In this tiny book—it’s 122 pages, and measures just 4-1/4” x 6”—editor George Hunt introduces the lay reader to 10 “pioneers” who opened “new trails of exploration,” and who exerted “the strongest influence on the course of Protestantism” in the first half of the last century: Schweitzer, Rauschenbusch, Temple, Kierkegaard, Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr, Tillich, Bultmann, and the Jewish thinker Martin Buber.
“To many persons outside of theological seminaries, their names—if familiar at all—have been only names,” the publisher allows, but adds, “Many of their ideas are widely accepted, many are debated widely….” Described, in a Journal of the American Academy of Religion review, as “readable introductions,” each short essay is written by a different scholar. “In capsule form, the writers give a surprising amount of information and insight.”
Read, and you’ll learn “something of the sense of the mystery of God’s presence in all things” [Buber]; that “the essential purpose of Christianity was to transform human society into the kingdom of God” [Rauschenbusch]; that “faith is a matter of will” [Schweitzer]; that there are no facts without interpretation [Bultmann]; that “sin” is “man’s desire to be independent of God” [Barth]; and what it takes to be “saved” [Tillich].
Ten Makers of Modern Protestant Thought
by George Hunt
Association Press, 1958
