In the landscape of Christian thought, few figures appear as deceptively noble—and devastating—as Friedrich Schleiermacher. Applauded by academics as a brilliant theologian and revered in liberal Protestant circles as a reformer, Schleiermacher was, in truth, a theological arsonist.
By Dr. Tim Orr
What if I told you the decline of Christianity in America didn’t begin with Darwin, Nietzsche, or the sexual revolution, but with a 19th-century theologian in a powdered wig who turned God into a feeling and Jesus into a role model? His name rarely appears in the headlines, but his fingerprints are all over our pulpits, politics, and even pews. Before TikTok therapists and progressive pastors told us to “follow our hearts,” Friedrich Schleiermacher whispered the same message in refined tones. His ideas now reign in mainline churches, infect evangelical pulpits, and fuel a cultural gospel that promises self-fulfillment instead of salvation. This is not just a story about theology. It’s about how one man’s subtle heresy hollowed out the soul of a nation.
In the landscape of Christian thought, few figures appear as deceptively noble—and devastating—as Friedrich Schleiermacher. Applauded by academics as a brilliant theologian and revered in liberal Protestant circles as a reformer, Schleiermacher was, in truth, a theological arsonist. He didn’t merely remodel Christianity; he gutted it. And in the ashes of orthodoxy, he built a shrine to subjectivity—a religion of me, baptized in the language of God.
But his influence extends beyond the church. Schleiermacher is not just the father of liberal theology; he is also the father of modern liberalism—not just in its theological sense, but in its broader cultural and political forms, where the self becomes sovereign, moral truth becomes fluid, and personal autonomy reigns supreme—the broader cultural worldview that enthrones personal autonomy, marginalizes objective truth, and seeks to remake morality according to human desire. In Schleiermacher, the secular and the spiritual met, and both were deformed.
Schleiermacher’s central move was subtle but seismic: he replaced divine revelation with religious feeling. In On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799), Schleiermacher argued that religion is not primarily about doctrine or ethics, but about the internal “feeling of absolute dependence” (Schleiermacher, 1996). In other words, true religion arises not from God speaking to us, but from how we feel about being human in the universe.
This was more than a theological move—it was an anthropological revolution. Schleiermacher sanctified the self. He relocated authority from the transcendent to the immanent, from God’s voice to the inner voice. This inner turn is the beating heart of modern liberalism, which views the self as the final arbiter of truth, meaning, and morality.
His influence here is profound. Schleiermacher was steeped in Romanticism, a cultural movement that reacted against Enlightenment rationalism by emphasizing emotion, individuality, and authenticity. He baptized these ideals into Christian theology, and in doing so, he seeded the broader culture with a new gospel: Be true to yourself—a slogan now echoed in everything from Instagram affirmations to bestselling books by self-help gurus like Brené Brown and Glennon Doyle, who sacralize inner authenticity as the highest virtue.
Imagine standing in a grand cathedral. The stained glass glows, the choir sings, the liturgy flows. But when the sermon begins, something strange happens: the preacher steps up, not with a Bible but with a mirror—trading the authority of God's Word to affirm human emotion, and losing the power to confront sin or offer true transformation. He holds it up to the congregation and says, “Behold your god.” This is Schleiermacher’s liturgy. Worship becomes self-reflection. Doctrine becomes autobiography. Truth becomes elastic. And when this theology escapes the pulpit and enters the university, the therapist’s couch, the legislative chamber, and eventually the iPhone screen, modern liberalism is born.
Schleiermacher’s legacy anticipated what sociologist Philip Rieff called the "therapeutic culture"—a society where moral categories are replaced by emotional wellness and personal fulfillment (Rieff, 1987). The self is no longer sinful, but wounded. Salvation is no longer deliverance from divine wrath, but healing from psychological discomfort.
Today, this worldview saturates everything from self-help literature to sexual ethics. Consider the modern mantra: “You are enough.” It sounds empowering, but it is a theological statement, one that assumes that human beings are not rebels in need of grace but fragile selves in need of validation. Schleiermacher laid this groundwork by redefining sin as estrangement from God-consciousness rather than rebellion against a holy God (Schleiermacher, 2016).
His theology also reaped political consequences. By elevating subjective experience over objective truth, he prepared the way for moral relativism and identity politics. If religion merely expresses internal feeling, then all truth claims are equally valid, and all must be affirmed to preserve personal authenticity. This helps explain why modern liberalism demands not just tolerance, but affirmation. Any dissent becomes a threat to identity. Disagreement becomes oppression. Schleiermacher’s deification of feeling means that to critique someone's moral choices is not a challenge to their ideas, but a denial of their personhood.
Even religious liberty becomes suspect. After all, if moral truth is fluid, then historic Christian convictions about sexuality, marriage, or salvation appear bigoted. The state must then silence these “destructive doctrines” for social harmony. Schleiermacher would not have advocated state repression, but the logic of his theology paved the road for it.
Schleiermacher’s theology arrived in America at just the right time: the early 19th century, when confidence in human progress, democratic values, and rugged individualism was peaking. Mainline Protestantism eagerly absorbed his ideas, transforming seminaries like Union Theological Seminary in New York into hubs of theological modernism.
By the 20th century, Schleiermacher’s influence had produced a church that could no longer speak prophetically. Social activism replaced gospel proclamation. Sentiment replaced Scripture. Pastors became community organizers. And in trying to win the world’s approval, the church lost its soul.
This is no abstract danger. Look at the collapsing number of mainline denominations. Visit churches where Christ is reduced to a moral exemplar or cosmic therapist. Listen to sermons that quote Brené Brown more than Romans. This is Schleiermacher's America—a Christianity without Christ, a faith without the Cross, a religion without repentance.
Against Schleiermacher’s sentimental gospel, we must reassert the scandal of the true one: that God has spoken, that His Word is authoritative, that sin is real, that wrath is coming, and only the blood of Christ can save. That truth is not created by our feelings but revealed in Christ. As the Reformers cried, sola Scriptura must be recovered.
The church must be where feelings are submitted to truth, not vice versa. We need prophets, not therapists, martyrs, not marketers, and pastors, not performers.
Schleiermacher taught the world to look within. The gospel calls us to look to the Cross.
“I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2, ESV).
That is the remedy. That is the revolution. That is the rebuke to the father of liberalism.
Rieff, P. (1987). The triumph of the therapeutic: Uses of faith after Freud. University of Chicago Press.
Schleiermacher, F. (1996). On religion: Speeches to its cultured despisers (R. Crouter, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1799)
Schleiermacher, F. (2016). The Christian faith (H. R. Mackintosh & J. S. Stewart, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Bloomsbury T&T Clark. (Original work published 1830)
Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Trueman, C. R. (2020). The rise and triumph of the modern self: Cultural amnesia, expressive individualism, and the road to sexual revolution. Crossway.