Christian Fundamentalism
American Protestant movement
By Ernest R. Sandeen
Main
Movement in American
Protestantism that arose in the late 19th century in reaction to theological
modernism, which aimed to revise traditional Christian beliefs to accommodate
new developments in the natural and social sciences, especially the advent of
the theory of biological evolution. In keeping with traditional Christian
doctrines concerning biblical interpretation, the mission of Jesus Christ, and
the role of the church in society, fundamentalists affirmed a core of Christian
beliefs that included the historical accuracy of the Bible,
the imminent and physical Second Coming of Jesus Christ,
and Christ’s Virgin Birth, Resurrection
(see resurrection), and Atonement (see atonement).
Fundamentalism became a significant phenomenon in the early 20th century and
remained an influential movement in American society into the 21st century. See
also Evangelical church.
Fundamentalist worship
practices, which are heavily influenced by revivalism, usually feature a sermon
with congregational singing and prayer, though there can be considerable
variation from denomination to denomination. Although fundamentalists are not
notably ascetic, they do observe certain prohibitions. Most fundamentalists do
not smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, dance, or attend movies or plays. At most
fundamentalist schools and institutes, these practices are strictly forbidden.
Origins
During the 19th century,
major challenges to traditional Christian teachings arose
on several fronts. Geologic discoveries revealed that the Earth was far older
than the few thousand years suggested by a literal reading of the biblical book
of Genesis. The work of Charles Darwin (1809–82) and his colleagues established
that human beings as a species had emerged over millions of years through a
process of evolution, rather than suddenly by divine
fiat. Social scientists and philosophers influenced by Herbert
Spencer (1820–1903) advocated a parallel theory of progressive social evolution that refuted the traditional religious
understanding of human sin, which was predicated on the
notion that, after the fall from grace, the human condition was corrupt beyond
repair. Meanwhile, some ministers in various denominations ceased to emphasize the
conversion of individuals to the religious life and instead propounded a “social gospel” that viewed progressive social change as a
means of building the kingdom of God on Earth.
A more direct challenge
to traditional Christianity came from scholars who adopted a critical and
historical approach to studying and interpreting the
Bible. This perspective, known as modernism, treated the books of the
Bible—especially the first five (the Pentateuch)—not as simple documents
written by a single author but as complex texts constructed by multiple authors
from several older sources. Although modernism offered a solution to many
problems posed by seemingly contradictory biblical passages, it also raised
severe doubts about the historical accuracy of the biblical text, leading
scholars to revise the traditional history of the biblical era and to
reconsider the nature of biblical authority. (For a discussion of modernism in
the history of Roman Catholicism, see Modernism.)
The issue of biblical
authority was crucial to American Protestantism, which had inherited the
fundamental doctrine of sola Scriptura (Latin: “Scripture alone”) as
enunciated by Martin Luther (1483–1546) and other 16th-century Reformers. Thus,
any challenge to scriptural integrity had the potential to undermine
Christianity as they understood and practiced it. In response to this
challenge, theologians at the Princeton Theological
Seminary argued for the verbal (word-for-word) inspiration of Scripture and
affirmed that the Bible was not only infallible (correct when it spoke on
matters of faith and morals) but inerrant (correct when
it spoke on any matters, including history and science).
As the theologians at
Princeton developed their new approach, John Nelson
Darby, one of the earliest leaders of the Plymouth
Brethren (a British free church movement emphasizing biblical prophecy and the
Second Coming of Christ), introduced a very different theological perspective,
called dispensationalism. First taught to the Brethren in
the mid-19th century, dispensationalism maintained that history is divided into
distinct periods, or “dispensations,” during which God acts in different ways
toward his chosen people. The present period, according to dispensationalism,
was one of expectant waiting for the imminent return of Jesus Christ.
Dispensationalists believed in an apocalyptic millennialism
that foretold the Rapture (the bodily rescue of the
chosen by God) and the subsequent cataclysmic events of the Last Days, such as
the persecutions by the Antichrist and the Battle of Armageddon (see also
eschatology).
Although most Protestant
churches rejected the broad teachings of the Plymouth Brethren, many accepted
the “premillennialism” of Darby’s followers. They
believed that the next important event in human history would be the coming of
Christ to justify and redeem his people and establish them in leadership over a
millennial (thousand-year) kingdom.
Singular interest in the
Second Coming—an issue promoted by William Miller (1782–1849) and the Adventist
churches in the 1830s and ’40s—inspired a popular movement through the Niagara Bible Conference, held every summer at
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Initiated by James Inglis,
a New York City Baptist minister, shortly before his death in 1872, the
conference continued under James H. Brookes (1830–97), a
St. Louis, Missouri, Presbyterian minister and editor of the influential
millennial periodical The Truth. Other early millennial leaders included
George C. Needham (1840–1902), a Baptist evangelist; William J. Erdman (1834–1923),
a Presbyterian minister noted for his skill as a biblical exegete; and William R. Nicholson (1822–1901), who left the Episcopal
Church in 1873 and later became a bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church (see
Episcopal Church, USA). Near the end of the century, the millennial movement
attracted other prominent leaders, such as Adoniram J. Gordon (1836–95), a
Baptist minister in Boston; and Maurice Baldwin (1836–1904), the bishop of
Huron in the Church of England in Canada.
The millenarians
associated with the Niagara Conference also sponsored public conferences in
major cities beginning in 1878, such as the International Prophetic Conferences
in New York City. Chicago evangelist Dwight L. Moody
(1837–99) provided an influential platform for millennial expression in his
Northfield, Massachusetts, conferences. Millennialists were also active in the
late 19th-century missionary revival that was eventually institutionalized as
the Student Volunteer Movement.
Doctrinal and institutional development » The late 19th to the mid-20th
century
During the last years of
the 19th century, the millennial movement was divided over issues of prophetic
interpretation, but Brookes managed to hold the dissident factions together.
Within a few years of his death, however, the Niagara Conference was abandoned.
Even before Brookes’s
death, tensions between millennialists and modernists had reached unprecedented
levels. In the 1890s several liberal ministers and professors were subjected to
church trials on charges of heresy and apostasy; the most famous such trial
involved Charles A. Briggs (1841–1913), a minister of the
Presbyterian Church who had denounced the idea of verbal inspiration in an
address at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1891. Briggs was
convicted of heresy and suspended from the ministry in 1893. In response, the
seminary dropped its official connection to the Presbyterian Church, and Briggs
became an Episcopalian. Briggs’s colleagues Henry Preserved Smith (1847–1927)
and A.C. McGiffert (1861–1933) suffered similar experiences, prompting them to
join Congregationalist churches (see Congregationalism).
Continuing conservative
militancy led to the founding of the American Bible
League in 1902 and the subsequent publication of The
Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (1910–15), a series of 12 booklets
comprising articles by conservative leaders from across the country. The
series, which would eventually give the conservatives their name, attacked
modernist theories of biblical criticism and reasserted the authority of the
Bible, affirming all the theological principles that conservatives felt were
being denied by modernist spokespersons. Financed by two wealthy Presbyterian
laymen, The Fundamentals was freely distributed to millions of pastors
throughout the world.
After a hiatus during
World War I, conflict between conservatives and modernists was renewed in 1918.
A number of conservative conferences in New York City and Philadelphia led to
the formation of a larger and more comprehensive organization in 1919, the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association. The 1919
conference placed planks in a platform on which the fundamentalist movement
would stand for years to come. Conservative-fundamentalist leaders reiterated
the creedal basis of the movement and called for the rejection of modernism and
related trends, especially the teaching of the theory of evolution. They turned
away from the universities (almost totally controlled by administrations and
faculties hostile to the fundamentalist position) and placed their faith in the
more recently founded Bible institutes. Finally, they denounced the unitive and
cooperative spirit exemplified in the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ
in America and threatened schism if this type of spiritual decline persisted.
By this time, the
modernist position had gained a foothold in Episcopal, Congregational, Methodist Episcopal, American
Baptist, and Presbyterian denominations in the North. The
stage was set for major confrontations during the 1920s, and it remained to be
seen only whether the modernists could be forced out of their denominations.
Not every Protestant
denomination was affected by intellectual controversy during the 1920s, of
course. In some, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, modernism had not become prominent. In contrast,
modernists were firmly in control of the Methodist Episcopal and Episcopal churches
by the 1920s, because a large block of theological conservatives had left those
churches in the late 19th century to form the Holiness churches and the
Reformed Episcopal Church, respectively. Other denominations, such as the
Congregationalists, were so loosely organized that decisions on theological
controversies were difficult to legislate.
Discord among northern Baptists was focused at their annual conventions. In 1920 a
group of Baptists calling themselves the National
Federation of Fundamentalists began holding annual preconvention conferences on
Baptist fundamentals. When their attempts to carry their views into the
convention failed to make immediate progress, the more militant among them
founded the Baptist Bible Union. Eventually the militants
left the denomination to form several small fundamentalist churches, while the
remainder stayed to constitute a permanent conservative voice within the
American Baptist Convention (now the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.).
The most serious phase of
the conservative-modernist controversy erupted among the Presbyterians.
Conservatives had imposed a set of doctrines upon the denomination in 1910,
declaring that the Christian faith required belief in the inerrant inspiration
of the Bible, Christ’s Virgin Birth, and his Atonement, Resurrection, and miracle-working power. In 1922 a New York minister, Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969), protested the activities
of conservatives in foreign-mission fields in a widely reproduced sermon titled
“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” The conservatives in the denomination forced
Fosdick, a Baptist serving the First Presbyterian Church of New York City, out
of his pastorate. He was soon reestablished in the independent Riverside
Church.
In the midst of these
debates, an event in the Deep South made visible the
intense division that had entered American religious life. Fundamentalists,
believing that the Bible could not be reconciled with Darwin’s theory of
evolution, lobbied their state legislatures to ban the teaching
of evolution in the public schools; they were joined in this effort by many
others who were not fundamentalists. The state of Tennessee
passed such a statute, which was challenged in the courts in 1925 at the
instigation of the American Civil Liberties Union. John T. Scopes (1900–70), a science teacher in the small
town of Dayton, offered to serve as the defendant against the charge of having
taught evolution. Two of the foremost figures of that decade, William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), a Presbyterian fundamentalist
and three-time Democratic presidential candidate, and Clarence
Darrow (1857–1938), a defense counsel in notable criminal trials, served as the
assistant prosecuting attorney and the lead defense attorney, respectively (see
Scopes Trial). Scopes was found guilty and fined, though his conviction was
later overturned on the technicality that the fine had been excessive. The law
forbidding the teaching of evolution in Tennessee was upheld in 1925 and
repealed in 1967.
By the end of the 1920s,
fundamentalists had lost control of the major denominations and had given up
hope of recapturing them, at least in the foreseeable future. Although most
remained in their denominations, some broke away to form their own churches. In
1932 a number of Baptists left the Northern Baptist Convention and established
the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches; four
years later, the Princeton theologian J. Gresham Machen
(1881–1937) headed a group of fundamentalists that created the Orthodox
Presbyterian Church. Other fundamentalists joined one of the smaller churches
that preached biblical literalism and premillennialism—such as the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Plymouth Brethren,
and the Evangelical Free Church—or one of the many
independent Bible churches that arose during that period.
Having also lost control
of the denominational seminaries, the fundamentalists regrouped around a set of
independent Bible institutes and Bible colleges. Many of these schools, such as
the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University), not
only provided instruction to their students but assumed many of the duties
formerly performed by denominational institutions. They published periodicals,
broadcast from their own radio stations, held conferences, and maintained a
staff of extension speakers. Indeed, they operated much like a denominational
headquarters, providing a bond between otherwise isolated congregations.
The establishment of new
fundamentalist denominations in the 1930s brought to the fore long-standing
divisions within the fundamentalist movement that had been held in check while
they concentrated on a common enemy. One of the most divisive issues for
Presbyterians was the question of premillennialism and postmillennialism.
While Machen defended the more conventional postmillennialism of the Princeton
theology, the opposite view was taken by New Jersey minister Carl
McIntire, who later founded the rival Bible Presbyterian Church.
McIntire was the focus
of a second divisive issue: separatism. He argued that
fundamentalists must not only denounce modernist deviations from traditional
Christian beliefs but also separate themselves from all heresy and apostasy.
This position entailed the condemnation of conservatives who chose to remain in
fellowship with more liberal members of their denominations. In 1942 McIntire
gathered the independents who accepted his position into the American
Council of Christian Churches.
The fundamentalists’
denunciation of modernist theology and their censure of church-related
institutions of higher learning often led them to reject contemporary
education; this in turn contributed to the impression of many outsiders that
fundamentalism was essentially anti-intellectual. At the same time, the fundamentalists’
withdrawal from larger denominations and their decrying of certain trends in
contemporary society conveyed the impression that they were opposed to science
and culture. By the end of the 1930s, the largest segment of the fundamentalist
movement, believing that a conservative restatement of faith, representing the
best of conservative scholarship, was compatible with contemporary intellectual
culture, distanced itself from the separatists. They dropped the fundamentalist
label, which they left to the separatists, and formed the so-called “neo-Evangelical” movement. Christianity
Today was founded as their major periodical. Their new intellectual centre,
Fuller Theological Seminary, was opened in Pasadena,
California; many of the schools formerly identified with fundamentalism, such
as the Moody Bible Institute, also moved into the Evangelical camp. A new
ecumenical organization, the National Association of
Evangelicals, was organized in 1942.
Doctrinal and institutional development » The mid-20th century to the
present
Although fundamentalism
was pushed to the fringe of the Christian community by the new Evangelical
movement, it continued to grow as new champions arose. The Baptist
Bible Fellowship, formed in 1950, became one of the largest fundamentalist
denominations; Jerry Falwell, subsequently a prominent
televangelist, emerged as the movement’s leading spokesperson in the 1970s. Liberty University, founded by Falwell in Lynchburg,
Virginia, in 1971; Bob Jones University, founded as Bob
Jones College in College Point, Florida, by Bob Jones, Sr., in 1927 (the school
relocated to Cleveland, Tennessee, and then to Greenville, South Carolina, in
1947); and Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat
Robertson in 1978, were the movement’s main intellectual centres. Television,
which provided direct access to the public, assisted the careers of a number of
fundamentalist religious leaders; in addition to Falwell, they included Tim LaHaye, head of a pastorate in San Diego and coauthor of
a popular series of novels based on the Revelation to John.
In the 1960s, religious
conservatives and fundamentalists became involved in a renewed controversy over
the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Defending the doctrine of creationism—the view that the account of the Creation
presented in Genesis is literally correct—they sought again to ban the teaching
of evolution or to require the teaching of the Genesis account wherever
evolutionary theory was taught. Some fundamentalists also attempted to require
the teaching of so-called “creation science,” or “scientific creationism,”
which presumed to present the Genesis account as a legitimate scientific
alternative to evolution. In the 1990s some creationists advocated the teaching
of a doctrine known as “intelligent design,” according to
which the diversity and complexity of living things is impossible to explain
except by positing the existence of an intelligent creator. In the late 20th
and early 21st centuries, creationists were elected to various local and state
boards of education, some of which subsequently enacted measures requiring the
teaching of intelligent design. In some cases the measures were blocked by the
courts or were repealed, and some creationists lost their seats to emboldened
defenders of evolution.
In 1979 Falwell founded
the Moral Majority, a civic organization that crusaded
against what it viewed as negative cultural trends, especially legalized
abortion, the women’s movement, and the gay rights movement. It also lobbied
for prayer in public schools, increased defense spending, a strong
anticommunist foreign policy, and continued American support for the State of
Israel. The Moral Majority led a new generation of fundamentalists beyond
simply denouncing cultural trends and back into an engagement with contemporary
life in the political arena. Falwell cooperated with nonfundamentalists on
common secular causes but remained aloof from the major fundamentalist
organizations. Meanwhile, the Evangelicals campaigned on many of the same issues,
thus blurring the boundaries between the two movements.
By the 1980s
fundamentalists had rebuilt all the institutional structures that had been lost
when they separated from the older denominations. As early as 1941,
fundamentalist groups had come together in the American Council of Christian
Churches, and in 1948 they joined with like-minded Christians around the world
to create the International Council of Christian Churches. In the late 1960s
the American Council attempted to move beyond the leadership of Carl McIntire,
who had dominated it for more than a quarter of a century. It withdrew from the
International Council to help form the World Council of Bible Believing
Churches. In the late 20th century, some fundamentalists even began to engage
in discussions with conservative members of the Roman Catholic Church,
traditionally regarded by fundamentalists as a non-Christian cult. Protestant
fundamentalists and conservative Catholics found common ground on a variety of
issues, including abortion and school prayer.
From the late 1980s,
fundamentalists sought to build on the success of the Moral Majority and
like-minded groups. In 1988 Robertson ran unsuccessfully for president of the
United States. Shortly afterward he founded the Christian
Coalition, which succeeded the Moral Majority as the leading organization of
the movement and became closely associated with the Republican
Party. Fundamentalists were strong supporters of President George W. Bush and
played an important role in the election of Republicans at all levels of
government. They also continued to promote conservative positions on various
questions of social policy.
At the start of the 21st
century, fundamentalist teachings were not significantly different from what
they were at the time of the Niagara Conference. Fundamentalists still believed
in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible and rejected critical biblical
scholarship and the many new translations of the Bible to which such
scholarship gave rise. A significant percentage of the movement continued to
use the King James Version of the Bible exclusively.
Additional Reading
George W. Dollar, A
History of Fundamentalism in America (1973, reissued 1983); and George M.
Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (1991), are important
introductions to the history of fundamentalism. Jerry Falwell (ed.), The
Fundamentalist Phenomenon: The Resurgence of Conservative Christianity
(1981, reissued 1986), is a study of the movement by one of its leaders.
Timothy P. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American
Premillennialism, 1875–1982, enlarged ed. (1983, reissued 1987), traces the
influence of an apocalyptic doctrine on American religious life. Marla J.
Selvidge (ed.), Fundamentalism Today: What Makes It So Attractive (1984),
is a useful collection of essays. Bruce B. Lawrence, Defenders of God: The
Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (1989, reissued 1995),
examines fundamentalism in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Henry M. Morris, History
of Modern Creationism, 2nd ed. (1993), is a survey of the movement. Clyde
Wilcox and Carin Larson, Onward Christian Soldiers?: The Religious Right in
American Politics, 3rd ed. (2006),
examines the role of fundamentalist Christians in American politics.
John Gordon Melton
Source: Encyclopædia
Britannica, 2009.
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