" To this end, they stressed ethics rather than eschatology; social reform rather than confessional debate; symbolic and allegorical interpretations of the Bible rather than more literal readings. Their great project was the Social Gospel, which urged believers to embrace an “applied Christianity” that would put Jesus’ commandments into practice here and now, through legislation as well as conversion, law as well as grace. Some aspects of modernism were compatible with traditional Christianity, "

― Ross Douthat , Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics