From Newsweek
Story★★★★Newsweek devoted its March 27, 1989 issue to the subject of Heaven. In the process, the writer, Kenneth L. Woodward, also made some interesting comments about hell: • American church historian Martin Marty [observes], “Hell disappeared. And no one noticed.”
For liberal Protestants, hell began to fade in the nineteenth century along with Calvinism’s stem and predestining God .... Today, hell is theology’s H-word, a subject too trite for serious scholarship. • At Harvard Divinity School, theologian Gordon Kaufman traces four centuries of decline in the concepts of heaven and hell; what is left is intellectually empty baggage. “It seems to me we’ve gone through irreversible changes,” Kaufman declares. “I don’t think there can be any future for heaven and hell.” • The studied evasions emanating from most American pulpits leave a real void for laymen seeking some assurance that being human has more than transitory significance. . . . • In rejecting heaven and hell, the rationalistic modern consciousness also rejects the awesome seriousness of moral and immoral behavior.6 1 William Secker, The Nonsuch Professor In His Meridian Splendor (Chicago: Fleming H.
Revell Co., 1899), 231. 2John Thomas, “That Hideous Doctrine,” Moody Magazine, September 1985, 92. 3 Kenneth S. Kantzer, “Do You Believe in Hell?”
Christianity Today, February 21, 1986, 12. •U. S. News and World Report, March 25, 1991, 60. sj. I.
Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: lnterVarsity, 1973), 175-176. 6Kennetb L. Woodward, “Heaven,” Newsweek, March 27, 1989, 52-53.
The point
Newsweek 1989 article: Christian historians note that heaven and hell have 'disappeared' from modern Protestant pulpits since the 19th century—the rationalistic modern mind rejects these concepts, leaving a void in moral seriousness.