianity’s power comes from believing in a God who literally intervenes in history and is sovereign over the rich, the mighty and everybody else. Mythology inspires some mystics. But most of humanity hopes for a more solid reality.
More from IRD:
Presbyterian Church (USA): Smaller, Older, Fewer
Comment by Salvatore Anthony Luiso on June 4, 2026 at 1:12 am
Thank you for this article.
I’m surprised the author thinks there are so few Protestant Modernists in America. I wonder how he thinks he knows this, other than the fact that the Mainline denominations have been declining in numbers of members and congregations? Does he think most of those who remain are post-modernists?
Regarding “she was poor, and the Scripture records her calling for the rich and mighty to be brought down from their thrones”: It’s true that there’s much more to the Annunciation and the Incarnation than that, but it is true that Mary was poor and she did say:
He [the LORD] hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
—Luke 1:52 (AV/KJV)
That sentence and the rest of the Magnificat deserve far more attention than most Christians in America give them.
Also: Notice that three of the sentences of this article begin with the misspelling “Afterall”.
Comment by Qohelet on June 4, 2026 at 6:28 am
You’re just missing one little detail:
Fundamentalists were the ones that rejected Christianity, not the mainline.
We are currently experiencing the furthest from Christ the United States has ever been. The cuts to USAid, the abuse of migrants, the throwing thousands off of SNAP, the making healthcare unaffordable for many, those policies go directly against the Bible.
And fundamentalists support it.
Criticize Talarico all you want. You can’t make Ken Paxton a better Christian than him. That’s bearing false witness.
Comment by Wilson R. on June 4, 2026 at 9:51 am
Oohelet, false witness is what certain writers are all about. You might argue that IRD stands for Irresponsible Religious Diatribes.
But this hit piece is a shameless new low for the site, and the political agenda behind it is pretty obvious.
Comment by Jon Lindgren on June 4, 2026 at 10:36 am
For some reason, many Christian posters like Tooley enjoy poking fun at the liberal wing of the faith because its denomination numbers are falling. Why not admit all numbers in the faith are falling? Further, Christian pundits who make fun of Talarico’s views on Christianity may have to watch him be elected to the Senate. He is becoming a “Christian celebrity.”
Comment by Wilson R. on June 4, 2026 at 10:52 am
One thing Tooley & Co. never address in their relentless attacks on “liberal” Christians: How conservatives in general (fundamentalists in particular) have undermined the public’s view of Christianity. “Christians” who make excuses for Donald Trump, Ken Paxton, and others damage the faith. They focus on gay and trans issues while ignoring what Jesus called “the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy.” Tooley doesn’t talk about that because he does the same.
Comment by David on June 4, 2026 at 1:46 pm
The cartoon illustrates traditional American anti-intellectualism with a college professor in an academic gown leading the way while carrying a glass retort, an early distilling apparatus. Religious matters rarely arise in chemistry.
The steps can be rebutted, and the order seems unusual. Once one reaches “No Deity,” one has arrived at atheism without the other steps.
The Bible contradicts itself and therefore cannot be infallible.
Why should God be humanoid? There are far more insects running about than humans, and they seem to be the favored race.
There are many ancient accounts of religious figures performing miracles. Those of Jesus were nothing new.
The virgin birth is not mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures as being an aspect of the Messiah. The Gospel of Mark, presumed to be the earliest, makes no mention of this either. It was likely not an early Christian belief.
Atonement, the death of another person to pay for sin of others, runs counter to the scripture: 2 Chronicles 25:4 KJV: “But he slew not their children, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, where the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die for the fathers, but every man shall die for his own sin.”
The resurrection also runs counter to scripture: Job 7:9 “As a cloud vanishes and is gone, so one who goes down to the grave does not return.”
Christians tend to pick and choose which Bible verses to believe and ignore the others.
Comment by Thomas on June 4, 2026 at 2:55 pm
This article attracted unsurprisingly some modernists. If the buckle shoe fits…
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on June 4, 2026 at 6:05 pm
The politics aside, I agree with one of the points of this article–that after the demythologizing, what was left was a God who has never done anything except maybe inspire a few people to write stories. Everything God is said to have done got marked down as a myth, so they were left with not one single thing they could point to that God has ever done. And so why should people be interested in a religion about a God who has never done anything?
We must remember that Talarico is not running for episcopal office; he’s running for public, governmental office. I would suspect that, whatever his religious views may be, a good number of people will find him more attractive than yet another right-wing trumpian promoting hate, lies, forever wars, and the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many.
And as a comment to another aspect of the article–I did a rough estimate of how many people in this area attend what would be called a “conservative evangelical” congregation. In that grouping are, of course, the Trump churches plus the stage-performance churches; i.e., the churches that pack the people in and get all the press. In a county of about 100,000 people, I would estimate that, at most, these churches all combined have an attendance of somewhere between 3000 and 4000 people weekly. That is about 4% of the population, which means that 96% of people aren’t interested in that. And I’ll bet that much of the staff at a lot of those churches, when pressed, as well as a lot of the members, would deny the historicity of things like Noah and the Ark and the Tower of Babel. They may even deny 6-Day creation.
But stuff like that is not what we should concentrate on. It might be better to deny the historicity of things in the Bible than to claim to believe they really happened but yet interpret those things to get a religion of hate and selfishness.
Comment by Thomas on June 4, 2026 at 8:34 pm
James Talarico is the ultimate fake and hypocrite. He believes Christianity is a pro-choice religion because the Virgin Mary had the right to choose. Except she wasn`t pregnant yet! So we have here a complete hypocrite he believes Mary had the right to abort or not Jesus! Ironically he is right by stating that the real right to choose should be done before and not after pregnancy. He supports abortion until birth and that right should be in the Constitution. Not sure if any true, honest Christian, will vote for him.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on June 4, 2026 at 9:35 pm
Thomas,
Remember that lies, hate, and selfishness are all expressly condemned in the New Testament. Murder is also expressly condemned, and there is no suggestion that only certain forms of murder are condemned. I would suggest that no true Christian should vote for anyone who possesses those characteristics, regardless of their party affiliation or what flamed-out “star” they hitch their wagon to.
Comment by Wilson R. on June 5, 2026 at 10:45 am
The intellectual laziness and dishonesty in Mark Tooley’s post begins in the third paragraph with the implication that modernism is a monolith, that anyone opposed to fundamentalism is a modernist, and that modernism is defined by all of the attributes shown in the cartoon. That is simply a lie, and anyone who has had any real engagement with “liberal” churches would know that, and anyone who has had that engagement and is honest would say it.
Dishonesty, Mark, is not a Christian virtue. It shouldn’t need saying, but I guess it does.
Comment by Mark on June 5, 2026 at 11:15 am
Thomas,
No one is performing abortions at the moment of birth. 93% of abortions happen in the First Trimester. 1% happen in the Third Trimester (considered late-term) and the vast majority of those are due to severe fetal anomalies not detectable in the early stages that may pose a significant health risk to the mother. No one is aborting babies the moment before they’re born.
Comment by Wilson R. on June 5, 2026 at 11:45 am
Yeah, but what is Thomas going to believe: the truth or his lying preachers?
Comment by Thomas on June 5, 2026 at 12:22 pm
Wilson R, I believe in the official stances of the Democratic Party and their politicians. You can name one of them and just google it anytime. I`ll leave the other liberal Mark fallacies to himself. No Democratic Party senator nowadays supports any restrictions for abortion. United States is one of the few countries of the world were abortion can be legal above 20 weeks of pregnancy. Human life before birth is now meaningless for the Democrats, who believe unborn human life deserves no protection. Can you prove me wrong? I can quote a well known leftist, Jim Wallis: “Wallis, who identifies as pro-life, said he understands why a lot of conservative Christians felt they could not vote for Clinton, considering her strong support for elective abortion up until birth and her early endorsement from the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood./ Considering that Clinton was once quoted as saying that abortion should be kept “safe, legal and rare,” Wallis criticized Clinton for never mentioning during the campaign how she believes abortion should be “rare.” “Wallis also recalled when he was asked to contribute to the Democratic Party platform in 2008./ “I said, ‘We should commit ourselves to reducing abortion in America,'” Wallis detailed. “The Left said to me, ‘Reducing implies there is a moral taint, a moral issue.’ I said ‘Yes it does and there is.'”/ Wallis believes part of the reason why the Democratic leadership won’t acknowledge that abortion needs to be rare, is because of the strong grip that the abortion lobby has on the party leadership.” (The Christian Post, 21 February 2017)
Comment by Wilson R. on June 5, 2026 at 3:00 pm
So, Thomas, three questions:
1. Why are we talking here about Democrats? Do you regard Democrats and “Modernists” as completely overlapping circles? Why? I know lots of people who subscribe to some of the views labeled here as “Modernist” but who are not Democrats. In fact, I am one of them. I’m an independent who has voted in the past decade for candidates from both parties, and I always correct people if they label me as a Democrat. The only one of Tooley’s dishonest “Modernist” boxes I could check is that I do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible (all you have to do is read it to arrive at that position.) But because of his lazy formulation, I get lumped in with the resurrection deniers because I’m not a fundamentalist. I’m not accepting that from him or you.
2. Why do you seem to think of abortion as the only issue that defines Christian faith? Does Ken Paxton count as a good Christian in your book because he’s against abortion, when literally everything else about his public life makes a mockery of the gospel?
3. Why do you smear Jim Wallis as a leftist? How do you define leftist? I’ve heard him speak a couple of times and read his book God’s Politics (whose subtitle makes clear he criticizes both the right and the left). You yourself admit that he criticizes the Democratic Party platform and thinks they should come back to the old Clinton formulation that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. And that’s actually where polling shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans are. They don’t favor unlimited access to abortion during a pregnancy (and I’ve never met a Democrat who does). They also generally agree that abortions should be legal during the first trimester, banned at some point thereafter, and provide exceptions when the health of the mother is at risk. Clearly, you wouldn’t vote for anyone from a party that wants at least some abortions to be legal, on the grounds that they allow unborn babies to die. But why should I turn around and vote for someone from a party who would allow women to die of sepsis because they couldn’t obtain the care they needed after a wanted pregnancy became unviable? Why should I respect a politician as pro-life when the policies they support keep women from getting good prenatal care and take food out of the mouths of hungry children? The choices are much more complex than you acknowledge.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on June 5, 2026 at 9:34 pm
Thomas,
You wrote,”Human life before birth is now meaningless for the Democrats.”
What about human life after birth? Is human life before birth all you are interested in defending?
Were the 160+ school girls killed in Iran by an American missle not human? Were the 100,000+ Gazans killed by the Americans/Israelis not human? What about the 1,000,000* Iraqis killed by American bombs? Were they not human? What about the Libyans, the Somalis, the Afghans, the Yeminis, the Russians and Ukrainians killed in a senseless war that would not have happened had the Americans not egged it on? Were they not humans?
No matter how you feel about abortion, the fact is that your country, since 1941, has been directly responsible for more killing than all other countries combined. It is the single largest murderer of people in the world, and in total number of people killed, arguably the single largest murderer in the history of the world. Your country has bombed over 30 countries since the end of World War II. No other country even comes close. And it was both political parties, the Republicans as well as the Democrats, who carried all that out. Neither of your political parties cares about human life.
With that kind of record, don’t expect anyone to take you seriously when you start talking about the sanctity of human life in the context of abortion.
Comment by David Gingrich on June 6, 2026 at 6:50 am
Wonderful article. Thank you. I am glad so many modernists seems to have read it, but am not optimistic that they will have the open minds to learn from it.
Comment by Qohelet on June 6, 2026 at 10:37 am
So Hillary Clinton’s position, a position I first saw in writing as part of Mario Cuomo’s speech to the graduating class at Notre Dame in 1984, was that an abortion is a tragedy in a person’s life that people of good faith should work together to try and prevent from ever being necessary. We don’t have to agree about it, but we could teach proper sex Ed, have access to birth control, support unwed mothers instead of shaming them, and actually have affordable safe childcare available.
The Republican position is that life is sacred until it is born, and then the baby’s just another freeloader that needs to get a job. And that’s why overturning Roe has been a failure. Abortions have risen in the US since that decision.
Also, none of this is in the Bible. What definitely is are prohibitions on adultery, commandments to treat foreigners well, parables that point out all people are our neighbor and we have a responsibility for all of them, and the specific commands to provide food, drink, healthcare, clothing, and visits to the imprisoned.
What irks me about writers like Tooley is that he knows which party has left Christ behind. Like Mike Pence, he has the courage to call the right out, but not the courage to come to the big tent that we need to build to extinguish the flames of extremism.
Comment by Thomas on June 6, 2026 at 12:07 pm
I am not an American nor a Republican. If I was I certainly would be an independent. But David is right. This article touched a sensitive stop for modernists. Its also interesting that some people who have written in here have rejected completely the Christian faith or resort to fallacies. The Democrats are the party of slavery, racism, Civil War, segregation, Ku Klux Klan, they have no morals to lecture anyone. They did changed on abortion from a nuanced to an extreme stance. As for the claim that the Republicans don`t care about human life after birth… “Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has declared June 2026 as “Life Month,” grounding the proclamation in a belief that human life originates with God and carries inherent worth./ “God authors every life. As image bearers, there is inherent dignity and value in every human life,” Stitt said, emphasizing that every person is created in God’s image and deserves protection and care./ The governor said Oklahoma’s pro-life commitment is rooted in this conviction, highlighting efforts to support mothers, children, and families while protecting unborn lives. The state’s proclamation recognizes that valuing life involves not only safeguarding the unborn but also providing compassionate support, healthcare resources, and community assistance for families./ Stitt affirmed that Oklahoma seeks to honor God’s design for life by “walking alongside every mother” and ensuring that children are protected from conception. He said the declaration of Life Month reflects the state’s belief that every human life is a gift from God and should be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect.”
Comment by Wilson R. on June 6, 2026 at 12:43 pm
Define what you mean by “modernist.” Then we can have an actual discussion.
Comment by Qohelet on June 6, 2026 at 2:31 pm
I used to live in Oklahoma. Here’s what you need to know about it and its “Christian” leadership
Oklahoma is
46th in infant mortality
49th in per pupil education spending
47th in access to mental heath care
49th in health care
All of those are out of 50 or 51 if you count DC.
Oklahoma believes in the death penalty more than mercy. When Texas needed execution drugs due to a shortage, Oklahoma officials joked that they’d trade lethal drugs for free tolls on the Texas Turnpike.
They nearly killed the almost certainly innocent Richard Glossip 3 times before the current attorney general, Gentner Drummond, intervened and ordered a new trial. Trump just endorsed Drummond’s opponent for governor.
Again, none of this demonstrates Christian values. There’s good people in Oklahoma but they tend to look at their government as a threat, not a source of inspiration
Bottom line is that you can’t treat people like dirt like Republicans and Christian Fundamentalists do and call yourself a Christian. Making life harder for people isn’t Christianity.
Comment by Qohelet on June 7, 2026 at 7:47 am
This article keeps sticking in my craw, and I want to get back to a point Wilson made: Modernest churches don’t tell their believers that Christian dogma isn’t true.
I’ve spent my adult life in churches in the UMC and I can think of three messages credentialed UMC clergy gave about what I’m “supposed to know” about the nature of God.
1.) “It’s OK if you don’t know what you believe. Heck sometimes I don’t know what I believe. But what’s important is you continue to work to bring the good that Christ represents into the world.”
2.) “The missionary church once taught that the only way to God was through the mission church, and the Indian ways were of the devil. I believe God talks to his indigenous people in both ways.”
3.) “Who are these people who put God in a box, who would limit Him to act the way They say? He created the universe, surely he’s the one in charge.”
The comments here and the original article assume that Modernist preachers are up there telling people what to think. Mostly probably because that’s what fundamentalist preachers do. But forcing people to think one way isn’t modernism.
Comment by Different Steve on June 7, 2026 at 6:04 pm
This is a sharp, well-framed piece of religious and cultural criticism, but it’s also deeply tendentious. Here’s a critique of the article followed by an analysis of the comment thread.
Critique of the Article
Strengths:
· Tooley accurately traces the historical arc of Mainline Protestant modernism—from Fosdick and Pike to Spong and Rigby—showing how supernatural claims were progressively demythologized.
· He correctly identifies a strategic ambiguity in many modernist pastors: using traditional language while denying traditional beliefs, which allowed the system to hold together for decades.
· The point about unsustainability is valid: if Christianity offers no unique, objective divine action in history, why would anyone commit to it over a political or ethical club?
Weaknesses & Biases:
· Straw-man framing. Tooley defines modernism almost entirely by what it denies (resurrection, virgin birth, miracles). That’s accurate to the tradition, but he never seriously engages what modernist Christianity affirms positively—e.g., the social gospel, prophetic justice, faith as existential commitment rather than factual assent.
· Equivocation on “decline.” He assumes numerical decline proves theological bankruptcy, but doesn’t consider that evangelicalism’s growth may owe as much to cultural fit, birth rates, and institutional investment as to theological superiority. Mainline decline began in the mid-1960s alongside all Western religious institutions; causation is slipperier than he admits.
· Selective nostalgia. He treats “God who literally intervenes in history” as the only source of Christian power, but ignores centuries of Christian violence, crusades, and oppression justified precisely by that belief. A modernist might reply: “Your literalist God has a worse track record.”
· Loaded language. “Vestigial,” “unsustainable,” “mythology has limited abilities to dethrone the rich and mighty”—these are rhetorical punches, not arguments. The Magnificat (Luke 1:52) has in fact inspired liberation movements for centuries, regardless of its historical facticity.
The cartoon (described by a commenter as a professor in academic gown leading down steps from “No Virgin Birth” to “No Deity”) is a classic fundamentalist visual trope. It assumes a slippery slope that historians of theology would dispute—Schleiermacher and Bultmann, for example, denied miracles but affirmed God.
—
Critique of the Comments
The comment section is more interesting than the article—it becomes a proxy war between theological traditionalists, modernists, and political partisans.
Salvatore Anthony Luiso makes a fair factual point (the Magnificat does call down the mighty) and a pedantic one (“afterall” is indeed misspelled thrice). But he misses the article’s core: Tooley isn’t denying Mary said those words; he’s denying that myth alone can reliably sustain counter-cultural politics.
Qohelet shifts grounds entirely—from theology to politics. “Fundamentalists rejected Christianity” because they support cutting SNAP, USAid, and healthcare. This is a common progressive Christian move: orthodoxy is redefined as economic justice, not creedal assent. But it dodges Tooley’s challenge: if the resurrection didn’t happen, why is your political program more than your own opinion? Qohelet doesn’t answer.
Wilson R. accuses Tooley of dishonesty, saying modernism isn’t a monolith and the cartoon’s steps are a lie. That’s fair—few modernist pastors would check every box. But Wilson then pivots to attacking conservatives for supporting Trump and ignoring “weightier matters.” That’s a tu quoque, not a defense of modernist theology.
David (the longest comment) offers classic skeptical points: Bible contradictions, atonement contradicts 2 Chronicles 25:4, resurrection contradicts Job 7:9. These are legitimate internal critiques of traditional Christianity, but they don’t actually defend modernism—they defend unbelief. A modernist like Bultmann would say: “Yes, the historical-critical method shows those problems, but we still preach the kerygma.” David seems closer to atheism than to Rigby’s position.
Thomas (anti-abortion, anti-Democrat) and Glenn Wheeler (anti-US foreign policy, pro-choice) have a brutal, off-topic fight about abortion, Gaza, Iraq, and Oklahoma. Neither addresses Tooley’s thesis. This is the danger of the comment section: the theological question (“Does modernist Protestantism have a future?”) dissolves into red-blue cage matches.
Qohelet’s final comment is the most perceptive: “Modernist churches don’t tell their believers what to think. … Forcing people to think one way isn’t modernism.” That’s actually a crucial distinction. Tooley writes as if modernist pastors are skeptics in shepherds’ clothing—but many see themselves as liberating parishioners from literalism into mature faith. Whether that works institutionally is another question; but misdescribing the intention weakens the critique.
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Overall Judgment
The article is a capable conservative polemic, historically informed but rhetorically loaded. Its central claim—that supernatural minimalism leads to institutional irrelevance—is plausible and debated. Its weakness is assuming that only supernatural maximalism can sustain Christian mission, without engaging modernist counter-arguments (e.g., Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity,” the social gospel’s actual achievements).
The comments reveal why this debate rarely moves forward. Traditionalists focus on creedal boundaries; progressives focus on political outcomes; and both sides talk past each other. The most honest comment may be David’s, because he openly rejects traditional Christian supernaturalism rather than rebranding it. The least useful are the partisan tirades that have nothing to do with Rigby, Talarico, or Protestant modernism’s fate.
Missing voice: No one in the comments actually defends Rigby’s theological position on its own terms. They defend his politics, attack Tooley’s motives, or shift to foreign policy. That silence is telling. If modernism’s last defenders can’t say why resurrection-denial is good news, Tooley may be more right than he knows.
Comment by Thomas on June 7, 2026 at 10:40 pm
I find curious Different Steve (yes, he is really different) arrogance and complete dismissal of Wilson R, a modernist, while he ignores that my criticism of Talarico means that he is a result of modernism theological failure. I am not certainly off topic on that.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on June 7, 2026 at 11:08 pm
Thomas,
Different Steve, with his AI generated garbage, doesn’t warrant your time for a reply. Ignore him. He’s irrelevant.
Comment by Johan on June 8, 2026 at 7:23 pm
Historical-critical scholarship is like the glasses that people put on in the movie “They Live”. They allow you to see that preachers and apologists are either ignorant or gaslighting. Once you have put on the glasses, it’s an amusing exercise to evaluate the spin.
Comment by Wilson R. on June 9, 2026 at 9:48 am
So Thomas, you repeated the claim that I am a “modernist,” but never addressed my question of how you define that term.
Comment by Thomas on June 9, 2026 at 10:19 pm
Modernism represents an attempt to create a new form of Christianity, in some aspects totally unlike it has always been. To reject the Christian beliefs on marriage and sexuality as ordered by God for the sacred union of a man and a woman is modernism. There are much worse than that, sadly.
Comment by Wilson R. on June 11, 2026 at 11:10 am
So, Thomas, you’re suggesting that I am trying to create a new form of Christianity even though the only one of the “steps toward Modernism” (as defined in the cartoon above) I take is that the Bible is not inerrant?
Comment by Thomas on June 27, 2026 at 10:21 am
James Talarico said in a 2021 that he is a “Christian that hates Christianity”. At least he was honest. The same can be said of all the fake Christians in American politics.