Modern Church is the main advocate for liberal theology in the British churches.
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By ‘liberal theology’ we mean that religious beliefs can and should develop in the light of new insights.
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Divine revelation has not come to an end. God invites us to believe in ways appropriate to 21st Century.
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New ideas should be judged on their merits. They may be true today even if they have not been officially accepted by church leaders in the past.
Modern Church has been promoting liberal theology since 1898.
Activities include:
• a quarterly theological journal: Modern Believing, first published in 1911
• a quarterly members' newsletter: Signs of the Times
• an annual conference and other events featuring leading speakers in their fields
• Forewords booklets illustrating liberal approaches to theological topics
• letters, papers, articles and other publications in response to current events.
Modern Church is a membership organisation with a long history and a liberal ethos.
It is a registered charity (number 281573), managed by a committee of officers (Chair, Secretary and Treasurer) who are trustees and up to eight other trustees. Click here to download our 2017 Constitution including our revised Charitable Objects.
The Treasurer is elected annually by the membership at the Annual General Meeting. Members of the Council are elected from among the Modern Church membership for terms of up to three years at the Annual General Meeting. The officers and the trustees are elected by the Council at its first meeting after the AGM.
This page lists resources on this site about Modern Church. There is introductory information on the About pages.
• Modern Church and liberal theology by Jonathan Clatworthy, in Signs of The Times
• Editorial on the centenary of our journal Modern Believing by Paul Badham
• Eight page supplement on Modern Church, Church Times, 26th October 2007
The nineteenth century background:
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Britain - like other western countries - was in a state of spiritual crisis.
Especially among the more educated classes, people were turning against Christianity, often because of its teachings on eternal hell, the substitutionary theory of the atonement and biblical texts where God approved of massacres.