Here is what the Modernist minister—Episcopal, Baptist and Presbyterian, believes, according to one of them. For fear of offending the older generation, of affrighting the established dignitaries of the church, or because it is thought unnecessary, all of it is not taught from the pulpit. But, with some latitude for individual differences, it is believed, according to one of them, an Episcopalian, that:
God is an intelligence and a personality, but not in human form, and bodiless. He reveals himself in all nature, but is spirit and apart from matter.
Heaven has no pearly gates, harps or hosannas.
Hell has no fire. The devil was an invention of the Zorastrian.
Prayer will never put a loaf of bread in the starving man’s box unless some human being intervenes.
Immortality will not be in the flesh. Personal identity will endure, but there will be no resurrection of the body.
The virgin birth is not essential.
The miracles in the Old Testament are all myths. Those of the New Testament were interpolated. Magic is not becoming to the character of Christ.
The phrase “ascension into heaven” was written in the creed by a man who thought heaven was the upstairs of a flat earth. “To say that is still believed is ridiculous.”
From the front page of the Reidsville Review, Nov. 19, 1923
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