Mars Hill Forum Lecture Series: Wilfred McClay

Address: Does the Idea of Progress Have a Future? Three Christian Views

Abstract: Like so much else about modernity, the idea of progress in history has gradually become problematic to us. Not only do many of us question the inevitability of progress, but the very idea that we would have any sure means of judging what progress is. But I contend that a reconsideration of the idea of progress from the standpoint of the Christian faith holds the prospect of a more adequate understanding of that idea. To begin exploring this possibility, my lecture draws upon a comparison of three important twentieth-century writers, Herbert Butterfield, Christopher Dawson, and Reinhold Niebuhr, each of whom brought Christian religious commitments to the problem, but in strikingly different ways. Co-sponsored by the Carl F.H. Henry Institute for Intellectual Discipleship and the Center for Politics and Religion