The Making of a Battle Royal: The Rise of Liberalism in Northern Baptist Life 1870-1920 (Monographs in Baptist History)

American Baptists emerged from the Civil War as a divided group. Slavery landmarkism and other issues sundered Baptists into regional clusters who held more or less to the same larger doctrinal sentiments. As the century progressed influences from Europe further altered the landscape. A new way to view the Bible--more human less divine--began to shape Baptist thought. Moreover Darwinian evolutionism altered the way religion was studied. Religion like humanity itself was progressing. Conservative Baptists--proto fundamentalists--objected to these alterations. Baptist bodies had a new enemy--theological liberalism. The schools were at the center of the story in the earliest days as professors many of whom studied abroad returned to the United States with progressive ideas that were passed on to their students. Soon these ideas were being presented at denominational gatherings or published in denomination papers and books. Baptists agitated over the new views with some professors losing their jobs when they strayed too far from historic Baptists commitments. By 1920 the Northern Baptists in particular broke out into an all-out war over theology that came to be called The Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. This is the fifty-year history behind that controversy. In the period between the Civil War and World War I Northern Baptist theology drifted increasingly to the left. This transition provoked the fundamentalist-modernist controversies among Northern Baptists in the 1920s and 1930s and ultimately inspired the rise of Baptist fundamentalism. In this helpful study Jeff Straub examines the trends personalities and rivalries that led to the ascendancy of theological liberalism in the Baptist North. --Nathan A. Finn School of Theology and Missions Union University The historiography of religious liberalism and that of American fundamentalism have until now been kept in separate compartments. Straub brings the two together explaining how liberals gained control of a previously-orthodox Baptist denomination. This story sets the stage for understanding how and why fundamentalism burst onto the scene. Those who wish to understand fundamentalism must begin by understanding liberalism. Straubs book provides a significant contribution to this understanding. --Kevin T. Bauder Central Baptist Seminary of Minneapolis In The Making of a Battle Royal Jeff Straub addresses a serious gap in the study of North American Baptist history. Until now with a few notable exceptions historians have tended to focus on the rise of fundamentalism while our understanding of the emerging thought and theology of Northern Baptist liberal/progressive academics has remained fragmented and in relative obscurity. With deftness depth and diligence Straub takes his reader on a journey through the events and exchanges that established a liberal Baptist identity and facilitated the emergence of liberal Baptist hegemony. We owe Professor Straub our gratitude for bringing this history to light. --Paul R. Wilson President the Canadian Baptist Historical Society Nineteenth-century liberal theology claimed to be about life and freedom. In reality it brought spiritual death and bondage to the then-current mentalite. The story of this devastation among Baptists in the northern United States one that especially involved the seminaries is now definitively told by Professor Straub with both a depth of scholarship and verve that are truly admirable. A profoundly insightful work and must reading for all concerned with handing on our most precious faith. --Michael A. G. Haykin The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary This is an excellent addition to the literature on American Baptist history. Well researched and well written it offers a fine-grained treatment of the rise of liberalism in the countrys Baptist seminaries especially. It is written by a Baptist in defense of conservative Baptists for a series aimed pri