Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism

By Avery Dulles

An interdenominational movement that originated in American Protestantism toward the end of the 19th century. It was a reaction against the liberal and modernistic currents of theology that infiltrated the seminaries and universities, especially in the Northern and Eastern parts of the United States. Drawing its strength principally from the rural areas and small towns of the "Bible belt" (the South and Midwest), old-fashioned evangelical faith found expression in various gatherings, notably in annual Bible conferences, at which the so-called "higher criticism" of the Bible was deplored. The Niagara Bible Conference of 1878 drew up 14 "fundamentals of the faith," which were later reduced to five: (1) the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible; (2) the virgin birth and full deity of Christ; (3) Christ's death as a sacrifice to satisfy the divine justice; (4) Christ's bodily resurrection; and (5) Christ's return in bodily form to preside at the Last Judgment. In some lists the miracles of Christ in his public ministry took the place of his second coming as the fifth fundamental.

Origin and Development

In Los Angeles, California, two brothers, Milton and Lyman Stewart, promoted the movement by founding in 1908 the Los Angeles Bible Institute and establishing the Stewart Evangelistic fund to promote their conservative views. With their financial support a series of 12 small volumes, titled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, were published between 1910 and 1915. The Stewarts mailed some three million copies of these books free of charge to pastors, missionaries, theology students, and church workers. These booklets, containing 90 articles by scholars from Europe and North America, defended the inspiration and total inerrancy of the Bible, opposed the "higher criticism," and attacked evolutionism and the "social gospel." Contrary to scientific biblical scholarship, they asserted that the Pentateuch (except Dt 34) was written by Moses himself.

The movement took another step forward in 1919, with the founding of the World's Christian Fundamentals Association, which published a quarterly review and conducted annual rallies in various North American cities during the next decade. About 1920 the title "Fundamentalist" first came into currency, signifying, as one newspaper expressed it, one who does "battle royal for the Fundamentals." This title was accepted by the adherents as a badge of honor. "Creation science," based on a strict interpretation of GENESIS, was promoted as an alternative to Darwinism.

During the 1920s many American Protestant churches, especially those with strong evangelical tendencies— such as the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Disciples of Christ—became split into Fundamentalist and Modernist camps, with an amorphous group caught in the middle. The Lutherans and Episcopalians felt the controversy (Page 28) less acutely, being more securely rooted in their confessional traditions.

Although Fundamentalism was primarily the fruit of simplistic popular thinking, it acquired intellectual respectability through the support of several distinguished theologians. Benjamin B. Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, perhaps the most eminent of America's conservative Presbyterian scholars, contributed to the first volume of The Fundamentals. John Gresham Machen, also of Princeton, while preferring to call himself simply a Calvinist, likewise supported the Fundamentalist cause.

Decline

Largely through Fundamentalist pressures, several state legislatures barred the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 1925 John T. Scopes, a high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was accused of teaching Darwinism in violation of the law. Behind the immediate question of evolution loomed the larger question whether the Bible was totally free of error in its obvious meaning, as understood by the ordinary reader. Although Scopes was convicted and the constitutionality of the statute upheld, William Jennings Bryan's feeble performance as a witness for the prosecution and the unfavorable publicity given to the case in the secular press resulted in a major setback for Fundamentalism.

In the mid-1920s the Fundamentalist tide began to recede. In 1927 Princeton Seminary, the traditional bastion of conservative orthodoxy, opened itself to other theological tendencies. In 1929 Machen resigned his post to found a new conservative seminary in Philadelphia, and ultimately (in 1936) his own Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Although Fundamentalism lost much of its influence, important Protestant groups, especially in the Netherlands and the U.S., remain strongly committed to the view that the Bible, understood in its obvious literal meaning, is totally inerrant. The more sophisticated representatives of conservative Evangelicalism, such as Carl F. H. Henry and Edward J. Carnell, sought to shed the Fundamentalist label and to identify themselves with international conservative Protestant bodies, such as the World Evangelical Fellowship. But the Fundamentalist mentality continues to manifest itself in some parts of the United States. In 1981, for example, the State of Arkansas adopted a law requiring that "creation science" be taught alongside of evolutionary theory in public schools. That law was later ruled unconstitutional.

Catholic Responses

Fundamentalism properly so called can have no legitimate place in Catholic theology. Already in the 17th century the Catholic bishop J. B. Bossuet controverted the view of the Calvinist Pierre Jurieu that a few "fundamental articles" could be a sufficient test of orthodoxy. In his encyclical Mortalium animos (1928) Pius XI rejected the distinction between fundamental and nonfundamental articles. The "five fundamentals," while true if rightly understood, do not mention all that Catholics consider basic to their faith. The omission of the Trinity, the Church, and the sacraments gives a markedly sectarian slant to the Fundamentalist platform.

Certain anti-Modernist trends in Catholic theology ran parallel to Protestant Fundamentalism. Catholics regarded by some as ultraconservative opposed the scientific study of the Scriptures and sought to defend every sentence of the Bible in what they took to be its obvious sense. They rejected the idea of human evolution as unbiblical and repudiated the practice of distinguishing between different "literary forms" in books deemed to be historical. Pius XII in his encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu (1943), correcting these tendencies, endorsed scientific literary and historical criticism and a prudent use of the method of form criticism. In 1993 the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued a document on The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, which included a severe criticism of Fundamentalism for offering false certitudes and for confusing the divine substance of the Bible with what are in fact its human limitations. The United States Catholic Bishops' Conference in 1987 established an ad hoc committee on Biblical Fundamentalism that warned against the deceptive attractions of Fundamentalism, calling attention to its tendency to neglect the role of the Church in the transmission of Christian faith.

Bibliography:

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G. M. MARSDEN, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York 1980); Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1991). T. M. O'MEARA, Fundamentalism: A Catholic Perspective (New York 1990). PONTIFICAL BIBLICAL COMMISSION, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (Vatican City 1993). UNITED STATES BISHOPS' COMMITTEE, "Pastoral Statement for Catholics on Biblical Fundamentalism," Origins 17 (Nov. 5, 1987) 376–77. H. A HARRIS, Fundamentalism and Evangelicals (Oxford 1998).

Source Citation: DULLES, A. "Fundamentalism." New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 6. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 27-29.