The Modern Era c. AD 1750 – 1900 · Enlightenment, revivals, missions, liberalism, Old Princeton, global expansion
The Modern Era of Christian history runs from roughly 1750 to 1900 — the century and a half between the Puritan post-Reformation era and the twentieth century's fundamentalist-modernist controversies. The period is shaped by several great currents: the Enlightenment intellectual challenge to traditional Christianity (rationalism, deism, the rise of higher biblical criticism); the German theological-philosophical engagement with Enlightenment-era thought (Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Strauss, Wellhausen, Ritschl, Harnack — the direction culminating in mature theological liberalism); the Great Awakenings in the English-speaking world (the First Great Awakening completing in the 1740s, the Second Great Awakening across the early nineteenth century, the subsequent revival traditions); the modern Protestant missionary century (William Carey's Enquiry of 1792 inaugurating the movement; Carey himself, Henry Martyn, Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, David Livingstone, the missionary expansion across India, China, Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas); the Reformed-evangelical responses through the Old Princeton tradition (Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield) and the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition (Kuyper, Bavinck); the Oxford Movement in Anglicanism; the slavery question and the American churches; the Catholic ultramontane consolidation (Vatican I 1869–70 with papal infallibility); and the global expansion of Christianity through colonial and missionary networks. The Reformed Christian reads the Modern Era as the century-and-a-half in which Christianity faced its most intellectual challenge since the Reformation (Enlightenment rationalism and higher criticism), responded with theological work (Old Princeton, Bavinck, Kuyper, the evangelical revival tradition), and expanded substantially into new global contexts that would shape twentieth- and twenty-first-century Christianity.
WHY THIS PAGE EXISTS — The Modern Era is the era in which Reformed evangelical Christianity met its most intellectual challenges and articulated the theological-pastoral responses that shape contemporary Reformed evangelical life. This page provides the focused era-survey treatment: timeline, political and ecclesial setting, principal figures, doctrinal developments, worship/piety/church order, controversies, theological stakes, hard places, influence on subsequent Christianity, modern lessons. The tone is doctrinally clear, historically careful, and engaged with the intellectual content of the period.
Read the Modern Era as the period of intellectual crisis and Protestant response. The Enlightenment challenge (rationalism, deism, higher biblical criticism) pressed intellectual questions on Western Christianity that demanded theological responses. The responses split Protestantism into multiple directions: the German liberal trajectory ( reshaping Christianity in accommodation to Enlightenment thought); the evangelical revival trajectory ( renewing evangelical conviction through experiential awakening); the Reformed orthodox trajectory ( articulating the Reformed orthodox response through Old Princeton and Bavinck). The contemporary Reformed evangelical reader inherits the Reformed orthodox trajectory.
Read the missionary century as one of the great chapters in Christian history. The modern Protestant missionary movement — substantially beginning with William Carey's An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792) and the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society — transformed global Christianity. The missionary work in India (Carey, Henry Martyn, Alexander Duff), China (Robert Morrison, Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission), Africa (David Livingstone, the missionary networks), the Pacific (John Williams, James Chalmers), the Americas ( mission work among Native American peoples), and the Korean Protestant beginnings created the conditions for the twentieth-century global expansion of Christianity.
Read the Reformed engagement with the era's intellectual challenges. The Old Princeton tradition (Alexander, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, Warfield) articulated the Reformed orthodox response to the nineteenth-century intellectual challenges — biblical inspiration and inerrancy against higher criticism, Reformed dogmatic theology against liberal reconstruction, apologetic engagement with the intellectual culture. The Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition (Kuyper, Bavinck) articulated the Reformed engagement with Continental intellectual culture in Continental form. The contemporary Reformed evangelical engagement continues these traditions.
Read the era's complicated dimensions honestly. The Modern Era includes complicated dimensions — the entanglement of Protestant missions with colonial powers; the American Protestant complicity in slavery and Jim Crow; the Anglican-Catholic ultramontane consolidation under papal centralisation; the Continental theological-liberal direction's eventual impact on mainline Protestantism. The Reformed reader engages each honestly while appreciating the gospel work of the era.
1. Timeline and historical overview
Hume, Voltaire
Baptist Missionary Society
in America
Hegel's Phenomenology
(Keble, Newman, Pusey)
Life of Jesus
Hodge's Princeton
Welsh Revival
for China
papal infallibility
(Kuyper)
History of Dogma
What is Christianity?
Principal resources: Mark Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism (IVP, 2003), America's God (Oxford, 2002), A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Eerdmans, 1992); David Bebbington, The Dominance of Evangelicalism (IVP, 2005); George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (2nd ed., Oxford, 2006); Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Orbis, 1996); Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag (Apollos, 1990); Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity (Penguin, 2009); Alister McGrath, Christianity's Dangerous Idea (HarperOne, 2007); Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Eerdmans, 1973); Stephen Nichols, J. Gresham Machen (P&R, 2004); Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism (Banner of Truth, 1994).
2. Political and ecclesial setting
The political-cultural transformation
The Modern Era saw political transformation: the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), the Napoleonic Wars, the industrial revolution, the colonial expansion, the democratisation of Western politics. The Christian church engaged each of these transformations.
The intellectual transformation
The Enlightenment intellectual challenge to traditional Christianity — rationalism, deism, the rise of higher biblical criticism, Darwinian evolution (1859), the naturalistic worldview — shaped the Christian theological response.
The ecclesial transformation
The American ecclesial pluralism (the disestablishment of state churches; the denominational explosion); the European secularisation; the Catholic ultramontane consolidation (Vatican I); the Reformed evangelical missionary expansion — shaped the new global Christian landscape.
3. Principal figures
William Carey and the missionary century
William Carey's An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792) inaugurated the modern Protestant missionary movement. Carey's missionary work at Serampore in India (1800 onwards), the Bible translation work in dozens of Indian languages, the education and social engagement, and the Baptist Missionary Society he co-founded shaped the subsequent missionary century. Timothy George's Faithful Witness: The Life and Mission of William Carey (Christian History Institute, 1991) is the standard accessible Reformed-evangelical biography.
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Schleiermacher is the founder of modern theological liberalism (see the Theological Liberalism page). His work reshaped the direction of nineteenth-century Protestant theology.
Charles Hodge and the Old Princeton tradition
The Old Princeton theological tradition — beginning with Archibald Alexander (founder of Princeton Theological Seminary, 1812) and continuing through Charles Hodge (whose three-volume Systematic Theology, 1872 – 1873, articulated the Reformed orthodox dogmatic system), A. A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield — articulated the Reformed orthodox response to the nineteenth-century liberal challenge. Charles Hodge page and Warfield page.
Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck — the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition
The Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition articulated the Continental Reformed response to the nineteenth-century theological challenge. Kuyper founded the Free University of Amsterdam (1880) and served as Dutch Prime Minister (1901 – 1905); his body of work (substantially Lectures on Calvinism, 1898) articulated the Reformed engagement with the broader culture. Bavinck's four-volume Reformed Dogmatics (1895 – 1901) articulated the mature Continental Reformed dogmatic system.
Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission
Hudson Taylor's missionary work in China and the China Inland Mission (founded 1865, now substantially OMF International) shaped the Protestant missionary engagement with China. Taylor's faith-mission principles ( no fund-raising; faith-trust in God's provision; cultural adaptation in dress and manner) influenced subsequent missionary work substantially.
David Livingstone
David Livingstone's missionary-exploration work in southern, central, and eastern Africa (1841 – 1873) combined missionary outreach with geographical exploration. His campaign against the African slave trade substantially shaped the Victorian missionary imagination. Livingstone page.
John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement (1833 onwards), substantially led by John Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Pusey, and others, pressed Anglican Catholic-leaning sacramental and liturgical convictions. Newman's 1845 conversion to Rome substantially shaped subsequent Anglican-Catholic relations. The Reformed engagement with the Oxford Movement addressed the drift of Anglican Christianity in direction away from Reformation evangelicalism.
Adolf von Harnack
Harnack — Berlin professor — was the principal late-nineteenth-century liberal theologian. See the Theological Liberalism page.
4. Doctrinal developments
The Reformed evangelical articulation against liberalism
The Old Princeton tradition articulated the Reformed orthodox doctrines — biblical inerrancy, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the penal-substitutionary atonement, salvation by grace alone — against the nineteenth-century liberal challenge. See Systematic Theology.
nineteenth-century revivalism and the evangelical conversion paradigm
The Second Great Awakening (early to mid nineteenth century in America) and the broader nineteenth-century revival tradition shaped American evangelical Christianity's emphasis on conscious personal conversion. Iain Murray's Revival and Revivalism (Banner of Truth, 1994) engages this development critically.
The Catholic ultramontane consolidation
The Catholic ultramontane consolidation under Pius IX — the Marian dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854), the Syllabus of Errors (1864), Vatican I with papal infallibility (1869 – 1870) — consolidated Catholic doctrinal positions that the Reformation had contested.
The higher criticism and the Bible question
The higher criticism (Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis on the Pentateuch; Strauss's Life of Jesus; the Tübingen-school New Testament reconstruction) challenged the Reformed orthodox doctrine of biblical inspiration. Warfield's body of work on biblical inspiration articulated the Reformed response.
The Reformed doctrine of inerrancy
The Reformed doctrine of biblical inerrancy — substantially articulated in the Westminster Confession (1.4 – 1.8) and substantially developed in the Old Princeton tradition (Warfield's work) — addressed the higher-critical challenge.
The Reformed apologetic tradition
The nineteenth-century Reformed apologetic engagement — through the Princeton tradition — addressed the Enlightenment-rationalist challenges to Christianity. See Apologetics.
5. Worship, piety, and church order
R eformed worship continuity
The Reformed worship traditions — Continental Reformed, Presbyterian, Reformed Baptist, Reformed Anglican — continued the Reformation worship inheritance through the Modern Era. The American Presbyterian Old School / New School divisions (the 1837 Old School / New School split, and the 1869 reunion) reflected subsequent developments.
R evivalist worship and the camp meeting tradition
The American camp meeting tradition (Cane Ridge 1801 and subsequent revival gatherings) shaped American evangelical worship patterns substantially in the direction of extemporaneous prayer, gospel hymnody, conscious-conversion calls. The subsequent Pentecostal-charismatic tradition substantially builds on this revivalist worship inheritance.
The nineteenth-century hymn tradition
The nineteenth-century English-language hymn tradition — Isaac Watts (whose ministry actually began earlier but whose hymns dominated nineteenth-century worship), Charles Wesley, Fanny Crosby, John Newton, William Cowper, the subsequent revival-hymn tradition — shaped Christian worship across Protestantism.
The American denominational expansion
The American religious disestablishment substantially shaped denominational expansion through American Methodism (the Methodist Episcopal Church), Baptist expansion, Presbyterian growth, Disciples and Restoration Movements, Adventist origins, and subsequent religious developments.
6. Controversies of the era
The slavery question and the American churches
The slavery question substantially divided American Protestantism through the nineteenth century. The American Presbyterian Old School / New School divisions (1837); the Baptist North-South split (1845, with the Southern Baptist Convention founded in defence of slaveholding missionaries); the Methodist North-South split (1844); the Princeton tradition's complicated engagement with slavery — represents one of the moral failures of American Protestantism. Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (UNC, 2006) engages the theological dimensions.
The Darwinian challenge
Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) pressed the naturalistic question of human origins on Christian theology. The Reformed engagement substantially divided in directions — young-earth literal-creationist, old-earth day-age, framework readings, theistic-evolutionist — that substantially continue to shape contemporary Reformed evangelical engagement with science.
The Oxford Movement and Anglican Catholic-leaning drift
The Oxford Movement pressed Anglican Catholic-leaning sacramental and liturgical convictions. Newman's 1845 conversion to Rome reflected subsequent direction of Anglican drift. The Reformed engagement with the Anglican tradition addressed this drift.
The Catholic ultramontane consolidation
The Vatican I formal definition of papal infallibility (1870) — combined with the Marian dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Syllabus of Errors (1864) — consolidated Catholic doctrinal positions that the Reformation had contested.
7. The theological stakes for today's reader
R eformed evangelical orthodoxy
The Old Princeton and Bavinck traditions articulated the Reformed orthodox response to the nineteenth-century intellectual challenges. The contemporary Reformed evangelical engagement substantially continues these traditions.
Biblical inerrancy and inspiration
The Reformed doctrine of biblical inerrancy — substantially articulated in the Old Princeton tradition — continues to shape the contemporary Reformed evangelical doctrine of Scripture. See Hermeneutics.
The missionary inheritance
The modern missionary movement shapes the contemporary global Christianity. The Reformed engagement with global missions continues this inheritance. Carey page.
The Reformed engagement with liberalism
The Old Princeton engagement with the nineteenth-century liberal challenge prepared the twentieth-century fundamentalist-modernist controversy and subsequent Reformed evangelical engagement. See Theological Liberalism.
The Reformed engagement with cultural change
The Kuyperian neo-Calvinist tradition substantially addresses the Reformed engagement with cultural change — Christian engagement with politics, education, science, art. See Systematic Theology.
The Reformed evangelical apologetic
The Modern Era's intellectual challenges shaped the Reformed apologetic tradition into the contemporary period. See Apologetics.
8. Hard places — read honestly
The complicity in slavery
The American Protestantism's complicity in slavery — including the Princeton tradition's complicated engagement, the Southern Baptist Convention's 1845 founding in defence of slaveholding missionaries, the Methodist North-South split — represents one of the moral failures of American Reformed evangelical history.
The colonial entanglement
The Protestant missionary century was substantially substantially substantially substantially substantially substantially substantially substantially substantially substantially substantially entangled with colonial expansion. Brian Stanley's The Bible and the Flag (Apollos, 1990) engages this entanglement carefully.
The racist scientific frameworks
nineteenth-century scientific racism shaped Western Christian engagement with non-Western peoples in substantially substantially regrettable ways.
The Protestant-Catholic bitterness
The Protestant-Catholic bitterness — substantially shaped by Catholic ultramontane consolidation and Reformed Reformation-Anti-Catholic polemic — requires contemporary Reformed engagement with Catholic theological partners more carefully.
The nineteenth-century revivalism's complications
The American revivalism shaped American evangelical Christianity in complicated ways — conscious-decision conversion often eclipsing Reformed doctrine of regeneration; revivalist methods substantially pressuring subsequent revival traditions. Iain Murray's Revival and Revivalism engages this substantially carefully.
The Continental liberal direction
The Continental Protestant liberal direction — substantially shaped by Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Harnack — shaped subsequent mainline Protestantism in directions the Reformed evangelical tradition contested.
9. Influence on later Christianity
The twentieth-century Christianity
The Modern Era shaped twentieth-century Christianity through liberalism, evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and the global expansion. See The Contemporary Church.
The Reformed evangelical tradition
The Old Princeton and Dutch neo-Calvinist traditions shaped the contemporary Reformed evangelical movement.
The global Protestant missions
The modern missionary movement shaped global Christianity to the present.
The American evangelical denominational landscape
The American denominational landscape substantially reflects the Modern Era developments.
The Reformed engagement with liberalism
The Old Princeton engagement prepared the Reformed evangelical engagement with twentieth-century theological liberalism.
The Reformed engagement with science
The Modern Era's Darwinian and scientific challenges shaped the contemporary Reformed engagement with science.
10. Modern parallels and lessons
The intellectual engagement
The Old Princeton tradition's intellectual engagement with nineteenth-century challenges substantially models contemporary Reformed engagement with twenty-first-century intellectual challenges.
The Reformed missions inheritance
The Modern Era's missionary expansion substantially shapes contemporary Reformed missionary engagement.
The American evangelical revival tradition
The American revival tradition substantially shapes contemporary American evangelical Christianity in complicated ways.
The mainline-evangelical division
The mainline-evangelical Protestant division continues the Modern Era's liberal-orthodox split.
The Reformed engagement with cultural change
The Kuyperian neo-Calvinist tradition shapes contemporary Reformed engagement with cultural change.
The Reformed engagement with science
The Modern Era's science engagement substantially shapes contemporary Reformed science engagement.
11. Where to start reading the Modern Era
A four-step reading path for beginners
- Start with Mark Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism (IVP, 2003), the early-Modern-Era volume of the multi-author history of evangelicalism.
- Then David Bebbington, The Dominance of Evangelicalism (IVP, 2005), the Victorian-era continuation.
- Then Stephen Nichols, J. Gresham Machen (P&R, 2004) for the Reformed-orthodox response.
- Then Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Orbis, 1996), the accessible scholarly missionary-history.
Going deeper
- Mark Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, America's God, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis.
- David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (Routledge, 1989) and The Dominance of Evangelicalism.
- George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (2nd ed., Oxford, 2006).
- Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Orbis, 1996); The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Orbis, 2002).
- Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag (Apollos, 1990).
- Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Eerdmans, 1973).
- Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Penguin, 2009), the modern era chapters.
- Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism (Banner of Truth, 1994).
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (Baker Academic, 2003 – 2008).
- Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1872 – 1873).
- Timothy George, Faithful Witness: The Life and Mission of William Carey (1991).
12. Conclusion: the century and a half of intellectual challenge, missionary expansion, and Reformed orthodox response
The Modern Era of Christian history (c. 1750 – 1900) is the century and a half in which Western Christianity faced its most intellectual challenge since the Reformation, expanded substantially into new global contexts, and articulated the Reformed orthodox theological response that shapes the contemporary Reformed evangelical tradition. The Reformed reader inherits the Old Princeton and Dutch neo-Calvinist traditions, the modern missionary movement, the Reformed engagement with the intellectual challenges of the period.
The Reformed posture toward the Modern Era is grateful, historically careful, and engaged. Grateful, because the Reformed orthodox response (Old Princeton, Bavinck, Kuyper) shapes the contemporary Reformed evangelical tradition. Historically careful, because the complicated dimensions — slavery, colonial entanglement, the revivalist complications, the Continental liberal direction — require honest naming. E ngaged, because the intellectual challenges of the Modern Era continue to shape contemporary Reformed engagement. The Reformed orthodox confession, articulated against intellectual challenge, carried into the global missionary expansion, continuing into the contemporary Reformed evangelical tradition — the inheritance the Reformed church continues to receive and engage.