Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy
Encyclopedia
The Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy was a religious controversy in the 1920s and 30s within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
that later created divisions in most American
Christian denomination
s as well. The major American denomination was torn by conflict over the issues of theology
and ecclesiology
. Underneath those struggles lay profound concerns about the role of Christianity
in the culture and how that role was to be expressed.
, Harry Emerson Fosdick
. Fosdick, a liberal Baptist
preaching by special permission in First Presbyterian Church, New York, delivered his sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" highlighting differences between liberal and conservative Christians. The ending of the controversy was marked by J. Gresham Machen and a number of other conservative Presbyterian theologians and clergy leaving the denomination in 1936 to establish the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
.
Although "Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy" is the term used to describe this major schism in the Presbyterian church, very similar and far-reaching reactions against the growth of liberal Christianity
also occurred in other major Protestant denominations. At the time of the Controversy, Presbyterians were the fourth-largest Protestant group in the United States
. (The Methodists were the largest, followed by the Baptists and the Lutherans; the Episcopalians
were in fifth place.) After considerable internal tensions, every major Protestant denomination came to accommodate liberalism within the denomination, to one degree or another. Often, some disgruntled conservatives left their denomination, some of them establishing smaller denominations with fundamentalist-conservative foundations. Sensitized by what they saw to be successful liberal infiltration into other denominations, in the 1970s Southern Baptist
conservatives began a concerted effort to rid their institutions and leadership of liberal leanings. This resulted in the Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence and occasioned the creation of two new Baptist denominations which accommodate the modernist theological position.
This process resulted in the modern division of Protestant American religious life into mainline Christianity on the one hand and evangelical
and fundamentalist Christianity
on the other. As such, the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy in the Presbyterian Church is part of a wider set of developments in American religious life. However, it also contained many aspects that were continuations of long-term conflicts within American Presbyterianism. Also, the Controversy in the Presbyterian Church received disproportionate attention in the press because of the prominent role played in it by William Jennings Bryan
.
The term fundamentalism
was coined during this Controversy.
American Presbyterianism had gone into schism
twice in the past, and these divisions were important precursors to the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy. The first was The Old Side-New Side Controversy
, which occurred during the First Great Awakening
, and resulted in the Presbyterian Church in 1741 being divided into an Old Side and New Side. The two churches reunified in 1758. The second was the Old School-New School Controversy
, which occurred in the wake of the Second Great Awakening
and which saw the Presbyterian Church split into two denominations starting in 1836-38. Each of these denominations in turn split into northern and southern halves over the issue of slavery. It was not until 1869-70 that the New School and Old School were reunited in the north to form the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
Although those Controversies involved many issues, the overarching issue had to do with the nature of church authority and the authority of the Westminster Confession of Faith
. The New Side/New School opposed a rigid interpretation of the Westminster Confession. Rather they preferred an emotional style of religion that made use of revival techniques. They were much more likely to ordain as clergy men who had not received a university education; were more lax in the degree of subscription to the Westminster Confession they required; and were generally opposed to using heresy
trials
as a means to ensure the orthodoxy
of the clergy
. They accused the Old Side/Old School of being dry formalists who fetishized the Westminster Confession and Calvinism
at the expense of an emotional encounter with the Bible
mediated by the Holy Spirit
. The Old Side/Old School responded that the Westminster Confession was the foundational constitutional document of the Presbyterian Church and that, since the Confession was simply a summary of the Bible
's teachings, the church had a responsibility to ensure that its ministers' preaching was in line with the Confession. They accused the New Side/New School of being much too lax about the purity of the church, and willing to allow Arminianism
, unitarianism
, and other errors to be taught in the Presbyterian Church. They criticized the New Side/School's revivals as being emotionally manipulative and shallow. Another major division had to do with their attitude towards other denominations: New Siders/Schoolers were willing to set up parachurch ministries to conduct evangelism
and missions
and were willing to cooperate with non-Presbyterians in doing so. The Old Siders/Schoolers felt that evangelism and missions should be conducted through agencies managed by the denomination and not involving outsiders, since this would involve a watering down of the church's theological distinctives. The two sides also had different attitudes towards their seminary
professors: Princeton Theological Seminary
, the leading institution of the Old School, demanded credal subscription and dedicated a large part of its academic efforts to the defense of Calvinist Orthodoxy; while the New School's Union Theological Seminary
was more willing to allow non-Presbyterians to teach at the school and was more broadminded in its academic output.
published 70 articles against higher criticism, and the number increased in the years after 1850. However, it was not until the years after 1880 that Higher Criticism really had any advocates within American seminaries. But when Higher Criticism did arrive, it arrived in force.
The first major proponent of Higher Criticism within the Presbyterian Church was Charles Briggs
, who had studied Higher Criticism in Germany (in 1866). His inaugural address upon being made Professor of Hebrew
at Union Theological Seminary in 1876 was the first salvo of Higher Criticism within American Presbyterianism. Briggs was active in founding The Presbyterian Review in 1880, with A. A. Hodge
, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, initially serving as Briggs' co-editor. In 1881, Briggs published an article in defense of W. Robertson Smith
which led to a series of responses and counter-responses between Briggs and the Princeton theologians
in the pages of The Presbyterian Review. In 1889, B. B. Warfield became co-editor and refused to publish one of Briggs' articles, a key turning point.
In 1891, Briggs was appointed as Union's first-ever Professor of Biblical Theology
. His inaugural address, entitled "The Authority of Holy Scripture", proved to be highly controversial. Whereas previously, Higher Criticism had seemed a fairly technical, scholarly issue, Briggs now spelt out its full implications. In this address, he announced that Higher Criticism had now definitively proven that Moses
did not write the Pentateuch; that Ezra
did not write Ezra, Chronicles
or Nehemiah
; Jeremiah
did not write the books of Kings
or the Lamentations
; David
only wrote a few of the Psalms
; Solomon
did not write the Song of Solomon
or Ecclesiastes
and only a few Proverbs
; and Isaiah
did not write half of the book of Isaiah
. The Old Testament was merely a historical record, and one which showed man in a lower state of moral development, with modern man having progressed morally far beyond Noah
, Abraham
, Jacob
, Judah
, David, and Solomon. At any rate, the Scriptures as a whole are riddled with errors and the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy
taught at Princeton Theological Seminary "is a ghost of modern evangelicalism to frighten children." Not only is the Westminster Confession wrong, but the very foundation of the Confession, the Bible, could not be used to create theological absolutes. He now called on other rationalists in the denomination to join him in sweeping away the dead orthodoxy of the past and work for the unity of the entire church.
The inaugural address provoked widespread outrage in the denomination, and led Old Schoolers in the denomination to move against him, with Francis Landey Patton
taking the lead. Under the terms of the reunion of 1869, General Assembly had the right to veto all appointments to seminary professorships, so, at the 1891 General Assembly, held in Detroit, Old Schoolers successfully got through a motion to veto Briggs' appointment, which passed by a vote of 449-60. The faculty of Union Theological Seminary, however, refused to remove Briggs, saying that it would be a violation of scholarly freedom
. In October 1892, the faculty would vote to withdraw from the denomination.
In the meantime, New York
Presbytery brought heresy charges against Briggs, but these were defeated by a vote of 94-39. The committee that had brought the charges then appealed to the 1892 General Assembly, held in Portland, Oregon
. The General Assembly responded with its famous "Portland Deliverance", affirming that the Presbyterian Church holds that the Bible is without error and that ministers who believe otherwise should withdraw from the ministry. Briggs' case was remanded to New York Presbytery, which conducted a second heresy trial for Briggs in late 1892, and in early 1893 again found Briggs not guilty of heresy. Again Briggs' opponents appealed to General Assembly, which in 1893 was held in Washington, D.C.
This time, General Assembly voted to overturn the New York decision and declared Briggs guilty of heresy. He was de-frocked as a result (though only briefly, since in 1899 the Episcopal bishop of New York
, Henry Codman Potter
, ordained him as an Episcopal priest.)
, which argued that all these heresy trials were bad for the church and that the church should be less concerned with theories about inerrancy and more concerned with getting on with its spiritual work. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that most clergymen in the period took this moderate view, being willing to tolerate Higher Criticism within the church, either because they were open to the points Higher Criticism was making or because they wanted to avoid the distraction and dissension of heresy trials. For many, this came out of the traditional New School resistance to heresy trials and the rigid imposition of the Confession.
There were two further heresy trials in subsequent years, which would be the last major heresy trials in the history of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. In late 1892, Henry Preserved Smith
, Professor of Old Testament at Lane Theological Seminary
, was convicted of heresy by the Presbytery of Cincinnati for teaching that there were errors in the Bible, and, upon appeal, his conviction was upheld by the General Assembly of 1894.
In 1898, Union Theological Seminary Professor of Church History Arthur Cushman McGiffert
was tried by New York Presbytery, which condemned certain portions of his book A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, but declined to apply sanctions. This decision was appealed to General Assembly, but McGiffert quietly resigned from the denomination and the charges were withdrawn.
, a modernist who had been a major supporter of Briggs in 1893, now headed a movement of modernists and New Schoolers to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith. Since 1889, Van Dyke had been calling for credal revision, to affirm that all dying infants (not just elect
dying infants) go to heaven; to say that God loved the whole world (not just the elect); and to affirm that Christ atoned for all mankind, not just the elect. In 1901, he chaired a 25-man committee (with a New School majority). Also in 1901, he drew up a non-binding summary of the church's faith. It mentioned neither biblical inerrancy nor reprobation
; affirmed God's love of all mankind; and denied that the Pope
was the Antichrist
. This was adopted by General Assembly in 1902 and ratified by the presbyteries in 1904.
As a result of these changes, the Arminian-leaning Cumberland Presbyterian Church
petitioned for reunification, and in 1906, over 1000 Cumberland Presbyterian ministers joined the Presbyterian Church in the USA. The arrival of so many liberal ministers strengthened the New School's position in the church.
Under the order of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, General Assembly was not authorized to accept or dismiss this complaint. It should have demitted the complaint to the presbytery, and could have done so with instructions that the presbytery hold a heresy trial. The result of this trial could then be appealed to the Synod of New York and from there to the General Assembly. However, the 1910 General Assembly, acting outside its scope of authority, dismissed the complaint against the three men and at the same time instructed its Committee on Bills and Overtures to prepare a statement for governing future ordinations. This was a major departure from standard procedure since under the presbyterian system, General Assembly is a court
, not a legislative body. Nevertheless, the committee reported, and the General Assembly passed the Doctrinal Deliverance of 1910. This Deliverance declared that five doctrines were "necessary and essential" to the Christian faith:
These five propositions would become known to history as the "Five Fundamentals" and by the late 1910s, theological conservatives rallying around the Five Fundamentals came to be known as "fundamentalists."
In 1910, a wealthy Presbyterian layman, Lyman Stewart
, the founder of Union Oil and a proponent of dispensationalism
as taught in the newly-published Scofield Reference Bible
, decided to use his wealth to sponsor a series of pamphlets to be entitled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth
. These twelve pamphlets, published between 1910 and 1915 eventually included 90 essays written by 64 authors from several denominations. The series was conservative and critical of Higher Criticism, but also broad in its approach, and the scholars who contributed articles included several Presbyterian moderates who would later be opposed to "fundamentalism", such as Charles R. Erdman, Sr. and Robert Elliott Speer
. It was apparently from the title of these pamphlets that the term "fundamentalist" was coined, with our first reference to the term being an article by Northern Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws.
In 1915, the conservative magazine The Presbyterian published a conservative manifesto that had been in circulation within the denomination entitled "Back to Fundamentals". Liberal Presbyterian magazines replied that if conservatives wanted a fight, they should bring heresy charges in the church's courts or else keep quiet. No charges were brought.
It is worth pointing out that the only people who actually embraced the name "fundamentalist" during the 1910s were committed dispensationalists, who elevated the premillennial return of Christ to the status of a fundamental of the Christian faith. None of the "fundamentalist" leaders (i.e. Machen, Van Til, Macartney) in the Presbyterian Church were dispensationalists.
) was heavily associated with the Social Gospel
, and with the Progressive
movement more broadly. The Council's Social Creed of the Churches was adopted by the Presbyterian Church in 1910, but conservatives in General Assembly were able to resist endorsing most of the Council's specific proposals, except for those calling for Prohibition
and sabbath laws
.
In response to World War I
, the FCC established the General War-Time Commission to coordinate the work of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish programs related to the war and work closely with the Department of War
. It was chaired by Speer and liberal Union Theological Seminary professor William Adams Brown. Following the war, they worked hard to build on this legacy of unity. The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions consequently called for a meeting of Protestant leaders on the topic and in early 1919 the Interchurch World Movement (IWM) was established with John Mott
as its chairman. The Executive Committee of the Presbyterian Church offered millions of dollars worth of support to help the IWM with fundraising. When the IWM collapsed financially, the denomination was on the hook for millions of dollars.
However the debate between modernists and conservatives over the issue of the IWM was small compared to the Church Union debate. In 1919, the General Assembly sent a delegation to a national ecumenical convention that was proposing church union, and in 1920, General Assembly approved a recommendation which included "organic union" with 17 other denominations - the new organization, to be known as the United Churches of Christ in America, would be a sort of "federal government" for member churches: denominations would maintain their distinctive internal identities, but the broader organization would be in charge of things like missions and lobbying for things like prohibition. Under the terms of presbyterian polity
, the measure would have to be approved by the presbyteries to take effect.
The plans for Church Union were roundly denounced by the Old School Princeton Theological Seminary faculty. It was at this point in 1920 that Princeton professor J. Gresham Machen first gained prominence within the denomination as a fundamentalist
opponent of Church Union, which he argued would destroy Presbyterian distinctives, and effectively cede control of the denomination to modernists and their New School allies. However, chinks were starting to show in the Princeton faculty's armor. Charles Erdman and the president of the seminary, William Robinson, came out in favor of the union.
Ultimately, the presbyteries defeated church union by a vote of 150-100 in 1921.
's sermon of May 21, 1922, "“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”" Fosdick was ordained as a Baptist, but had been given special permission to preach in First Presbyterian Church in New York City
.
In this sermon, Fosdick presented the liberals in both the Presbyterian and Baptist denominations as sincere evangelical Christians who were struggling to reconcile new discoveries in history, science, and religion with the Christian faith. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, were cast as intolerant conservatives who refused to deal with these new discoveries and had arbitrarily drawn the line as to what was off limits in religious discussion. Many people, Fosdick argued, simply found it impossible to accept the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement
, or the literal second coming of Christ in the light of modern science. Given the different points of view within the church, only tolerance and liberty could allow for these different perspectives to co-exist in the church.
Fosdick's sermon was re-packaged as "The New Knowledge and the Christian Faith" and quickly published in three religious journals, and then distributed as a pamphlet to every Protestant clergyman in the country.
Conservative Clarence E. Macartney
, pastor of Arch Street Presbyterian Church
in Philadelphia, responded to Fosdick with a sermon of his own, entitled "Shall Unbelief Win?" which was quickly published in a pamphlet. He argued that liberalism had been progressively "secularizing" the church and, if left unchecked, would lead to "a Christianity of opinions and principles and good purposes, but a Christianity without worship, without God, and without Jesus Christ."
Led by Macartney, the Presbytery of Philadelphia requested that the General Assembly direct the Presbytery of New York to take such actions as to ensure that the teaching and preaching in the First Presbyterian Church of New York City conform to the Westminster Confession of Faith. This request would lead to over a decade of bitter wrangling in the Presbyterian Church.
, was one of the few Presbyterian controversialists to turn their guns on Darwinism
prior to World War I
. Hodge published his What is Darwinism? in 1874, three years after The Descent of Man was published, and argued that Darwin's system could not be reconciled with biblical Christianity.
Most churchmen, however, took a far more prosaic attitude. In the early period, it must have appeared far from clear that Charles Darwin
's theory of natural selection
would come to be hegemonic among scientists, as refutations and alternate systems were still being proposed and debated. Then, when evolution became widely accepted, most churchmen were far less concerned with refuting it than they were with establishing schemes whereby Darwinism could be reconciled with Christianity. This was true even among prominent Old Schoolers at Princeton Theological Seminary such as Charles Hodge's successors A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield who came to endorse the ideas now described as theistic evolution
.
William Jennings Bryan
, a former lawyer who was also a Presbyterian ruling elder, was elected to Congress in 1890, then became the Democratic
presidential
candidate for three unsuccessful presidential bids in 1896
, 1900
, and 1908
. After his 1900 defeat, Bryan re-examined his life and concluded that he had let his passion for politics obscure his calling as a Christian. Beginning in 1900, he began lecturing on the Chautauqua
circuit, where his speeches often involved religious as well as political themes. For the next 25 years until his death, Bryan was one of the most popular Chautauqua lecturers and he spoke in front of hundreds of thousands of people.
By 1905, Bryan had concluded that Darwinism and the modernism of Higher Criticism were allies in promoting liberalism within the church, thereby in his view undermining the foundations of Christianity. In lectures from 1905, Bryan spoke out against the spread of Darwinism, which he characterized as involving "the operation of the law of hate - the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak", and warned that it could undermine the foundations of morality. In 1913 he became Woodrow Wilson
's secretary of state
, then resigned in 1915 because he believed that the Woodrow administration was about to enter World War I
in response to the sinking of the RMS Lusitania
and he opposed American intervention in a European war.
When the US did finally join World War I in 1917, Bryan volunteered for the army, though he was never allowed to enlist. At a time of widespread revulsion at alleged German atrocities, Bryan linked evolution to Germany, and claimed that Darwinism provided a justification for the strong to dominate the weak and was therefore the source of German militarism
. He drew on reports by the entomologist Vernon Kellogg
of German officers discussing the Darwinian rationale for their declaration of war, and the sociologist
Benjamin Kidd
's book The Science of Power which contended that Nietzsche's philosophy
represented an interpretation of Darwinism, to conclude that Nietzsche's and Darwin's ideas were the impetus for German nationalism
and militarism. Bryan argued that Germany's militarism and "barbarism" came from their belief that the "struggle for survival" described in Darwin's On the Origin of the Species applied to nations as well as to individuals, and that "The same science that manufactured poisonous gases to suffocate soldiers is preaching that man has a brute ancestry and eliminating the miraculous and the supernatural from the Bible."
Bryan was, in essence, fighting what would later be called social Darwinism
, social and economic ideas owing as much to Herbert Spencer
and Thomas Malthus
as to Darwin, and viewed by modern biologists as a misuse of his theory. Germany, or so Bryan's argument ran, had replaced Christ's teachings with Nietzsche's philosophy based on ideas of survival of the fittest
, and the implication was that America would suffer the same fate if unchecked. This fear was reinforced by the report of the psychologist
James H. Leuba
's 1916 study indicating that a considerable number of college students lost their faith during the four years they spent in college.
Bryan launched his campaign against Darwinism in 1921 when he was invited to give the James Sprunt Lectures at Virginia's Union Theological Seminary
. At the end of one, The Menace of Darwinism, he said that "Darwinism is not a science at all; it is a string of guesses strung together" and that there is more science in the Bible's "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature...." than in all of Darwin. These lectures were published and became a national bestseller.
Now that Bryan had linked Darwinism and Higher Criticism as the twin evils facing the Presbyterian Church, Harry Emerson Fosdick responded by defending Darwinism, as well as Higher Criticism, from Bryan's attack. In the early 1920s, Bryan and Fosdick squared off against each other in a series of articles and replies in the pages of the New York Times.
, Bryan was determined to strike against Darwinism and against Fosdick, so he organized a campaign to have himself elected as Moderator of the General Assembly
. He lost the election by a vote of 451-427 to the Rev. Charles F. Wishart, president of the College of Wooster, a strong proponent of allowing evolution to be taught at Presbyterian-run colleges and universities.
Undaunted, Bryan took to opposing Darwinism on the floor of the General Assembly, the first time General Assembly had debated the matter. He proposed a resolution that the denomination should cease payments to any school, college, or university where Darwinism was taught. Opponents argued that there were plenty of Christians in the church who believed in evolution
. Ultimately, Bryan could not convince even Machen to back his position, and the Assembly simply approved a resolution condemning materialistic (as opposed to theistic) evolutionary philosophy.
The major question dealt with at the General Assembly of 1923 was not, however, Darwinism. It was the question of what to do about Harry Emerson Fosdick and his provocative sermon of the previous year. The Committee on Bills and Overtures recommended that the assembly declare its continuing commitment to the Westminster Confession, but leave the matter to New York Presbytery, which was investigating. The Committee's minority report recommended a declaration re-affirming the denomination's commitment to the Five Fundamentals of 1910 and to require New York Presbytery to force First Presbyterian Church to conform to the Westminster Confession. A fiery debate ensued, with Bryan initially seeking a compromise to drop the prosecution of Fosdick in exchange for a reaffirmation of the Five Fundamentals. When this proved impossible, he lobbied intensely for the minority report, and was successful in having the minority report adopted by a vote of 439-359.
Even before the end of General Assembly, this decision was controversial. 85 commissioners filed an official protest, arguing that the Fosdick case was not properly before the General Assembly, and that, as the General Assembly was a court, not a legislative body, the Five Fundamentals could not be imposed upon church officers without violating the constitution of the church. At the same time, Henry Sloane Coffin
of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City issued a statement saying that he did not accept the Five Fundamentals and that if Fosdick were removed from his pulpit, they would need to get rid of him too.
was circulating a paper in which he argued that the Old School-New School reunion of 1870 and the merger with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of 1906 had created a church specifically designed to accommodate doctrinal diversity.
Two weeks after the General Assembly of 1923, 36 clergymen met in Syracuse, New York
, and, using Nichols' paper as a base, ultimately issued a declaration known to history as the Auburn Affirmation
.
The Auburn Affirmation opened by affirming the Westminster Confession of Faith, but argued that within American Presbyterianism, there had been a long tradition of freedom of interpretation of the Scriptures and the Confession. General Assembly's issuance of the Five Fundamentals not only eroded this tradition, but it flew in the face of the Presbyterian Church's constitution, which required all doctrinal changes be approved by the presbyteries. While some members of the church could regard the Five Fundamentals as a satisfactory explanation of Scriptures and the Confession, there were others who could not, and therefore, the Presbyteries should be free to hold to whatever theories they saw fit in interpreting Scripture and the Confession.
The Auburn Affirmation was circulated beginning in November 1923 and ultimately signed by 174 clergymen. In January 1924, it was released to the press, along with the names of 150 signatories.
In June 1923, New York Presbytery ordained two men — Henry P. Van Dusen and Cedric O. Lehman — who refused to affirm the virgin birth.
On December 31, 1923, Henry van Dyke publicly relinquished his pew at First Presbyterian Church, Princeton as a protest against Machen's fundamentalist preaching. Van Dyke would ultimately return to his pew in December 1924 when Charles Erdman replaced Machen in the pulpit.
In May 1924, the Auburn Affirmation was republished, along with supplementary materials, and now listing 1,274 signatories.
in May 1924. During the campaign for moderator, William Jennings Bryan threw his weight behind Clarence E. Macartney (the Philadelphia minister who was instrumental in bringing charges against Fosdick), who narrowly beat out moderate Princeton Theological Seminary faculty member Charles Erdman by a vote of 464-446. Macartney named Bryan his vice-moderator.
No action was taken at this General Assembly about the Auburn Affirmation. The ordination of Van Dusen and Lehman was referred to the Synod of New York for "appropriate action."
On the question of Harry Fosdick, moderates in 1924 steered debate away from his theology and towards matter of polity. As Fosdick was a Baptist, General Assembly instructed First Presbyterian Church, New York to invite Fosdick to join the Presbyterian Church, and if he would not, to get rid of him. Fosdick refused to join the Presbyterian Church and ultimately resigned from his post at First Presbyterian Church in October.
At the 1925 General Assembly, held in Columbus, Ohio
, the denomination seemed determined to put the Fosdick controversy behind them. Charles R. Erdman was elected as moderator, which was widely seen as a blow against the fundamentalists. Erdman, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, had been engaged in a series of debates with J. Gresham Machen and Clarence Macartney throughout the year, and in spring 1925, he was ousted as Princeton Seminary's student advisor for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the League of Evangelical Students, set up as a counterweight to more liberal intervarsity organizations. Erdman was himself theologically conservative, but was more concerned with pursuing "purity and peace and progress" (his slogan during the election for moderator) than he was with combatting liberalism. Machen felt that men like Erdman would ultimately be responsible for agnostic Modernism triumphing in the Presbyterian Church.
It seemed to many observers that the licensing of Van Dusen and Lehman was likely to cause a split in the church. General Assembly required all candidates to the ministry to affirm the virgin birth and returned the matter to New York Presbytery for proper proceedings. In response, the New York commissioners, led by Henry Sloane Coffin protested that General Assembly had no right to change or add to the conditions for entrance to the ministry beyond those affirmed in the reunions of 1870 and 1906. Coffin and the liberals were prepared to walk out of the Assembly and take their churches out of the denomination rather than submit to the further "Bryanizing of the Presbyterian Church." A special commission of fifteen was appointed to study the constitutional issues involved. Erdman was able to convince Coffin not to leave the denomination, arguing that, as his interpretation of the constitution was the correct one, he would prevail when the Special Commission issued its report.
, which passed such a law
in March 1925. (Given the present-day contours of the evolution-creation debate
, it is interesting to note that in many states in 1925, evolution continued to be taught in church-run institutions at the same time that its teaching was banned in state-run public schools.)
The ACLU was seeking a test case to challenge these anti-evolutionary laws. This led to the famous trial of John Scopes
for teaching evolution in a public school in Dayton, Tennessee
. The ACLU sent in renowned lawyer
John Randolph Neal, Jr.
to defend Scopes.
Baptist pastor William Bell Riley
, founder and president of the World Christian Fundamentals Association
, persuaded William Jennings Bryan to act as its counsel. Bryan invited his major allies in the Presbyterian General Assembly to attend the trial with him, but J. Gresham Machen refused to testify, saying he had not studied biology in enough detail to testify at trial, while Clarence Macartney had a previous engagement.
In response to the announcement that Bryan would be attending the trial, renowned lawyer and committed agnostic Clarence Darrow
volunteered to serve on Scopes' defense team.
The stage was thus set for a trial which would prove to be a media circus
, with reporters from across the country descending on the small town of 1,900 people.
Although the prosecution of Scopes was successful, the trial is widely seen as a crucial moment in discrediting the fundamentalist movement in America, particularly after Darrow called Bryan to the stand and he appeared little able to defend his view of the Bible.
Among the media, Bryan's loudest and ultimately most influential critic was H. L. Mencken
, who reported on the trial in his columns and denounced fundamentalism as irrational, backwards and intolerant.
As noted earlier, opposition to Darwinism was always much more important to Bryan than it was to other conservative Presbyterian Church leaders. Thus, following Bryan's death in 1925, the debate about evolution, while it remained an issue within church politics, never again assumed the prominence to the debate that it had while Bryan was alive. (Probably the reason why the issue of evolution has obtained such an iconic status within the popular consciousness about the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy is that it represented the one point where internal church politics intersected with government, specifically public school, policy.)
At the 1926 General Assembly, another moderate, W.O. Thompson, was elected as moderator.
The Special Committee delivered its report on May 28. It argued that there were five major causes of unrest in the Presbyterian Church: 1) general intellectual movements, including "the so-called conflict between science and religion", naturalistic worldviews, different understandings of the nature of God, and changes in language; 2) historical differences going back to the Old School-New School split; 3) disagreements about church polity, particularly the role of General Assembly, and lack of representation of women in the church; 4) theological changes; and 5) misunderstanding. The report went on to conclude that the Presbyterian system had traditionally allowed a diversity of views when the core of truth was identical; and that the church flourished when it focused on its unity of spirit. Toleration of doctrinal diversity, including in how to interpret the Westminster Confession, was to be encouraged. In short, the report essentially affirmed the views of the Auburn Affirmation. The committee affirmed that General Assembly could not amend the Westminster Confession without the permission of the presbyteries, though it could issue judicial rulings consistent with the Confession that were binding on the presbyteries. The Five Fundamentals, though, had no binding authority.
In spite of Clarence Macartney's opposition on the floor of General Assembly, the committee's report was adopted.
The majority of the faculty in 1920 remained convinced Old Schoolers, including J. Gresham Machen and Geerhardus Vos
. However, to combat a perceived lack of training in practical divinity
, a number of more moderate New Schoolers were brought in, including Charles Erdman and J. Ross Stevenson, who by 1920 was the president of the seminary. As we saw above, the tension between Old Schoolers and moderates revealed itself in debates about the proposed Church Union of 1920; Machen's anti-liberal preaching which resulted in the public fall-out with Harry van Dyke; the controversy about Erdman's approach to the League of Evangelical Students; and splits about how to deal with the splits in the wider church.
By 1925, the Old School's majority on the faculty was threatened, but the selection of Clarence Macartney to replace outgoing Professor of Apologetics
William Greene seemed to solidify the Old School majority on the faculty. However, when Macartney turned the job down, Machen was offered the job.
Before he could accept or refuse, however, General Assembly intervened, and in the 1926 General Assembly, moderates succeeded in securing a committee to study how to reconcile the two parties at Princeton. (The seminary was governed by a board of directors subject to the supervision of General Assembly.) (On a sidenote, some members of the General Assembly seem to have been wary of Machen because of his opposition to Prohibition.)
The committee reported back at the General Assembly of 1927, where the moderate Robert E. Speer was elected as moderator. Their report concluded that the source of the difficulties at Princeton was that some of the Princeton faculty (i.e. Machen) were trying to keep Princeton in the service of a certain party in the church rather than doing what was in the best interest of the denomination as a whole. They recommended re-organization of the seminary. General Assembly renewed the committee's mandate and ordered them to study how to re-organize the seminary.
This led Machen to declare that the 1927 General Assembly was "probably the most disastrous meeting, from the point of view of evangelical Christianity, that has been held in the whole history of our Church." Machen composed and had circulated in the denomination a document entitled "The Attack Upon Princeton Seminary: A Plea for Fair Play." He argued that Princeton was the only seminary continuing to defend orthodoxy among the older theological institutions in the English-speaking world. The loss of the seminary would be a major blow for orthodoxy. The moderates and liberals already had control of pretty much every seminary in the denomination: why couldn't the conservatives be left with one?
The committee reported to the 1928 General Assembly, held in Tulsa, Oklahoma
, recommending re-organizing the seminary to give more powers to the president of the seminary and to replace the two ruling boards with one unified board. In response, Clarence Macartney responded that his party were prepared to take legal action to stop this from happening. Wary, General Assembly simply appointed a committee to continue studying the matter.
This committee reported to the 1929 General Assembly. Machen gave a fiery speech on the floor of General Assembly, but he could not prevent General Assembly from voting to re-organize the seminary.
Rather than contesting this decision in the courts as had been threatened, Machen now decided to set up a new seminary to be a bastion of conservative thought. This institution would become Westminster Theological Seminary
(named to stress its fidelity to the Westminster Confession of Faith) and several conservatives on the Princeton faculty, including Machen and Cornelius Van Til
, would leave Princeton to teach at Westminster. Clarence Macartney initially opposed setting up Westminster, arguing that conservatives should stay at Princeton where they could continue to provide an orthodox voice. Machen responded that Princeton was in a state of apostasy
and that he couldn't serve alongside apostates. Macartney was eventually won over to Machen's side.
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In 1930, as a result of widespread second thoughts about missions in general, a group of Baptist
laymen at the request of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
concluded that it was time for a serious re-evaluation of the effectiveness of foreign missions. With Rockefeller's financial backing, they convinced seven major denominations - the Methodist Episcopal Church
, the Northern Baptist Convention, the Reformed Church in America
, the Congregational
church, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
and the United Presbyterian Church of North America
- to participate in their "Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry". They commissioned a study of missionaries in India
, Burma, China
, and Japan
and launched a separate inquiry under the chairmanship of the philosopher and Harvard professor William Ernest Hocking
. These two inquiries led to the publication of a one-volume summary of the findings of the Laymen's Inquiry entitled Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen's Inquiry after One Hundred Years in 1932.
Re-Thinking Missions argued that in the face of emerging secularism
, Christians should ally with other world religions, rather than struggle against them.
The seven denominations who had agreed to participate in the Laymen's Inquiry now distanced themselves from the report. The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions
issued a statement reaffirming the board's commitment to the evangelistic basis of the missionary enterprise and to Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior.
Pearl S. Buck
, now weighed into the debate. In a review published in The Christian Century
, she praised the report, saying it should be read by every Christian in America and, ironically mimicking the biblical literalism
of the fundamentalists, "I think this is the only book I have ever read that seems to me literally true in its every observation and right in its every conclusion." Then, in a November 1932 speech before a large audience at the Astor Hotel, later published in Harper's, Buck decried gauging the success of missions by the numbers of new church members. Instead she advocated humanitarian efforts to improve the agricultural, educational, medical, and sanitary conditions of the community. She described the typical missionary as "narrow, uncharitable, unappreciative, ignorant." In the Harpers article along with another in Cosmopolitan
published in May 1933, Buck rejected the doctrine of original sin
, saying "I believe that most of us start out wanting to do right and to be good." She asserted that belief in the virgin birth
or the divinity of Christ
was not a prerequisite to being a Christian. She said that the only need is to acknowledge that one can't live without Christ and to reflect that in one's life.
Macartney quickly called on the Board of Foreign Missions, under the presidency of Charles Erdman, to denounce Re-Thinking Missions and asked for their response to Buck's statements. Erdman responded that the Board was committed to historic evangelical standards and that they felt that Pearl S. Buck's comments were unfortunate, but he hoped she might yet be won back to the missionary cause. She would eventually resign as a Presbyterian missionary in May.
J. Gresham Machen now published a book arguing that the Board of Foreign Missions was insufficiently evangelical and particularly that its secretary, Robert E. Speer, had refused to require missionaries to subscribe to the Five Fundamentals. In New Brunswick Presbytery, Machen proposed an overture to General Assembly calling on it to ensure that in future, only solidly evangelical Christians be appointed to the Board of Foreign Missions. Machen and Speer faced off in the Presbytery, with Speer arguing that conflict and division were bad for the church — the presbytery agreed and refused to make the recommendation.
Clarence Macartney, however, was able to get a similar motion through the Presbytery of Philadelphia, so the issue came before the General Assembly of 1933. The majority report of the Standing Committee of Foreign Missions affirmed the church's adherence to the Westminster Confession; expressed its confidence that Speer and the Board shared this conviction; and repudiated Re-Thinking Missions. The minority report argued that the Board was not orthodox and proposed a slate of conservatives candidates for the Board. The majority report passed overwhelming.
to truly promote biblical and Presbyterian work. Macartney refused to go along with Machen in setting up an independent missions board.
The 1934 General Assembly declared that the Independent Board violated the Presbyterian constitution and ordered the Board to cease collecting funds within the church and ordered all Presbyterian clergy and laity to sever their connections with the Board or face disciplinary action. (This motion was opposed by both Macartney and Henry Sloane Coffin
as overly harsh.) Less than a month later, New Brunswick Presbytery asked Machen for his response. He replied that General Assembly's actions were illegal and that he would not shut down the Independent Board. The presbytery consequently brought charges against Machen including violation of his ordination vows and renouncing the authority of the church. A trial was held, and in March 1935, he was convicted and suspended from the ministry.
Macartney urged Machen to compromise, but he refused. In June 1935, he set up the Presbyterian Constitutional Covenant Union. In October, the split between Macartney and Machen spread to Westminster Seminary, where the faculty, led by Machen, called on the board of trustees to announce their support of the Independent Board of Foreign Missions and the Covenant Union. Thirteen trustees, including Macartney, refused to do so and resigned in 1936.
Eight ministers, including Machen, were tried in the General Assembly of 1936. They were convicted and removed from the ministry. Machen then led the Presbyterian Constitutional Covenant Union to form a new denomination, the Presbyterian Church of America, later forced to change its name to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
in 1939.
) as a modernist, liberal denomination was secured. However, as of 2010, the denomination is still shrinking. Not all who remained in the PCUSA were modernists or liberals, but those theological conservatives who remained in the denomination were willing to co-exist institutionally with liberals and modernists. In the course of the twentieth century, this commitment to tolerance of divergent opinions within the church would be tested repeatedly over issues such as Christ's role in salvation, the ordination of women
and homosexuals and the church's position on political and social questions, such as temperance
, abortion
, and the state of Israel
. In contrast, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
has largely avoided these controversies because of its position on these issues grows from its traditionalist reading of the Bible.
The dispute between the fundamentalists and modernists would be played out in nearly every Christian denomination. By the 1920s, it was clear that every mainstream Protestant denomination was going to be willing to accommodate modernism, with the exception of the Presbyterians and Southern Baptists, where it was still unclear. When the outcome of the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy brought the Presbyterians into the camp willing to accommodate modernism, this left the Southern Baptists as the only mainstream denomination where fundamentalists were still "in play" within the denomination. Fundamentalists and modernists would continue to struggle within the Southern Baptist Convention and the triumph of fundamentalist views in that denomination would not be secure until the 1970s.
The social tensions and prejudices created by the Fundamentalist-Modernist split would remain very active within American Christianity into the twenty-first century, with modernists
seeing fundamentalists
as intolerant, and fundamentalists seeing modernists as overly willing to compromise with the forces of secularism, abandoning authentic Christianity in the process.
The controversy also sheds some light on the differences between "fundamentalist" and "evangelical
" Christianity: fundamentalists are those like Machen who in the 1920s and 1930s withdrew from the mainstream denominations and educational institutions, advocating separatism as the only way to preserve Christian purity; while evangelicals are more in the spirit of Macartney, seeking to engage the forces of secularism rather than withdrawing. (Harold Ockenga
, founder of the National Association of Evangelicals
, in fact spent time working as assistant pastor under Macartney in Pittsburgh
.)
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America was a Presbyterian denomination in the United States. It was organized in 1789 under the leadership of John Witherspoon in the wake of the American Revolution and existed until 1958 when it merged with the United Presbyterian Church of North...
that later created divisions in most American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Christian denomination
Christian denomination
A Christian denomination is an identifiable religious body under a common name, structure, and doctrine within Christianity. In the Orthodox tradition, Churches are divided often along ethnic and linguistic lines, into separate churches and traditions. Technically, divisions between one group and...
s as well. The major American denomination was torn by conflict over the issues of theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...
and ecclesiology
Ecclesiology
Today, ecclesiology usually refers to the theological study of the Christian church. However when the word was coined in the late 1830s, it was defined as the science of the building and decoration of churches and it is still, though rarely, used in this sense.In its theological sense, ecclesiology...
. Underneath those struggles lay profound concerns about the role of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
in the culture and how that role was to be expressed.
Overview
The Controversy is conventionally dated as beginning in 1922 with a sermon by a well-recognized and articulate spokesman for liberal ProtestantismLiberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
, Harry Emerson Fosdick
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Harry Emerson Fosdick was an American clergyman. He was born in Buffalo, New York. He graduated from Colgate University in 1900, and Union Theological Seminary in 1904. While attending Colgate University he joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1903 at the...
. Fosdick, a liberal Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
preaching by special permission in First Presbyterian Church, New York, delivered his sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" highlighting differences between liberal and conservative Christians. The ending of the controversy was marked by J. Gresham Machen and a number of other conservative Presbyterian theologians and clergy leaving the denomination in 1936 to establish the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Orthodox Presbyterian Church
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church is a conservative Presbyterian denomination located primarily in the United States. It was founded by conservative members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America who strongly objected to the pervasive Modernist theology during the 1930s . Led...
.
Although "Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy" is the term used to describe this major schism in the Presbyterian church, very similar and far-reaching reactions against the growth of liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
also occurred in other major Protestant denominations. At the time of the Controversy, Presbyterians were the fourth-largest Protestant group in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. (The Methodists were the largest, followed by the Baptists and the Lutherans; the Episcopalians
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
were in fifth place.) After considerable internal tensions, every major Protestant denomination came to accommodate liberalism within the denomination, to one degree or another. Often, some disgruntled conservatives left their denomination, some of them establishing smaller denominations with fundamentalist-conservative foundations. Sensitized by what they saw to be successful liberal infiltration into other denominations, in the 1970s Southern Baptist
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...
conservatives began a concerted effort to rid their institutions and leadership of liberal leanings. This resulted in the Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence and occasioned the creation of two new Baptist denominations which accommodate the modernist theological position.
This process resulted in the modern division of Protestant American religious life into mainline Christianity on the one hand and evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
and fundamentalist Christianity
Fundamentalist Christianity
Christian fundamentalism, also known as Fundamentalist Christianity, or Fundamentalism, arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century among evangelical Christians...
on the other. As such, the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy in the Presbyterian Church is part of a wider set of developments in American religious life. However, it also contained many aspects that were continuations of long-term conflicts within American Presbyterianism. Also, the Controversy in the Presbyterian Church received disproportionate attention in the press because of the prominent role played in it by William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
.
The term fundamentalism
Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is strict adherence to specific theological doctrines usually understood as a reaction against Modernist theology. The term "fundamentalism" was originally coined by its supporters to describe a specific package of theological beliefs that developed into a movement within the...
was coined during this Controversy.
The Old-Side–New-Side Split (1741–58) and the Old-School–New-School Split (1838–69)
Schism (religion)
A schism , from Greek σχίσμα, skhísma , is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization or movement religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a break of communion between two sections of Christianity that were previously a single body, or to a division within...
twice in the past, and these divisions were important precursors to the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy. The first was The Old Side-New Side Controversy
The Old Side-New Side Controversy
The Old Side-New Side Controversy occurred within the Presbyterian Church in Colonial America and was part of the wider theological controversy surrounding the First Great Awakening. The Old and New Side Presbyterians existed as separate churches from 1741 until 1758. The name of Old Side-New...
, which occurred during the First Great Awakening
First Great Awakening
The First Awakening was a Christian revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, and especially the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal...
, and resulted in the Presbyterian Church in 1741 being divided into an Old Side and New Side. The two churches reunified in 1758. The second was the Old School-New School Controversy
Old School-New School Controversy
The Old School-New School Controversy was a schism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America which began in 1837. Later, both the Old School and New School branches further split over the issue of slavery, into southern and northern churches...
, which occurred in the wake of the Second Great Awakening
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Christian revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1800, had begun to gain momentum by 1820, and was in decline by 1870. The Second Great Awakening expressed Arminian theology, by which every person could be...
and which saw the Presbyterian Church split into two denominations starting in 1836-38. Each of these denominations in turn split into northern and southern halves over the issue of slavery. It was not until 1869-70 that the New School and Old School were reunited in the north to form the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
Although those Controversies involved many issues, the overarching issue had to do with the nature of church authority and the authority of the Westminster Confession of Faith
Westminster Confession of Faith
The Westminster Confession of Faith is a Reformed confession of faith, in the Calvinist theological tradition. Although drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly, largely of the Church of England, it became and remains the 'subordinate standard' of doctrine in the Church of Scotland, and has been...
. The New Side/New School opposed a rigid interpretation of the Westminster Confession. Rather they preferred an emotional style of religion that made use of revival techniques. They were much more likely to ordain as clergy men who had not received a university education; were more lax in the degree of subscription to the Westminster Confession they required; and were generally opposed to using heresy
Christian heresy
Christian heresy refers to non-orthodox practices and beliefs that were deemed to be heretical by one or more of the Christian churches. In Western Christianity, the term "heresy" most commonly refers to those beliefs which were declared to be anathema by the Catholic Church prior to the schism of...
trials
Trial (law)
In law, a trial is when parties to a dispute come together to present information in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court...
as a means to ensure the orthodoxy
Orthodoxy
The word orthodox, from Greek orthos + doxa , is generally used to mean the adherence to accepted norms, more specifically to creeds, especially in religion...
of the clergy
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
. They accused the Old Side/Old School of being dry formalists who fetishized the Westminster Confession and Calvinism
Calvinism
Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
at the expense of an emotional encounter with the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
mediated by the Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit
Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
. The Old Side/Old School responded that the Westminster Confession was the foundational constitutional document of the Presbyterian Church and that, since the Confession was simply a summary of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
's teachings, the church had a responsibility to ensure that its ministers' preaching was in line with the Confession. They accused the New Side/New School of being much too lax about the purity of the church, and willing to allow Arminianism
Arminianism
Arminianism is a school of soteriological thought within Protestant Christianity based on the theological ideas of the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius and his historic followers, the Remonstrants...
, unitarianism
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
, and other errors to be taught in the Presbyterian Church. They criticized the New Side/School's revivals as being emotionally manipulative and shallow. Another major division had to do with their attitude towards other denominations: New Siders/Schoolers were willing to set up parachurch ministries to conduct evangelism
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
and missions
Mission (Christian)
Christian missionary activities often involve sending individuals and groups , to foreign countries and to places in their own homeland. This has frequently involved not only evangelization , but also humanitarian work, especially among the poor and disadvantaged...
and were willing to cooperate with non-Presbyterians in doing so. The Old Siders/Schoolers felt that evangelism and missions should be conducted through agencies managed by the denomination and not involving outsiders, since this would involve a watering down of the church's theological distinctives. The two sides also had different attitudes towards their seminary
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
professors: Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church located in the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey in the United States...
, the leading institution of the Old School, demanded credal subscription and dedicated a large part of its academic efforts to the defense of Calvinist Orthodoxy; while the New School's Union Theological Seminary
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a preeminent independent graduate school of theology, located in Manhattan between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, 120th to 122nd Streets. The seminary was founded in 1836 under the Presbyterian Church, and is affiliated with nearby Columbia...
was more willing to allow non-Presbyterians to teach at the school and was more broadminded in its academic output.
The rise of Higher Criticism and the Briggs Affair, 1880–93
American Presbyterians first became aware of Higher Criticism (a.k.a. the Historical-Critical method) as a development of the German academy. Between 1829 and 1850, the Princeton Review, the leading Old School theological journal under the editorship of Charles HodgeCharles Hodge
Charles Hodge was the principal of Princeton Theological Seminary between 1851 and 1878. A Presbyterian theologian, he was a leading exponent of historical Calvinism in America during the 19th century. He was deeply rooted in the Scottish philosophy of Common Sense Realism...
published 70 articles against higher criticism, and the number increased in the years after 1850. However, it was not until the years after 1880 that Higher Criticism really had any advocates within American seminaries. But when Higher Criticism did arrive, it arrived in force.
Charles Augustus Briggs
Charles Augustus Briggs , American Presbyterian scholar and theologian, was born in New York City, the son of Alanson Briggs and Sarah Mead Berrian...
, who had studied Higher Criticism in Germany (in 1866). His inaugural address upon being made Professor of Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew language
Biblical Hebrew , also called Classical Hebrew , is the archaic form of the Hebrew language, a Canaanite Semitic language spoken in the area known as Canaan between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Biblical Hebrew is attested from about the 10th century BCE, and persisted through...
at Union Theological Seminary in 1876 was the first salvo of Higher Criticism within American Presbyterianism. Briggs was active in founding The Presbyterian Review in 1880, with A. A. Hodge
Archibald Alexander Hodge
Archibald Alexander Hodge , an American Presbyterian leader, was the principal of Princeton Seminary between 1878 and 1886...
, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, initially serving as Briggs' co-editor. In 1881, Briggs published an article in defense of W. Robertson Smith
William Robertson Smith
William Robertson Smith was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica...
which led to a series of responses and counter-responses between Briggs and the Princeton theologians
Princeton theologians
The Princeton theology is a tradition of conservative, Christian, Reformed and Presbyterian theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The appellation has special reference to certain theologians, from Archibald Alexander to B.B...
in the pages of The Presbyterian Review. In 1889, B. B. Warfield became co-editor and refused to publish one of Briggs' articles, a key turning point.
In 1891, Briggs was appointed as Union's first-ever Professor of Biblical Theology
Biblical Theology
Biblical theology is a discipline within Christian theology which studies the Bible from the perspective of understanding the progressive history of God revealing Himself to humanity following the Fall and throughout the Old Testament and New Testament...
. His inaugural address, entitled "The Authority of Holy Scripture", proved to be highly controversial. Whereas previously, Higher Criticism had seemed a fairly technical, scholarly issue, Briggs now spelt out its full implications. In this address, he announced that Higher Criticism had now definitively proven that Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
did not write the Pentateuch; that Ezra
Ezra
Ezra , also called Ezra the Scribe and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra. According to the Hebrew Bible he returned from the Babylonian exile and reintroduced the Torah in Jerusalem...
did not write Ezra, Chronicles
Books of Chronicles
The Books of Chronicles are part of the Hebrew Bible. In the Masoretic Text, it appears as the first or last book of the Ketuvim . Chronicles largely parallels the Davidic narratives in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings...
or Nehemiah
Book of Nehemiah
The Book of Nehemiah is a book of the Hebrew Bible. Told largely in the form of a first-person memoir, it concerns the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah, a Jew who is a high official at the Persian court, and the dedication of the city and its people to God's laws...
; Jeremiah
Jeremiah
Jeremiah Hebrew：יִרְמְיָה , Modern Hebrew:Yirməyāhū, IPA: jirməˈjaːhu, Tiberian:Yirmĭyahu, Greek:Ἰερεμίας), meaning "Yahweh exalts", or called the "Weeping prophet" was one of the main prophets of the Hebrew Bible...
did not write the books of Kings
Books of Kings
The Book of Kings presents a narrative history of ancient Israel and Judah from the death of David to the release of his successor Jehoiachin from imprisonment in Babylon, a period of some 400 years...
or the Lamentations
Book of Lamentations
The Book of Lamentations ) is a poetic book of the Hebrew Bible composed by the Jewish prophet Jeremiah. It mourns the destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple in the 6th Century BCE....
; David
David
David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
only wrote a few of the Psalms
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...
; Solomon
Solomon
Solomon , according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before...
did not write the Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
The Song of Songs of Solomon, commonly referred to as Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible—one of the megillot —found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim...
or Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes
The Book of Ecclesiastes, called , is a book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name derives from the Greek translation of the Hebrew title.The main speaker in the book, identified by the name or title Qoheleth , introduces himself as "son of David, king in Jerusalem." The work consists of personal...
and only a few Proverbs
Book of Proverbs
The Book of Proverbs , commonly referred to simply as Proverbs, is a book of the Hebrew Bible.The original Hebrew title of the book of Proverbs is "Míshlê Shlomoh" . When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms. In the Greek Septuagint the title became "paroimai paroimiae"...
; and Isaiah
Isaiah
Isaiah ; Greek: ', Ēsaïās ; "Yahu is salvation") was a prophet in the 8th-century BC Kingdom of Judah.Jews and Christians consider the Book of Isaiah a part of their Biblical canon; he is the first listed of the neviim akharonim, the later prophets. Many of the New Testament teachings of Jesus...
did not write half of the book of Isaiah
Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, preceding the books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve...
. The Old Testament was merely a historical record, and one which showed man in a lower state of moral development, with modern man having progressed morally far beyond Noah
Noah
Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...
, Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
, Jacob
Jacob
Jacob "heel" or "leg-puller"), also later known as Israel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur'an was the third patriarch of the Hebrew people with whom God made a covenant, and ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his descendants.In the...
, Judah
Judah (Biblical figure)
Judah was, according to the Book of Genesis, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah, and the founder of the Israelite Tribe of Judah. Biblical scholars, such as J. A...
, David, and Solomon. At any rate, the Scriptures as a whole are riddled with errors and the doctrine of scriptural inerrancy
Biblical inerrancy
Biblical inerrancy is the doctrinal position that the Bible is accurate and totally free of error, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact." Some equate inerrancy with infallibility; others do not.Conservative Christians generally believe that...
taught at Princeton Theological Seminary "is a ghost of modern evangelicalism to frighten children." Not only is the Westminster Confession wrong, but the very foundation of the Confession, the Bible, could not be used to create theological absolutes. He now called on other rationalists in the denomination to join him in sweeping away the dead orthodoxy of the past and work for the unity of the entire church.
The inaugural address provoked widespread outrage in the denomination, and led Old Schoolers in the denomination to move against him, with Francis Landey Patton
Francis Landey Patton
Francis Landey Patton , American educationalist and theologian, and the twelfth president of Princeton University.-Background, 1843-1871:He was born in Warwick Parish, Bermuda and attended Warwick Academy...
taking the lead. Under the terms of the reunion of 1869, General Assembly had the right to veto all appointments to seminary professorships, so, at the 1891 General Assembly, held in Detroit, Old Schoolers successfully got through a motion to veto Briggs' appointment, which passed by a vote of 449-60. The faculty of Union Theological Seminary, however, refused to remove Briggs, saying that it would be a violation of scholarly freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
. In October 1892, the faculty would vote to withdraw from the denomination.
In the meantime, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
Presbytery brought heresy charges against Briggs, but these were defeated by a vote of 94-39. The committee that had brought the charges then appealed to the 1892 General Assembly, held in Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
. The General Assembly responded with its famous "Portland Deliverance", affirming that the Presbyterian Church holds that the Bible is without error and that ministers who believe otherwise should withdraw from the ministry. Briggs' case was remanded to New York Presbytery, which conducted a second heresy trial for Briggs in late 1892, and in early 1893 again found Briggs not guilty of heresy. Again Briggs' opponents appealed to General Assembly, which in 1893 was held in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
This time, General Assembly voted to overturn the New York decision and declared Briggs guilty of heresy. He was de-frocked as a result (though only briefly, since in 1899 the Episcopal bishop of New York
Episcopal Diocese of New York
The Episcopal Diocese of New York is a diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, encompassing the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island in New York City, and the New York state counties of Westchester, Rockland, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Sullivan, and...
, Henry Codman Potter
Henry Codman Potter
Henry Codman Potter was a bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States. He was the seventh Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.-Life:...
, ordained him as an Episcopal priest.)
The aftermath of the Briggs Affair, 1893–1900
There was no subsequent attempt to ferret out followers of Higher Criticism in the years following the Portland Deliverance and the de-frocking of Briggs. Most followers of Higher Criticism were like the 87 clergymen who had signed the Plea for Peace and Work manifesto drafted by Henry van DykeHenry van Dyke
Henry Jackson van Dyke was an American author, educator, and clergyman.-Biography:Henry van Dyke was born on November 11, 1852 in Germantown, Pennsylvania in the United States....
, which argued that all these heresy trials were bad for the church and that the church should be less concerned with theories about inerrancy and more concerned with getting on with its spiritual work. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that most clergymen in the period took this moderate view, being willing to tolerate Higher Criticism within the church, either because they were open to the points Higher Criticism was making or because they wanted to avoid the distraction and dissension of heresy trials. For many, this came out of the traditional New School resistance to heresy trials and the rigid imposition of the Confession.
There were two further heresy trials in subsequent years, which would be the last major heresy trials in the history of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. In late 1892, Henry Preserved Smith
Henry Preserved Smith
Henry Preserved Smith , was an American Biblical scholar.Smith was born in Troy, Ohio. He graduated at Amherst College in 1869 and studied theology in Lane Theological Seminary in 1869–1872, in Berlin in 1872–1874 and in Leipzig in 1876–1877...
, Professor of Old Testament at Lane Theological Seminary
Lane Theological Seminary
Lane Theological Seminary was established in the Walnut Hills section of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1829 to educate Presbyterian ministers. It was named in honor of Ebenezer and William Lane, who pledged $4,000 for the new school, which was seen as a forward outpost of the Presbyterian Church in the...
, was convicted of heresy by the Presbytery of Cincinnati for teaching that there were errors in the Bible, and, upon appeal, his conviction was upheld by the General Assembly of 1894.
In 1898, Union Theological Seminary Professor of Church History Arthur Cushman McGiffert
Arthur Cushman McGiffert
Arthur Cushman McGiffert , American theologian, was born in Sauquoit, New York, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman of Scots-Irish descent....
was tried by New York Presbytery, which condemned certain portions of his book A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, but declined to apply sanctions. This decision was appealed to General Assembly, but McGiffert quietly resigned from the denomination and the charges were withdrawn.
The movement to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith, 1900–1910
Henry van DykeHenry van Dyke
Henry Jackson van Dyke was an American author, educator, and clergyman.-Biography:Henry van Dyke was born on November 11, 1852 in Germantown, Pennsylvania in the United States....
, a modernist who had been a major supporter of Briggs in 1893, now headed a movement of modernists and New Schoolers to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith. Since 1889, Van Dyke had been calling for credal revision, to affirm that all dying infants (not just elect
Chosen people
Throughout history and even today various groups of people have considered themselves as chosen by a deity for some purpose such as to act as the deity's agent on earth. In monotheistic faiths, like Abrahamic religions, references to God are used in constructs such as "God's Chosen People"...
dying infants) go to heaven; to say that God loved the whole world (not just the elect); and to affirm that Christ atoned for all mankind, not just the elect. In 1901, he chaired a 25-man committee (with a New School majority). Also in 1901, he drew up a non-binding summary of the church's faith. It mentioned neither biblical inerrancy nor reprobation
Reprobation
Reprobation, in Christian theology, is a corollary to the Calvinistic doctrine of unconditional election which derives that some of mankind are predestined by God for salvation. Therefore, the remainder are left bound to their fallen nature and certain damnation. This same state of unbelief is...
; affirmed God's love of all mankind; and denied that the Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
was the Antichrist
Antichrist
The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...
. This was adopted by General Assembly in 1902 and ratified by the presbyteries in 1904.
As a result of these changes, the Arminian-leaning Cumberland Presbyterian Church
Cumberland Presbyterian Church
The Cumberland Presbyterian Church is a Presbyterian Christian denomination spawned by the Second Great Awakening. In 2007, it had an active membership of less than 50,000 and about 800 congregations, the majority of which are concentrated in the United States...
petitioned for reunification, and in 1906, over 1000 Cumberland Presbyterian ministers joined the Presbyterian Church in the USA. The arrival of so many liberal ministers strengthened the New School's position in the church.
The Doctrinal Deliverance of 1910 (a.k.a. The Five Fundamentals)
In 1909, there was heated debate in the New York Presbytery about whether or not to ordain three men who refused to assent to the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus. (They did not deny the doctrine outright, just said that they were not prepared to affirm it.) The majority eventually ordained the men; the minority complained to the General Assembly and it was this complaint that would form the basis of the subsequent controversy.Under the order of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, General Assembly was not authorized to accept or dismiss this complaint. It should have demitted the complaint to the presbytery, and could have done so with instructions that the presbytery hold a heresy trial. The result of this trial could then be appealed to the Synod of New York and from there to the General Assembly. However, the 1910 General Assembly, acting outside its scope of authority, dismissed the complaint against the three men and at the same time instructed its Committee on Bills and Overtures to prepare a statement for governing future ordinations. This was a major departure from standard procedure since under the presbyterian system, General Assembly is a court
Court
A court is a form of tribunal, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law...
, not a legislative body. Nevertheless, the committee reported, and the General Assembly passed the Doctrinal Deliverance of 1910. This Deliverance declared that five doctrines were "necessary and essential" to the Christian faith:
- The inspirationBiblical inspirationBiblical inspiration is the doctrine in Christian theology that the authors and editors of the Bible were led or influenced by God with the result that their writings many be designated in some sense the word of God.- Etymology :...
of the BibleBibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
by the Holy SpiritHoly SpiritHoly Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, but understood differently in the main Abrahamic religions.While the general concept of a "Spirit" that permeates the cosmos has been used in various religions Holy Spirit is a term introduced in English translations of...
and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this. - The virgin birth of Christ.
- The belief that Christ's death was an atonement for sin.
- The bodily resurrection of Christ.
- The historical reality of Christ's miracles.
These five propositions would become known to history as the "Five Fundamentals" and by the late 1910s, theological conservatives rallying around the Five Fundamentals came to be known as "fundamentalists."
The Fundamentals and "Back to Fundamentals"
Lyman Stewart
Lyman Stewart was a U.S. businessman and cofounder of Union Oil, which eventually became Unocal. Stewart was also a significant Christian philanthropist and cofounder of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles...
, the founder of Union Oil and a proponent of dispensationalism
Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism is a nineteenth-century evangelical development based on a futurist biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive "dispensations" or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants.As a system,...
as taught in the newly-published Scofield Reference Bible
Scofield Reference Bible
The Scofield Reference Bible is a widely circulated study Bible edited and annotated by the American Bible student Cyrus I. Scofield, that popularized dispensationalism at the beginning of the 20th century...
, decided to use his wealth to sponsor a series of pamphlets to be entitled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth
The Fundamentals
The Fundamentals or The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth edited by A. C. Dixon and later by Reuben Archer Torrey is a set of 90 essays in 12 volumes published from 1910 to 1915 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. They were designed to affirm orthodox Protestant beliefs and defend against...
. These twelve pamphlets, published between 1910 and 1915 eventually included 90 essays written by 64 authors from several denominations. The series was conservative and critical of Higher Criticism, but also broad in its approach, and the scholars who contributed articles included several Presbyterian moderates who would later be opposed to "fundamentalism", such as Charles R. Erdman, Sr. and Robert Elliott Speer
Robert Elliott Speer
Robert Elliott Speer was an American religious leader and authority on missions.He was born at Huntingdon, Pa., graduated from Phillips Academy in 1886 and from Princeton in 1889, and studied at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1890-91. In 1891 he was appointed secretary of the American...
. It was apparently from the title of these pamphlets that the term "fundamentalist" was coined, with our first reference to the term being an article by Northern Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws.
In 1915, the conservative magazine The Presbyterian published a conservative manifesto that had been in circulation within the denomination entitled "Back to Fundamentals". Liberal Presbyterian magazines replied that if conservatives wanted a fight, they should bring heresy charges in the church's courts or else keep quiet. No charges were brought.
It is worth pointing out that the only people who actually embraced the name "fundamentalist" during the 1910s were committed dispensationalists, who elevated the premillennial return of Christ to the status of a fundamental of the Christian faith. None of the "fundamentalist" leaders (i.e. Machen, Van Til, Macartney) in the Presbyterian Church were dispensationalists.
Ecumenism, 1908–21
Several leading Presbyterians, notably Robert E. Speer, played a role in founding the Federal Council of Churches in 1908. This organization (which received 5% of its first year's budget from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. was a major philanthropist and a pivotal member of the prominent Rockefeller family. He was the sole son among the five children of businessman and Standard Oil industrialist John D. Rockefeller and the father of the five famous Rockefeller brothers...
) was heavily associated with the Social Gospel
Social Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...
, and with the Progressive
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...
movement more broadly. The Council's Social Creed of the Churches was adopted by the Presbyterian Church in 1910, but conservatives in General Assembly were able to resist endorsing most of the Council's specific proposals, except for those calling for Prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
and sabbath laws
Blue law
A blue law is a type of law, typically found in the United States and, formerly, in Canada, designed to enforce religious standards, particularly the observance of Sunday as a day of worship or rest, and a restriction on Sunday shopping...
.
In response to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, the FCC established the General War-Time Commission to coordinate the work of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish programs related to the war and work closely with the Department of War
United States Department of War
The United States Department of War, also called the War Department , was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army...
. It was chaired by Speer and liberal Union Theological Seminary professor William Adams Brown. Following the war, they worked hard to build on this legacy of unity. The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions consequently called for a meeting of Protestant leaders on the topic and in early 1919 the Interchurch World Movement (IWM) was established with John Mott
John Mott
John Raleigh Mott was a long-serving leader of the YMCA and the World Student Christian Federation...
as its chairman. The Executive Committee of the Presbyterian Church offered millions of dollars worth of support to help the IWM with fundraising. When the IWM collapsed financially, the denomination was on the hook for millions of dollars.
However the debate between modernists and conservatives over the issue of the IWM was small compared to the Church Union debate. In 1919, the General Assembly sent a delegation to a national ecumenical convention that was proposing church union, and in 1920, General Assembly approved a recommendation which included "organic union" with 17 other denominations - the new organization, to be known as the United Churches of Christ in America, would be a sort of "federal government" for member churches: denominations would maintain their distinctive internal identities, but the broader organization would be in charge of things like missions and lobbying for things like prohibition. Under the terms of presbyterian polity
Presbyterian polity
Presbyterian polity is a method of church governance typified by the rule of assemblies of presbyters, or elders. Each local church is governed by a body of elected elders usually called the session or consistory, though other terms, such as church board, may apply...
, the measure would have to be approved by the presbyteries to take effect.
The plans for Church Union were roundly denounced by the Old School Princeton Theological Seminary faculty. It was at this point in 1920 that Princeton professor J. Gresham Machen first gained prominence within the denomination as a fundamentalist
Fundamentalist Christianity
Christian fundamentalism, also known as Fundamentalist Christianity, or Fundamentalism, arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century among evangelical Christians...
opponent of Church Union, which he argued would destroy Presbyterian distinctives, and effectively cede control of the denomination to modernists and their New School allies. However, chinks were starting to show in the Princeton faculty's armor. Charles Erdman and the president of the seminary, William Robinson, came out in favor of the union.
Ultimately, the presbyteries defeated church union by a vote of 150-100 in 1921.
"Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" (1922)
The splits between fundamentalists and modernists had been bubbling in the Presbyterian Church for some time. The event which was to bring the issue to a head was Harry Emerson FosdickHarry Emerson Fosdick
Harry Emerson Fosdick was an American clergyman. He was born in Buffalo, New York. He graduated from Colgate University in 1900, and Union Theological Seminary in 1904. While attending Colgate University he joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1903 at the...
's sermon of May 21, 1922, "“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”" Fosdick was ordained as a Baptist, but had been given special permission to preach in First Presbyterian Church in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Substitutionary atonement
Technically speaking, substitutionary atonement is the name given to a number of Christian models of the atonement that all regard Jesus as dying as a substitute for others, "instead of" them...
, or the literal second coming of Christ in the light of modern science. Given the different points of view within the church, only tolerance and liberty could allow for these different perspectives to co-exist in the church.
Fosdick's sermon was re-packaged as "The New Knowledge and the Christian Faith" and quickly published in three religious journals, and then distributed as a pamphlet to every Protestant clergyman in the country.
Conservative Clarence E. Macartney
Clarence E. Macartney
Clarence Edward Noble Macartney was a prominent conservative Presbyterian pastor and author. With J...
, pastor of Arch Street Presbyterian Church
Arch Street Presbyterian Church
Arch Street Presbyterian Church is a historic church at 1726-1732 Arch Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.It was built in 1855 and added to the National Register in 1971....
in Philadelphia, responded to Fosdick with a sermon of his own, entitled "Shall Unbelief Win?" which was quickly published in a pamphlet. He argued that liberalism had been progressively "secularizing" the church and, if left unchecked, would lead to "a Christianity of opinions and principles and good purposes, but a Christianity without worship, without God, and without Jesus Christ."
Led by Macartney, the Presbytery of Philadelphia requested that the General Assembly direct the Presbytery of New York to take such actions as to ensure that the teaching and preaching in the First Presbyterian Church of New York City conform to the Westminster Confession of Faith. This request would lead to over a decade of bitter wrangling in the Presbyterian Church.
Background: Darwinism and Christianity
A giant of Old School Presbyterianism at Princeton, Charles HodgeCharles Hodge
Charles Hodge was the principal of Princeton Theological Seminary between 1851 and 1878. A Presbyterian theologian, he was a leading exponent of historical Calvinism in America during the 19th century. He was deeply rooted in the Scottish philosophy of Common Sense Realism...
, was one of the few Presbyterian controversialists to turn their guns on Darwinism
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
prior to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Hodge published his What is Darwinism? in 1874, three years after The Descent of Man was published, and argued that Darwin's system could not be reconciled with biblical Christianity.
Most churchmen, however, took a far more prosaic attitude. In the early period, it must have appeared far from clear that Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's theory of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
would come to be hegemonic among scientists, as refutations and alternate systems were still being proposed and debated. Then, when evolution became widely accepted, most churchmen were far less concerned with refuting it than they were with establishing schemes whereby Darwinism could be reconciled with Christianity. This was true even among prominent Old Schoolers at Princeton Theological Seminary such as Charles Hodge's successors A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield who came to endorse the ideas now described as theistic evolution
Theistic evolution
Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution...
.
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
, a former lawyer who was also a Presbyterian ruling elder, was elected to Congress in 1890, then became the Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
presidential
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
candidate for three unsuccessful presidential bids in 1896
United States presidential election, 1896
The United States presidential election held on November 3, 1896, saw Republican William McKinley defeat Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a campaign considered by political scientists to be one of the most dramatic and complex in American history....
, 1900
United States presidential election, 1900
The United States presidential election of 1900 was a re-match of the 1896 race between Republican President William McKinley and his Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan. The return of economic prosperity and recent victory in the Spanish–American War helped McKinley to score a decisive...
, and 1908
United States presidential election, 1908
The United States presidential election of 1908 was held on November 3, 1908. Popular incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt, honoring a promise not to seek a third term, persuaded the Republican Party to nominate William Howard Taft, his close friend and Secretary of War, to become his successor...
. After his 1900 defeat, Bryan re-examined his life and concluded that he had let his passion for politics obscure his calling as a Christian. Beginning in 1900, he began lecturing on the Chautauqua
Chautauqua
Chautauqua was an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with...
circuit, where his speeches often involved religious as well as political themes. For the next 25 years until his death, Bryan was one of the most popular Chautauqua lecturers and he spoke in front of hundreds of thousands of people.
By 1905, Bryan had concluded that Darwinism and the modernism of Higher Criticism were allies in promoting liberalism within the church, thereby in his view undermining the foundations of Christianity. In lectures from 1905, Bryan spoke out against the spread of Darwinism, which he characterized as involving "the operation of the law of hate - the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak", and warned that it could undermine the foundations of morality. In 1913 he became Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
's secretary of state
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
, then resigned in 1915 because he believed that the Woodrow administration was about to enter World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in response to the sinking of the RMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship entered passenger service with the Cunard Line on 26 August 1907 and continued on the line's heavily-traveled passenger service between Liverpool, England and New...
and he opposed American intervention in a European war.
When the US did finally join World War I in 1917, Bryan volunteered for the army, though he was never allowed to enlist. At a time of widespread revulsion at alleged German atrocities, Bryan linked evolution to Germany, and claimed that Darwinism provided a justification for the strong to dominate the weak and was therefore the source of German militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
. He drew on reports by the entomologist Vernon Kellogg
Vernon Lyman Kellogg
Vernon Myman Lyman Kellogg was a U.S. entomologist, evolutionary biologist, and science administrator....
of German officers discussing the Darwinian rationale for their declaration of war, and the sociologist
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
Benjamin Kidd
Benjamin Kidd
Benjamin Kidd was a British sociologist. He entered the British civil service and did not become generally known until the publication of an essay, Social Evolution, in 1894...
's book The Science of Power which contended that Nietzsche's philosophy
Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche developed his philosophy during the late 19th century amid growing criticism of G. W. F. Hegel's philosophic system.Nietzsche owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and admitted that Schopenhauer was...
represented an interpretation of Darwinism, to conclude that Nietzsche's and Darwin's ideas were the impetus for German nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and militarism. Bryan argued that Germany's militarism and "barbarism" came from their belief that the "struggle for survival" described in Darwin's On the Origin of the Species applied to nations as well as to individuals, and that "The same science that manufactured poisonous gases to suffocate soldiers is preaching that man has a brute ancestry and eliminating the miraculous and the supernatural from the Bible."
Bryan was, in essence, fighting what would later be called social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
, social and economic ideas owing as much to Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
and Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent....
as to Darwin, and viewed by modern biologists as a misuse of his theory. Germany, or so Bryan's argument ran, had replaced Christ's teachings with Nietzsche's philosophy based on ideas of survival of the fittest
Survival of the fittest
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase originating in evolutionary theory, as an alternative description of Natural selection. The phrase is today commonly used in contexts that are incompatible with the original meaning as intended by its first two proponents: British polymath philosopher Herbert...
, and the implication was that America would suffer the same fate if unchecked. This fear was reinforced by the report of the psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
James H. Leuba
James H. Leuba
James Henry Leuba was an American psychologist, best known for his contributions to the psychology of religion. His work in this area is marked by a reductionistic tendency to explain mysticism and other religious experiences in physiological terms. Philosophically, his position may be described...
's 1916 study indicating that a considerable number of college students lost their faith during the four years they spent in college.
Bryan launched his campaign against Darwinism in 1921 when he was invited to give the James Sprunt Lectures at Virginia's Union Theological Seminary
Union Theological Seminary & Presbyterian School of Christian Education
Union Presbyterian Seminary, located on the near north side of the city of Richmond, Virginia, is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church...
. At the end of one, The Menace of Darwinism, he said that "Darwinism is not a science at all; it is a string of guesses strung together" and that there is more science in the Bible's "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature...." than in all of Darwin. These lectures were published and became a national bestseller.
Now that Bryan had linked Darwinism and Higher Criticism as the twin evils facing the Presbyterian Church, Harry Emerson Fosdick responded by defending Darwinism, as well as Higher Criticism, from Bryan's attack. In the early 1920s, Bryan and Fosdick squared off against each other in a series of articles and replies in the pages of the New York Times.
The General Assembly of 1923
In these circumstances, when General Assembly met in 1923 in IndianapolisIndianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
, Bryan was determined to strike against Darwinism and against Fosdick, so he organized a campaign to have himself elected as Moderator of the General Assembly
Moderator of the General Assembly
The Moderator of the General Assembly is the chairperson of a General Assembly, the highest court of a presbyterian or reformed church. Kirk Sessions and Presbyteries may also style the chairperson as moderator....
. He lost the election by a vote of 451-427 to the Rev. Charles F. Wishart, president of the College of Wooster, a strong proponent of allowing evolution to be taught at Presbyterian-run colleges and universities.
Undaunted, Bryan took to opposing Darwinism on the floor of the General Assembly, the first time General Assembly had debated the matter. He proposed a resolution that the denomination should cease payments to any school, college, or university where Darwinism was taught. Opponents argued that there were plenty of Christians in the church who believed in evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
. Ultimately, Bryan could not convince even Machen to back his position, and the Assembly simply approved a resolution condemning materialistic (as opposed to theistic) evolutionary philosophy.
The major question dealt with at the General Assembly of 1923 was not, however, Darwinism. It was the question of what to do about Harry Emerson Fosdick and his provocative sermon of the previous year. The Committee on Bills and Overtures recommended that the assembly declare its continuing commitment to the Westminster Confession, but leave the matter to New York Presbytery, which was investigating. The Committee's minority report recommended a declaration re-affirming the denomination's commitment to the Five Fundamentals of 1910 and to require New York Presbytery to force First Presbyterian Church to conform to the Westminster Confession. A fiery debate ensued, with Bryan initially seeking a compromise to drop the prosecution of Fosdick in exchange for a reaffirmation of the Five Fundamentals. When this proved impossible, he lobbied intensely for the minority report, and was successful in having the minority report adopted by a vote of 439-359.
Even before the end of General Assembly, this decision was controversial. 85 commissioners filed an official protest, arguing that the Fosdick case was not properly before the General Assembly, and that, as the General Assembly was a court, not a legislative body, the Five Fundamentals could not be imposed upon church officers without violating the constitution of the church. At the same time, Henry Sloane Coffin
Henry Sloane Coffin
Henry Sloane Coffin was president of the Union Theological Seminary, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA, and one of the most famous ministers in the U.S...
of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City issued a statement saying that he did not accept the Five Fundamentals and that if Fosdick were removed from his pulpit, they would need to get rid of him too.
The Auburn Affirmation (1923–24)
Even before the General Assembly of 1923, Robert Hastings Nichols, a history professor at Auburn Theological SeminaryAuburn Theological Seminary
Auburn Theological Seminary was founded in 1818. Auburn Theological Seminary focuses on religious leadership development, movement-building, and research. Auburn is based in New York City and exists in covenant with the Presbyterian Church ....
was circulating a paper in which he argued that the Old School-New School reunion of 1870 and the merger with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of 1906 had created a church specifically designed to accommodate doctrinal diversity.
Two weeks after the General Assembly of 1923, 36 clergymen met in Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
, and, using Nichols' paper as a base, ultimately issued a declaration known to history as the Auburn Affirmation
Auburn Affirmation
The Auburn Affirmation was a document dated May 1924, with the title "AN AFFIRMATION designed to safeguard the unity and liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America", authored by an eleven-member Conference Committee and signed by 1274 ministers of the PCUSA...
.
The Auburn Affirmation opened by affirming the Westminster Confession of Faith, but argued that within American Presbyterianism, there had been a long tradition of freedom of interpretation of the Scriptures and the Confession. General Assembly's issuance of the Five Fundamentals not only eroded this tradition, but it flew in the face of the Presbyterian Church's constitution, which required all doctrinal changes be approved by the presbyteries. While some members of the church could regard the Five Fundamentals as a satisfactory explanation of Scriptures and the Confession, there were others who could not, and therefore, the Presbyteries should be free to hold to whatever theories they saw fit in interpreting Scripture and the Confession.
The Auburn Affirmation was circulated beginning in November 1923 and ultimately signed by 174 clergymen. In January 1924, it was released to the press, along with the names of 150 signatories.
Conservative activities prior to the 1924 General Assembly
The most significant conservative preparation for the General Assembly of 1924 actually occurred slightly before the 1923 General Assembly. This was the publication of J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism. In this book, Machen argued that liberalism, far from being a set of teachings that could be accommodated within the church, was in fact antithetical to the principles of Christianity and was currently engaged in a struggle against historic Christianity.Liberal activities prior to the 1924 General Assembly
New York Presbytery, which had been ordered by General Assembly to deal with Fosdick, adopted a report that essentially exonerated Fosdick of any wrongdoing.In June 1923, New York Presbytery ordained two men — Henry P. Van Dusen and Cedric O. Lehman — who refused to affirm the virgin birth.
On December 31, 1923, Henry van Dyke publicly relinquished his pew at First Presbyterian Church, Princeton as a protest against Machen's fundamentalist preaching. Van Dyke would ultimately return to his pew in December 1924 when Charles Erdman replaced Machen in the pulpit.
In May 1924, the Auburn Affirmation was republished, along with supplementary materials, and now listing 1,274 signatories.
Convening the Assembly
General Assembly met in Grand Rapids, MichiganGrand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...
in May 1924. During the campaign for moderator, William Jennings Bryan threw his weight behind Clarence E. Macartney (the Philadelphia minister who was instrumental in bringing charges against Fosdick), who narrowly beat out moderate Princeton Theological Seminary faculty member Charles Erdman by a vote of 464-446. Macartney named Bryan his vice-moderator.
No action was taken at this General Assembly about the Auburn Affirmation. The ordination of Van Dusen and Lehman was referred to the Synod of New York for "appropriate action."
On the question of Harry Fosdick, moderates in 1924 steered debate away from his theology and towards matter of polity. As Fosdick was a Baptist, General Assembly instructed First Presbyterian Church, New York to invite Fosdick to join the Presbyterian Church, and if he would not, to get rid of him. Fosdick refused to join the Presbyterian Church and ultimately resigned from his post at First Presbyterian Church in October.
The General Assembly of 1925
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
, the denomination seemed determined to put the Fosdick controversy behind them. Charles R. Erdman was elected as moderator, which was widely seen as a blow against the fundamentalists. Erdman, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, had been engaged in a series of debates with J. Gresham Machen and Clarence Macartney throughout the year, and in spring 1925, he was ousted as Princeton Seminary's student advisor for being insufficiently enthusiastic about the League of Evangelical Students, set up as a counterweight to more liberal intervarsity organizations. Erdman was himself theologically conservative, but was more concerned with pursuing "purity and peace and progress" (his slogan during the election for moderator) than he was with combatting liberalism. Machen felt that men like Erdman would ultimately be responsible for agnostic Modernism triumphing in the Presbyterian Church.
It seemed to many observers that the licensing of Van Dusen and Lehman was likely to cause a split in the church. General Assembly required all candidates to the ministry to affirm the virgin birth and returned the matter to New York Presbytery for proper proceedings. In response, the New York commissioners, led by Henry Sloane Coffin protested that General Assembly had no right to change or add to the conditions for entrance to the ministry beyond those affirmed in the reunions of 1870 and 1906. Coffin and the liberals were prepared to walk out of the Assembly and take their churches out of the denomination rather than submit to the further "Bryanizing of the Presbyterian Church." A special commission of fifteen was appointed to study the constitutional issues involved. Erdman was able to convince Coffin not to leave the denomination, arguing that, as his interpretation of the constitution was the correct one, he would prevail when the Special Commission issued its report.
The Scopes Trial (1925)
At the same time he had been campaigning against Darwinism (largely unsuccessfully) within the Presbyterian Church, William Jennings Bryan had also been encouraging state law makers to pass laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Several states had responded to Bryan's call, including TennesseeTennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, which passed such a law
Butler Act
The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of man’s origin. It was enacted as Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 Section 1922...
in March 1925. (Given the present-day contours of the evolution-creation debate
Creation-evolution controversy
The creation–evolution controversy is a recurring cultural, political, and theological dispute about the origins of the Earth, humanity, life, and the universe....
, it is interesting to note that in many states in 1925, evolution continued to be taught in church-run institutions at the same time that its teaching was banned in state-run public schools.)
The ACLU was seeking a test case to challenge these anti-evolutionary laws. This led to the famous trial of John Scopes
Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial—formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made it unlawful to...
for teaching evolution in a public school in Dayton, Tennessee
Dayton, Tennessee
Dayton is a city in Rhea County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 6,180 at the 2000 census. The Dayton, TN, Urban Cluster, which includes developed areas adjacent to the city and extends south to Graysville, Tennessee, had 9,050 people in 2000...
. The ACLU sent in renowned lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
John Randolph Neal, Jr.
John Randolph Neal, Jr.
John Randolph Neal, Jr. was an American attorney, law professor, politician, and activist, best known for his role as chief counsel during the 1925 Scopes Trial, and as an advocate for the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1920s and 1930s...
to defend Scopes.
Baptist pastor William Bell Riley
William Bell Riley
William Bell Riley was known as "The Grand Old Man of Fundamentalism." After being educated at normal school in Valparaiso, Indiana, Riley received his teacher's certificate. After teaching in county schools, he attended college in Hanover, Indiana, where he received an A.B. degree in 1885...
, founder and president of the World Christian Fundamentals Association
World Christian Fundamentals Association
World Christian Fundamentals Association, was an interdenominational organization founded in 1919 by the Baptist minister William Bell Riley of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was originally formed to launch "a new Protestantism" based upon premillennial interpretations of...
, persuaded William Jennings Bryan to act as its counsel. Bryan invited his major allies in the Presbyterian General Assembly to attend the trial with him, but J. Gresham Machen refused to testify, saying he had not studied biology in enough detail to testify at trial, while Clarence Macartney had a previous engagement.
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...
volunteered to serve on Scopes' defense team.
The stage was thus set for a trial which would prove to be a media circus
Media circus
Media circus is a colloquial metaphor, or idiom, describing a news event where the media coverage is perceived to be out of proportion to the event being covered, such as the number of reporters at the scene, the amount of news media published or broadcast, and the level of media hype...
, with reporters from across the country descending on the small town of 1,900 people.
Although the prosecution of Scopes was successful, the trial is widely seen as a crucial moment in discrediting the fundamentalist movement in America, particularly after Darrow called Bryan to the stand and he appeared little able to defend his view of the Bible.
Among the media, Bryan's loudest and ultimately most influential critic was H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
, who reported on the trial in his columns and denounced fundamentalism as irrational, backwards and intolerant.
As noted earlier, opposition to Darwinism was always much more important to Bryan than it was to other conservative Presbyterian Church leaders. Thus, following Bryan's death in 1925, the debate about evolution, while it remained an issue within church politics, never again assumed the prominence to the debate that it had while Bryan was alive. (Probably the reason why the issue of evolution has obtained such an iconic status within the popular consciousness about the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy is that it represented the one point where internal church politics intersected with government, specifically public school, policy.)
The Special Commission of 1925 and the General Assembly of 1926
The Special Committee appointed at the General Assembly of 1925 consisted mainly of moderates. The committee solicited testimony from both sides, and received statements from Machen, Macartney, and Coffin.At the 1926 General Assembly, another moderate, W.O. Thompson, was elected as moderator.
The Special Committee delivered its report on May 28. It argued that there were five major causes of unrest in the Presbyterian Church: 1) general intellectual movements, including "the so-called conflict between science and religion", naturalistic worldviews, different understandings of the nature of God, and changes in language; 2) historical differences going back to the Old School-New School split; 3) disagreements about church polity, particularly the role of General Assembly, and lack of representation of women in the church; 4) theological changes; and 5) misunderstanding. The report went on to conclude that the Presbyterian system had traditionally allowed a diversity of views when the core of truth was identical; and that the church flourished when it focused on its unity of spirit. Toleration of doctrinal diversity, including in how to interpret the Westminster Confession, was to be encouraged. In short, the report essentially affirmed the views of the Auburn Affirmation. The committee affirmed that General Assembly could not amend the Westminster Confession without the permission of the presbyteries, though it could issue judicial rulings consistent with the Confession that were binding on the presbyteries. The Five Fundamentals, though, had no binding authority.
In spite of Clarence Macartney's opposition on the floor of General Assembly, the committee's report was adopted.
The Battle for Princeton Theological Seminary, 1926–29
Following the reunion of the Old School and New School in 1870, Princeton Theological Seminary remained the bulwark of Old School thought within the Presbyterian Church. Indeed, by 1920, it was arguably the only remaining Old School institution in the Presbyterian Church.The majority of the faculty in 1920 remained convinced Old Schoolers, including J. Gresham Machen and Geerhardus Vos
Geerhardus Vos
Geerhardus Johannes Vos was an American Calvinist theologian and one of the most distinguished representatives of the Princeton Theology. He is sometimes called the father of Reformed Biblical Theology.-Biography:...
. However, to combat a perceived lack of training in practical divinity
Practical theology
Practical theology is the practical application of theology to everyday life. Richard Osmer explains that the four key questions and tasks in practical theology are:# What is going on? # Why is this going on?...
, a number of more moderate New Schoolers were brought in, including Charles Erdman and J. Ross Stevenson, who by 1920 was the president of the seminary. As we saw above, the tension between Old Schoolers and moderates revealed itself in debates about the proposed Church Union of 1920; Machen's anti-liberal preaching which resulted in the public fall-out with Harry van Dyke; the controversy about Erdman's approach to the League of Evangelical Students; and splits about how to deal with the splits in the wider church.
By 1925, the Old School's majority on the faculty was threatened, but the selection of Clarence Macartney to replace outgoing Professor of Apologetics
Apologetics
Apologetics is the discipline of defending a position through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (often religious) through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers...
William Greene seemed to solidify the Old School majority on the faculty. However, when Macartney turned the job down, Machen was offered the job.
Before he could accept or refuse, however, General Assembly intervened, and in the 1926 General Assembly, moderates succeeded in securing a committee to study how to reconcile the two parties at Princeton. (The seminary was governed by a board of directors subject to the supervision of General Assembly.) (On a sidenote, some members of the General Assembly seem to have been wary of Machen because of his opposition to Prohibition.)
The committee reported back at the General Assembly of 1927, where the moderate Robert E. Speer was elected as moderator. Their report concluded that the source of the difficulties at Princeton was that some of the Princeton faculty (i.e. Machen) were trying to keep Princeton in the service of a certain party in the church rather than doing what was in the best interest of the denomination as a whole. They recommended re-organization of the seminary. General Assembly renewed the committee's mandate and ordered them to study how to re-organize the seminary.
This led Machen to declare that the 1927 General Assembly was "probably the most disastrous meeting, from the point of view of evangelical Christianity, that has been held in the whole history of our Church." Machen composed and had circulated in the denomination a document entitled "The Attack Upon Princeton Seminary: A Plea for Fair Play." He argued that Princeton was the only seminary continuing to defend orthodoxy among the older theological institutions in the English-speaking world. The loss of the seminary would be a major blow for orthodoxy. The moderates and liberals already had control of pretty much every seminary in the denomination: why couldn't the conservatives be left with one?
The committee reported to the 1928 General Assembly, held in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...
, recommending re-organizing the seminary to give more powers to the president of the seminary and to replace the two ruling boards with one unified board. In response, Clarence Macartney responded that his party were prepared to take legal action to stop this from happening. Wary, General Assembly simply appointed a committee to continue studying the matter.
This committee reported to the 1929 General Assembly. Machen gave a fiery speech on the floor of General Assembly, but he could not prevent General Assembly from voting to re-organize the seminary.
Rather than contesting this decision in the courts as had been threatened, Machen now decided to set up a new seminary to be a bastion of conservative thought. This institution would become Westminster Theological Seminary
Westminster Theological Seminary
Westminster Theological Seminary is a Presbyterian and Reformed Christian graduate educational institution located in Glenside, Pennsylvania, with a satellite location in London.-History:...
(named to stress its fidelity to the Westminster Confession of Faith) and several conservatives on the Princeton faculty, including Machen and Cornelius Van Til
Cornelius Van Til
Cornelius Van Til , born in Grootegast, the Netherlands, was a Christian philosopher, Reformed theologian, and presuppositional apologist.-Biography:...
, would leave Princeton to teach at Westminster. Clarence Macartney initially opposed setting up Westminster, arguing that conservatives should stay at Princeton where they could continue to provide an orthodox voice. Machen responded that Princeton was in a state of apostasy
Apostasy
Apostasy , 'a defection or revolt', from ἀπό, apo, 'away, apart', στάσις, stasis, 'stand, 'standing') is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy is known as an apostate. These terms have a pejorative implication in everyday...
and that he couldn't serve alongside apostates. Macartney was eventually won over to Machen's side.
Foreign missions 1930–36
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
laymen at the request of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. was a major philanthropist and a pivotal member of the prominent Rockefeller family. He was the sole son among the five children of businessman and Standard Oil industrialist John D. Rockefeller and the father of the five famous Rockefeller brothers...
concluded that it was time for a serious re-evaluation of the effectiveness of foreign missions. With Rockefeller's financial backing, they convinced seven major denominations - the Methodist Episcopal Church
Methodist Episcopal Church
The Methodist Episcopal Church, sometimes referred to as the M.E. Church, was a development of the first expression of Methodism in the United States. It officially began at the Baltimore Christmas Conference in 1784, with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the first bishops. Through a series of...
, the Northern Baptist Convention, the Reformed Church in America
Reformed Church in America
The Reformed Church in America is a mainline Reformed Protestant denomination in Canada and the United States. It has about 170,000 members, with the total declining in recent decades. From its beginning in 1628 until 1819, it was the North American branch of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1819, it...
, the Congregational
Congregational Christian Churches
The Congregational Christian Churches were a Protestant Christian denomination that operated in the U.S. from 1931 through 1957. On the latter date, most of its churches joined the Evangelical and Reformed Church in a merger to become the United Church of Christ. Others created the National...
church, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America was a Presbyterian denomination in the United States. It was organized in 1789 under the leadership of John Witherspoon in the wake of the American Revolution and existed until 1958 when it merged with the United Presbyterian Church of North...
and the United Presbyterian Church of North America
United Presbyterian Church of North America
The United Presbyterian Church of North America was an American Presbyterian denomination that existed for exactly one hundred years. It was formed on May 26, 1858 by the union of the Northern branch of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church with the Associate Presbyterian Church at a...
- to participate in their "Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry". They commissioned a study of missionaries in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Burma, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and launched a separate inquiry under the chairmanship of the philosopher and Harvard professor William Ernest Hocking
William Ernest Hocking
William Ernest Hocking was an American idealist philosopher at Harvard University. He continued the work of his philosophical teacher Josiah Royce in revising idealism to integrate and fit into empiricism, naturalism and pragmatism...
. These two inquiries led to the publication of a one-volume summary of the findings of the Laymen's Inquiry entitled Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen's Inquiry after One Hundred Years in 1932.
Re-Thinking Missions argued that in the face of emerging secularism
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
, Christians should ally with other world religions, rather than struggle against them.
The seven denominations who had agreed to participate in the Laymen's Inquiry now distanced themselves from the report. The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions
American Presbyterian Mission
American Presbyterian Mission was an American Presbyterian missionary society, operated by the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, that was involved in sending workers to countries such as China during the late Qing Dynasty and to India in nineteenth century...
issued a statement reaffirming the board's commitment to the evangelistic basis of the missionary enterprise and to Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior.
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932...
, now weighed into the debate. In a review published in The Christian Century
The Christian Century
The Christian Century is a Christian magazine based in Chicago, Illinois. Considered the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism, the biweekly reports on religious news; comments on theological, moral, and cultural issues; and reviews books, movies, and music...
, she praised the report, saying it should be read by every Christian in America and, ironically mimicking the biblical literalism
Biblical literalism
Biblical literalism is the interpretation or translation of the explicit and primary sense of words in the Bible. A literal Biblical interpretation is associated with the fundamentalist and evangelical hermeneutical approach to Scripture, and is used almost exclusively by conservative Christians...
of the fundamentalists, "I think this is the only book I have ever read that seems to me literally true in its every observation and right in its every conclusion." Then, in a November 1932 speech before a large audience at the Astor Hotel, later published in Harper's, Buck decried gauging the success of missions by the numbers of new church members. Instead she advocated humanitarian efforts to improve the agricultural, educational, medical, and sanitary conditions of the community. She described the typical missionary as "narrow, uncharitable, unappreciative, ignorant." In the Harpers article along with another in Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan (magazine)
Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s...
published in May 1933, Buck rejected the doctrine of original sin
Original sin
Original sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...
, saying "I believe that most of us start out wanting to do right and to be good." She asserted that belief in the virgin birth
Virgin birth
A virgin birth can refer to:*Parthenogenesis, birth without fertilization*Miraculous births, virgin birth in mythology and religion*Virgin birth of Jesus*Artificial insemination*Russell case...
or the divinity of Christ
Incarnation (Christianity)
The Incarnation in traditional Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ the second person of the Trinity, also known as God the Son or the Logos , "became flesh" by being conceived in the womb of a woman, the Virgin Mary, also known as the Theotokos .The Incarnation is a fundamental theological...
was not a prerequisite to being a Christian. She said that the only need is to acknowledge that one can't live without Christ and to reflect that in one's life.
Macartney quickly called on the Board of Foreign Missions, under the presidency of Charles Erdman, to denounce Re-Thinking Missions and asked for their response to Buck's statements. Erdman responded that the Board was committed to historic evangelical standards and that they felt that Pearl S. Buck's comments were unfortunate, but he hoped she might yet be won back to the missionary cause. She would eventually resign as a Presbyterian missionary in May.
J. Gresham Machen now published a book arguing that the Board of Foreign Missions was insufficiently evangelical and particularly that its secretary, Robert E. Speer, had refused to require missionaries to subscribe to the Five Fundamentals. In New Brunswick Presbytery, Machen proposed an overture to General Assembly calling on it to ensure that in future, only solidly evangelical Christians be appointed to the Board of Foreign Missions. Machen and Speer faced off in the Presbytery, with Speer arguing that conflict and division were bad for the church — the presbytery agreed and refused to make the recommendation.
Clarence Macartney, however, was able to get a similar motion through the Presbytery of Philadelphia, so the issue came before the General Assembly of 1933. The majority report of the Standing Committee of Foreign Missions affirmed the church's adherence to the Westminster Confession; expressed its confidence that Speer and the Board shared this conviction; and repudiated Re-Thinking Missions. The minority report argued that the Board was not orthodox and proposed a slate of conservatives candidates for the Board. The majority report passed overwhelming.
Creation of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions
Disapproving of General Assembly's decision not to appoint a new slate of conservatives to the Board of Foreign Missions, J. Gresham Machen, along with H. McAllister Griffiths, announced that they were forming an Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign MissionsIndependent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions
Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions is a small, independent Presbyterian mission agency, which early in its history became the missions board of the Bible Presbyterian Church. Founded in 1933 by J. Gresham Machen, the IBPFM played a significant role in the Fundamentalist-Modernist...
to truly promote biblical and Presbyterian work. Macartney refused to go along with Machen in setting up an independent missions board.
The 1934 General Assembly declared that the Independent Board violated the Presbyterian constitution and ordered the Board to cease collecting funds within the church and ordered all Presbyterian clergy and laity to sever their connections with the Board or face disciplinary action. (This motion was opposed by both Macartney and Henry Sloane Coffin
Henry Sloane Coffin
Henry Sloane Coffin was president of the Union Theological Seminary, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA, and one of the most famous ministers in the U.S...
as overly harsh.) Less than a month later, New Brunswick Presbytery asked Machen for his response. He replied that General Assembly's actions were illegal and that he would not shut down the Independent Board. The presbytery consequently brought charges against Machen including violation of his ordination vows and renouncing the authority of the church. A trial was held, and in March 1935, he was convicted and suspended from the ministry.
Macartney urged Machen to compromise, but he refused. In June 1935, he set up the Presbyterian Constitutional Covenant Union. In October, the split between Macartney and Machen spread to Westminster Seminary, where the faculty, led by Machen, called on the board of trustees to announce their support of the Independent Board of Foreign Missions and the Covenant Union. Thirteen trustees, including Macartney, refused to do so and resigned in 1936.
Eight ministers, including Machen, were tried in the General Assembly of 1936. They were convicted and removed from the ministry. Machen then led the Presbyterian Constitutional Covenant Union to form a new denomination, the Presbyterian Church of America, later forced to change its name to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Orthodox Presbyterian Church
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church is a conservative Presbyterian denomination located primarily in the United States. It was founded by conservative members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America who strongly objected to the pervasive Modernist theology during the 1930s . Led...
in 1939.
Legacy
As a result of the departure of Machen and the denominational conservatives, especially of the Old School, the shape of the Presbyterian Church in the USA (and ultimately, its successor denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA)Presbyterian Church (USA)
The Presbyterian Church , or PC, is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination in the United States. Part of the Reformed tradition, it is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S...
) as a modernist, liberal denomination was secured. However, as of 2010, the denomination is still shrinking. Not all who remained in the PCUSA were modernists or liberals, but those theological conservatives who remained in the denomination were willing to co-exist institutionally with liberals and modernists. In the course of the twentieth century, this commitment to tolerance of divergent opinions within the church would be tested repeatedly over issues such as Christ's role in salvation, the ordination of women
Ordination of women
Ordination in general religious usage is the process by which a person is consecrated . The ordination of women is a regular practice among some major religious groups, as it was of several religions of antiquity...
and homosexuals and the church's position on political and social questions, such as temperance
Temperance movement
A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...
, abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
, and the state of Israel
Presbyterian Church (USA) Hezbollah controversy
The Presbyterian Church Hezbollah controversy began following a series of statements made by church representatives in 2004.-Background:...
. In contrast, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Orthodox Presbyterian Church
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church is a conservative Presbyterian denomination located primarily in the United States. It was founded by conservative members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America who strongly objected to the pervasive Modernist theology during the 1930s . Led...
has largely avoided these controversies because of its position on these issues grows from its traditionalist reading of the Bible.
The dispute between the fundamentalists and modernists would be played out in nearly every Christian denomination. By the 1920s, it was clear that every mainstream Protestant denomination was going to be willing to accommodate modernism, with the exception of the Presbyterians and Southern Baptists, where it was still unclear. When the outcome of the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy brought the Presbyterians into the camp willing to accommodate modernism, this left the Southern Baptists as the only mainstream denomination where fundamentalists were still "in play" within the denomination. Fundamentalists and modernists would continue to struggle within the Southern Baptist Convention and the triumph of fundamentalist views in that denomination would not be secure until the 1970s.
The social tensions and prejudices created by the Fundamentalist-Modernist split would remain very active within American Christianity into the twenty-first century, with modernists
Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
seeing fundamentalists
Fundamentalist Christianity
Christian fundamentalism, also known as Fundamentalist Christianity, or Fundamentalism, arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century among evangelical Christians...
as intolerant, and fundamentalists seeing modernists as overly willing to compromise with the forces of secularism, abandoning authentic Christianity in the process.
The controversy also sheds some light on the differences between "fundamentalist" and "evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
" Christianity: fundamentalists are those like Machen who in the 1920s and 1930s withdrew from the mainstream denominations and educational institutions, advocating separatism as the only way to preserve Christian purity; while evangelicals are more in the spirit of Macartney, seeking to engage the forces of secularism rather than withdrawing. (Harold Ockenga
Harold Ockenga
Harold John Ockenga was a leading figure of 20th century American evangelicalism, part of the reform movement known as "Neo-Evangelicalism". A Congregational minister, Ockenga served for many years as pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also a prolific author on...
, founder of the National Association of Evangelicals
National Association of Evangelicals
The National Association of Evangelicals is a fellowship of member denominations, churches, organizations, and individuals. Its goal is to honor God by connecting and representing evangelicals in the United States. Today it works in four main areas: Church & Faith Partners, Government Relations,...
, in fact spent time working as assistant pastor under Macartney in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
.)
Further reading
- The Presbyterian Conflict by Edwin H. Rian (1940)
- The Broadening Church: A Study of Theological Issues in the Presbyterian Church Since 1869 by Lefferts A. Loetscher (1954)
- A Half Century of Union Theological Seminary, 1896-1945 by Henry Sloane Coffin (1954)
- The Making of a Minister: The Autobiography of Clarence E. Macartney by Clarence E. Macartney (1961)
- Henry Sloane Coffin: The Man and His Ministry by Morgan Phelps Noyes (1964)
- Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet by Robert Moats Miller (1985)
- Harry Emerson Fosdick: Persuasive Preacher by Halford R. Ryan (1989)
- The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates by Bradley J. Longfield (1991)
- Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden (1991)
- The Confessional Mosaic: Presbyterians and Twentieth-Century Theology, ed. Milton J. Coalter, John M. Mulder, and Louis B. Weeks (1991)
- The Pluralistic Vision: Presbyterians and Mainstream Protestant Education and Leadership. ed. Milton J. Coalter, John M. Mulder, and Louis B. Weeks (1992)
- Princeton Theological Seminary: A Narrative History, 1812-1982 by William K. Selden (1992)
- A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan by Robert W. Cherney (1994)
- Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Twentieth-Century America by D. G. Hart (1995)
- Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church by Gary North (1996)
- Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography by Peter Conn (1996)
- A Brief History of the Presbyterians by James H. SmylieJames H. SmylieJames H. Smylie is Emeritus Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary & Presbyterian School of Christian Education and author of books on American church history and presbyterianism.-Career:...
(1996) - Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson (1998)
- Toward a Sure Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Dilemma of Biblical Criticism by Terry A. Chrisope (2001)
- The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents by Jeffrey P. Moran (2002)
- Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial by Marvin Olasky and John Perry (2005)
- A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan by Michael Kazin (2006)
- Fundamentalism and American Culture by George M. Marsden (2006)
- Yet Saints Their Watch Are Keeping: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and the Development of Evangelical Ecclesiology, 1887-1937 by J. Michael Utzinger (2006)
External links
- The Scofield Reference Bible (1909) (the online version is the 1917 edition)
- The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, edited by R.A. Torrey (1910–15)
- The Origins of Paul's Religion by J. Gresham Machen (1921)
- "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" by Harry Emerson Fosdick (1922)
- "Shall Unbelief Win?" by Clarence E. Macartney (1922)
- In His Image by William Jennings Bryan (1922) at Project Gutenberg
- "Who is Fundamental?" from Time magazine (1923)
- Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen (1923)
- The Auburn Affirmation (1924)
- H.L. Mencken's newspaper columns on the Scopes Trial (July 17–20, 1925)
- William Jenning's Bryan's Testimony at the Scopes Trial (July 20, 1925)
- Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen's Inquiry after One Hundred Years by William Ernest Hocking (1932) at questia.com (a pay site unfortunately)