Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism

By Paul Merritt Bassett

Fundamentalism is a term popularly used to describe strict adherence to Christian doctrines based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. This usage derives from a late 19th and early 20th century trans-denominational Protestant movement that opposed the accommodation of Christian doctrine to modern scientific theory and philosophy. With some differences among themselves, fundamentalists insist on belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus Christ, the vicarious and atoning character of his death, his bodily resurrection, and his second coming as the irreducible minimum of authentic Christianity. This minimum was reflected in such early declarations as the 14 point creed of the Niagara Bible Conference of 1878 and the 5 point statement of the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1910.

Two immediate doctrinal sources for fundamentalist thought were Millenarianism and biblical inerrancy. Millenarianism, belief in the physical return of Christ to establish a 1,000 year earthly reign of blessedness, was a doctrine prevalent in English speaking Protestantism by the 1870s. At the same time, powerful conservative forces led by Charles Hodge and Benjamin Warfield opposed the growing use of literary and historical criticism in biblical studies, defending biblical inspiration and the inerrant authority of the Bible.

The name fundamentalist was coined in 1920 to designate those "doing battle royal for the Fundamentals." Also figuring in the name was The Fundamentals, a 12 volume collection of essays written in the period 1910-15 by 64 British and American scholars and preachers. Three million copies of these volumes and the founding of the World's Christian Fundamentals Association in 1919 gave sharp identity to fundamentalism as it moved into the 1920s. Leadership moved across the years from such men as A T Pierson, A J Gordon, and C I Scofield to A C Dixon and Reuben Torrey, William Jennings Bryan, and J Gresham Machen.

As fundamentalism developed, most Protestant denominations in the United States felt the division between liberalism and fundamentalism. The Baptists, Presbyterians, and Disciples of Christ were more affected than others. Nevertheless, talk of schism was much more common than schism itself. Perhaps the lack of a central organization and a normative creed, certainly the caricature of fundamentalism arising from the Scopes Trial (1925), the popularization of the liberal response by representatives like Harry Emerson Fosdick, well publicized divisions among fundamentalists themselves, and preoccupations with the Depression of the 1930s and World War II curtailed fundamentalism's appeal. By 1950 it was either isolated and muted or had taken on the more moderate tones of Evangelicalism.

In the 1970s and 1980s, however, fundamentalism again became an influential force in the United States. Promoted by popular television evangelists and represented by such groups as the Moral Majority, the new politically oriented "religious right" opposes the influence of liberalism and secularism in American life. The term fundamentalist has also been used to describe members of militant Islamic groups.

Bibliography. 

L J Averill, Religious Right, Religious Wrong (1989); S G Cole, History of Fundamentalism (1931); N Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy, 1918-1931 (1954); B Lawrence, Defenders of God (1989); G Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980); E R Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (1970).

Source: Academic American Encyclopedia (Danbury, Conn.: Grolier, 1995).