Liberal Christianity

Liberal Christian Theologians and Authors

Protestant

• Marcus Borg, New Testament scholar
• Charles Augustus Briggs, Hebrew scholar
• Rudolf Bultmann, Biblical scholar
• Peter Carnley, Anglican Primate of Australia
• William Ellery Channing, pioneering liberal theologian in the USA, who criticised the doctrine of the Trinity and the strength of scriptural authority, in favour of more rationalistic and historical-critical beliefs
• Harry Emerson Fosdick, Baptist pastor of Riverside Church in New York City
• Karl Heinrich Graf, Old Testament scholar
• Adolf von Harnack, German liberal theologian who sought to return Christianity's focus to the teachings of Jesus, away from complex structures of thought about Jesus and faith.
• John Robinson, author of Honest to God
• Paul Tillich, synthesized Protestant Christian theology with existentialist philosophy
• Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, often called the "father of liberal theology", he claimed that religious experience was introspective, and that the truest understanding of God consisted of 'a sense of absolute dependence'
• Albert Schweitzer, missionary and New Testament scholar
• John Shelby Spong, heterodox Episcopalian bishop
• Leslie Weatherhead, English preacher, and author of The Will of God and The Christian Agnostic
• Julius Wellhausen, Biblical scholar

Catholic

• Yves Congar
• John Dominic Crossan, New Testament scholar
• Hans Küng
• Edward Schillebeeckx
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin