Just as liberal theology was gaining acceptance in the 1930s, however, a new theological movement emerged as some liberals became disenchanted with the optimism of their tradition in the face of World War I, the Great Depression and the rise of European fascism. The neo-orthodox looked back to the Bible and the Protestant Reformers of the 16th century in order to construct a "more sturdy theology" able to address the crisis of Western culture. Unlike the liberals who tended to view the Bible "as a record of humanity's evolving religious consciousness", the neo-orthodox understood the Bible to be the instrument through which God spoke and revealed himself—in the person of Jesus Christ—to humanity. At the same time, neo-orthodoxy was distinguished from fundamentalism in its acceptance of biblical criticism and rejection of biblical inerrancy. While the Bible was an "adequate witness to the one revelation of God, Jesus Christ", it was a fallible document written by fallible men. Neo-orthodoxy was also characterized by an emphasis on divine transcendence rather than divine immanence, renewed affirmation of total depravity, and resistance to secularism and cultural accommodation within the church. By the 1940s, neo-orthodoxy and the closely related biblical theology movement had become the unifying doctrinal consensus within the PCUSA.