Margaret Bendroth
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469624006
- eISBN:
- 9781469624020
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469624006.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
This chapter takes up the experiences of laypeople as they sifted through Sunday school lessons about the book of Genesis and sermons on a so-called new theology, where turn-of-the-century liberal ...
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This chapter takes up the experiences of laypeople as they sifted through Sunday school lessons about the book of Genesis and sermons on a so-called new theology, where turn-of-the-century liberal piety refused to make forced choices between fixed positions, one right and the other wrong. Many Congregational laypeople found themselves in this liminal space as the nineteenth century drew to a close and the twentieth century began to unfold. They understood that the past, with all its traditions, was important, but they knew at the same time that it was not absolute. They were relativists but also believers, skeptical of old pieties but unable or unwilling to leave them behind.Less
This chapter takes up the experiences of laypeople as they sifted through Sunday school lessons about the book of Genesis and sermons on a so-called new theology, where turn-of-the-century liberal piety refused to make forced choices between fixed positions, one right and the other wrong. Many Congregational laypeople found themselves in this liminal space as the nineteenth century drew to a close and the twentieth century began to unfold. They understood that the past, with all its traditions, was important, but they knew at the same time that it was not absolute. They were relativists but also believers, skeptical of old pieties but unable or unwilling to leave them behind.
