González talks about the intellectual conflict between religion and modern science. This conflict stemmed from the idea that Darwin had proposed: evolution. This idea conflicted with some of the bibles passages about the creation of earth. Beyond that there was a greater challenger being presented about Christianity by studies that were being done in Europe, these studies led to doubts about the validity of most of the bible. Anything that seemed to be magical was declared fiction. This lead to new denominations of Christianity. One of the new denominations was Protestant Liberalism, this was mainly popular in the north eastern states and attempted to fit Christianity into the new intellectual mold. The other main denomination hat came about was an anti-liberalism approach called fundamentalists. This idea was more popular in the southern states where many people saw liberalism as a denial of faith.

Fosdick characterizes the mentality of the fundamentalists and the modernists on the question of “new knowledge” by the separation of the modernists blending the new knowledge and the old faith, and the fundamentalists view that everyone must believe in certain miracles shown through the texts of the bible. Their approaches differ from the bible as fundamentalists deny those the name of being a christian if they do not believe in all that is written in the bible as they believe that everything that has been written has been the work of god. While, the modernists approach of the bible is god revealing his will for the world from the beginning of time up until the end of Christ. Fosdicks solution for resolving this divide is tolerance from the denominations and emphasis on more pressing worldly matters than fighting over denominational issues.

Fosdick envisions modernist Christianity integrating the scriptures with new knowledge, this approach could diminish the bibles authority by contradicting it’s passages. Given the theory of Darwinism as an example, by integrating that the man has evolved through out the years in religion it would contradict with the passages of genesis and the idea that the earth was intended for man. With the continuation and furthering of science this could bring superstition to all the miracles in the bible, which could in turn question the validity of any of the bible being god willed and it would lose it’s importance.