In a recent comment on a posting here on evolution Tobias Haller wrote:
When “religion” is only around to plug the gaps in understanding the world, and science comes along and plugs those gaps more effectively and persuasively, religion will feel assaulted. That is why a faith that is based more on a Who than a Why or How is more lively, and surely at the root of Christianity we have a grasp on Who we worship. In the long run, this Who is at the base of everything, not just the gaps.
I wonder if The Rev. Dr. Leslie Fairfield is one of those who feels assaulted. In an interview the professor emeritus of church history at Trinity seminary in Ambridge stated:
There are dozens of consequences that follow from our choice between Biblical Anglican Christianity and Modernism. Let me just mention two.
If you opt for Modernism, you give up hope. The “god” of Modernism is simply the “force” that’s spinning a sick system. Even a nine-second appraisal of human behavior immediately reminds us that we’re in big trouble. And even in American suburbia (gasp) there are intractable problems that don’t go away when you throw money at them or go serve at the soup kitchen. Drugs, teen suicide…you fill in the blanks. The Modernist “god” offers absolutely no hope, no intervention from outside, no autonomous burst of healing energy. Because the Modernist “god” is finally simply our experience – in other words, Us.
If you opt for Modernism, likewise, you give up reason. Let me say that again…if you opt for Modernism, you give up any hope of rationality or accurate knowledge. If “mind” is not a gift from God – a possibility that Modernism categorically excludes – then “mind” is simply a random product of genetic inheritance plus accidental environmental stimuli. Therefore a thought in my head is as likely to have been caused by some ancestral experience on the African savannah as it has of portraying the tree I’m looking at right now.
All of which is to say that Biblical Anglican theology is Christianity, and Modernism isn’t.
Dr. Fairfield figures that if you are not in his Biblical Anglican theology camp then you are in this Modernist camp. Is he right? Or has he misunderstood the nature of the division that exists?