February 5 Today in OPC History

On Monday afternoon, February 5, 1923, J. Gresham Machen delivered the opening address on the topic of “Christianity vs. Modern Liberalism” at the Moody Bible Institute Founder’s Week Conference in Chicago. Joseph Bowles reported that “both the man and the message caught at once the fixed attention of the audience.” Bowles described Machen as “a rapid, even speaker” whose every sentence gave “added force to the argument, the whole a singularly lucid, logical, overwhelming refutation of modernist sophistries.”

In the address, Machen argued that the great redemptive religion called Christianity was being attacked within the church by a totally different type of religious thought and life, a non-redemptive religion called Modernism or Liberalism. He closed with the words, “Christianity today is fighting a great battle, but I, for my part, am looking for the ultimate victory. God will not desert his church.”

Two weeks after the conference, Machen’s book Christianity and Liberalism was published.