Modernism
One of the first Protestant groups to become infested with modernism, the Unitarian church now is exhibiting the logical and full ripe fruits of that school of thought. The current issue of Newsweek (dated January 21, 1957), under the heading of "Lord's Prayer Rewritten," reports:
"Unitarians a r e characteristically troubled by many traditional Christian symbols, feeling them empty and static. In most Unitarian churches today the Lord's Supper, for instance, is omitted as being nothing more than a wornout form filled with overtones of superstition. Recently, a Unitarian, Dr. Wallace P. Rusterholtz, a librarian in the University of Chicago, suggested that it is high time something was done about the Lord's Prayer, which survives in some Unitarian churches.
"To begin with, Rusterholtz insists in an article in the current Christian Register, any appeal to 'Our Father' is futile when so many people think of God not as a person but as a principle. The phrase 'hallowed be Thy name' means, by his interpretation, only to revere God, whereas today man should revere not so much the name but the presence of the spiritual in himself and in all nature.
"As a final thrust, he charges that the prayer's conclusion ('for Thine is the kingdom' etc.) 'is sonorous and makes an imposing ending, but its significance is merely literary.'
"Dr. Rusterboltz offers his own streamlined version of prayer called 'Meditation.' With admirable consistency, he urges that it, too, be updated at the first signs of inner spiritual fatigue. Its present form:
"May we reverence life, within us and in all nature.
May we strive for the good, and help to realize the ideal.
May we find each day our proper work.
May we do onto others as though we were the others.
May we know good and evil, and overcome evil with good."
The above is infidelity in religious garm-yet quite blatant infidelity at that. Expressions of it to such an extent do not come overnight. They are arrived at step by step. But any attitude that denies or questions the inerrancy, the all-sufficiency, or the finality of the Scriptures is not only not true Bible faith; it is also a step in the direction of such infidelity as described above, whether it ever goes that far or not. Our faith has to be based upon the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, or we are not true Christians. Those who teach otherwise are enemies of genuine Christianity.
(From Chicago Christian)
Truth Magazine I:9, p. 24
June 1957