Fundamentalist Christianity
Encyclopedia
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. The founders reacted against liberal theology
and militantly
asserted that the inerrancy
of the Bible was essential for true Christianity and was being violated by the modernists.
As an organized movement, it began in the 1920s within Protestant churches — especially Baptist and Presbyterian — in the United States in the early 20th century. Many such churches adopted a "fighting style" and certain theological elements, such as Dispensationalism
. The broader term "evangelical" includes the Fundamentalists as well as people with similar or identical religious beliefs who do not engage the outside challenge to the Bible as actively.
Fundamentalism is a movement, rather than a denomination or a systematic theology; no one is a "member." Since 1930, Fundamentalism has not been an organized movement, and has not had a national body or official statement of beliefs. The Evangelicals, however, have a national organization, the National Association of Evangelicals
(NAE).
. The term "Fundamentalism" entered the English language in 1922, and is often capitalized when referring to the religious movement.
The term fundamentalist is controversial into the 21st century; it is often used to attack or ridicule an adherent (labelled "fundy" or "fundie"), even though it was coined by movement leaders. Some who hold these beliefs reject the label of "fundamentalism", seeing it as too pejorative while to others it has become a banner of pride. Such Christians prefer to use the term fundamental, as opposed to fundamentalist (e.g., Independent Fundamental Baptist and Independent Fundamental Churches of America
).
This term is sometimes confused with Christian legalism
.
, a new interpretation of the Bible developed in the 1830s in England. It was a millenarian
theory that divided all of time into seven different stages, called "dispensations," which were seen as stages of God's revelation. At the end of each stage, according to this theory, God punished humanity for having been found wanting in God's testing. Secularism
, liberalism, and immorality in the 1920s were believed to be signs that humanity had again failed God's testing. This means that the world is on the verge of the last stage, where a final battle will take place at Armageddon
, followed by Christ's return and 1,000 year reign. One important sign is the rebirth of Israel, support for which became the centerpiece of Fundamentalist foreign policy.
A second stream came from Princeton Theology in the mid-19th century, which developed the doctrine of inerrancy
in response to higher criticism of the Bible. The work of Charles Hodge
influenced fundamentalists' insistence that the Bible was inerrant because it had been dictated by God and written by men who took that dictation. This meant that the Bible should be read differently from any other historical document, and also that modernism
and liberalism
were believed to lead people to hell just as much as non-Christian religions.
A third strand—and the name itself—came from a 12-volume study The Fundamentals, published 1910-1915. Sponsors subsidized the free distribution of over three million individual volumes to clergy, laymen and libraries. This version stressed several core beliefs, including:
By the late 1920s the first two points had become central to Fundamentalism.
A fourth strand was the growing concern among many evangelical Christians with the fruits of modernism and the higher criticism of the Bible. This strand concentrated on opposition to Darwinism
.
A fifth strand was the strong sense of the need for public revivals, a common theme among many Evangelicals who did not become Fundamentalists.
Numerous efforts to form coordinating bodies failed, and the most influential treatise came much later, in Systematic Theology (1947) by Lewis S. Chafer, who founded the Dallas Theological Seminary
in 1924.
Much of the enthusiasm for mobilizing Fundamentalism came from "Bible Colleges", especially those modeled after the Moody Bible Institute
in Chicago. Dwight Moody was also influential in preaching the imminence of the Kingdom of God that was so important to dispensationalism. The Bible colleges prepared ministers who lacked college or seminary experience with intense study of the Bible, often using the Scofield Reference Bible
of 1909, which was the King James version with detailed notes explaining how to interpret Dispensationalist passages.
churches. Fundamentalism was especially controversial among Presbyterians; although it began in the North its greatest popular strength was in the South, especially among Southern Baptists
. By the late 1920s the national media had identified it with the South, largely ignoring manifestations elsewhere.
The leading organizer of the Fundamentalist campaign against modernism was William Bell Riley
, a Northern Baptist based in Minneapolis, where his Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School (1902), Northwestern Evangelical Seminary (1935), and Northwestern College (1944) produced thousands of graduates.
Riley created, at a large conference in Philadelphia in 1919, the World's Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA). It became the chief interdenominational fundamentalist organization in the 1920s. Although the fundamentalist drive of the 1920s to take control of the major Protestant denominations failed at the national level, the network of churches and missions fostered by Riley shows the movement was growing in strength, especially in The South
. Both rural and urban in character, the flourishing movement acted as a denominational surrogate and aimed at a militant orthodoxy of evangelical Christianity. Riley was president until 1929, after which the WFCA faded in importance and was never replaced.
in Tennessee in 1925 to bring in famed politician William Jennings Bryan
as an assistant to the local prosecutor. Liberals saw a division between educated, tolerant Christians and narrow-minded, tribal, obscurantist Christians. In the half century after the Scopes Trial the Fundamentalists had little success in shaping government policy, and generally were defeated in their efforts to reshape the mainline denominations. The Mainline Protestant denominations refused to join the attacks on evolution, and welcomed modern ideas.
However Edwards (2000) challenges the consensus among scholars view that in the wake of the Scopes trial a humiliated fundamentalism retreated into the political and cultural background, a viewpoint evidenced in the movie "Inherit the Wind" and the majority of contemporary historical accounts. Rather, he argues, the cause of fundamentalism's retreat was the death of its leader, Bryan. Most fundamentalists saw the trial as a victory and not a defeat, but Bryan's death soon after created a leadership void that no other fundamentalist leader could fill. Bryan, unlike the other leaders, brought name recognition, respectability, and the ability to forge a broad-based coalition of fundamentalist religious groups to argue for the anti-evolutionist position.
Gatewood (1969) analyzes the transition from the anti-evolution crusade of the 1920s to the creation science
movement of the 1960s. Despite some similarities between these two causes, the creation science movement represented a shift from religious to scientific objections to Darwin's theory. Creation science also differed in terms of popular leadership, rhetorical tone, and sectional focus. It lacked a prestigious leader like Bryan, utilized scientific rather than religious rhetoric, and was a product of California and Michigan instead of the South.
." Marsden explains that Christian
fundamentalists were American evangelical Christians who in the 20th century opposed "both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorsed. Militant opposition to modernism was what most clearly set off fundamentalism." Other historians agree that militancy is a core characteristic of the movement.
The Fundamentalists from the 1920s insisted on "militant" action to counteract modernism and historians emphasize that theme too. "Militant does not mean "violent", it means "aggressively active in a cause." Recent scholars differentiate "fundamentalists" from "evangelicals" by arguing the former were more militant and less willing to collaborate with groups considered "modernist" in theology. McKim and Wright (1992) argue,"in the 1920s, militant conservatives (fundamentalists) united to mount a conservative counter-offensive. Fundamentalists sought to rescue their denominations from the growth of modernism at home." In the 1940s the more moderate faction of fundamentalists (or "postfundamentalists") maintained the same theology but began calling themselves "evangelicals" to stress their less militant position. Olson (2007) points out, "Most postfundamentalist evangelicals do not wish to be called fundamentalists, even though their basic theological orientation is not very different." A key event, Olson says, was the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals
(NAE) in 1942. As Hankins (2008) notes, "Beginning in the 1940s....militant and separatist evangelicals came to be called fundamentalists, while culturally engaged and non-militant evangelicals were supposed to be called evangelicals."
For example, American evangelist Billy Graham came from a fundamentalist background, but parted company with that movement because of his choice, early in his ministry (1950s), to cooperate with other Christians. Graham represents a movement that arose within fundamentalism, but has increasingly become distinct from it, known as neo-evangelicalism or New Evangelicalism (a term coined by Harold J. Ockenga, the "Father of New Evangelicalism").
The original Fundamentalist Movement divided along clearly defined lines within conservative Evangelical Protestantism as issues progressed. Many groupings, large and small, were produced by this schism. Neo-evangelicalism, Reformed and Lutheran Confessionalism, the Heritage movement, and Paleo-Orthodoxy
have all developed distinct identities, but none of them acknowledge any more than an historical overlap with the Fundamentalist Movement, and the term is seldom used of them.
and in 1963 to prohibit mandatory Bible reading in public schools in the case of Abington School District v. Schempp
. By the time Ronald Reagan
ran for the presidency in 1980, fundamentalist preachers, like the prohibitionist ministers of the early 20th century, were organizing their congregations to vote for supportive candidates.
Leaders of the political force included Rob Grant
and Jerry Falwell
. Beginning with Grant's American Christian Cause in 1974, Christian Voice
throughout the 1970s and Falwell's Moral Majority
in the 1980s, the Christian Right
began to have a major impact on American politics. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Christian Right was influencing elections and policy with groups such as the Family Research Council
(founded 1981 by James Dobson
) and the Christian Coalition (formed in 1989 by Pat Robertson
) helping conservative polticians, especially Republicans to win state and national elections.
(1873–1955), who led 80 churches out of the Baptist federation in Ontario in 1927 and formed the Union of regular Baptist churches of Ontario and Quebec. He was affiliated with the "Baptist Bible Union", based in the United States. His newspaper, The Gospel Witness, reached 30,000 subscribers in 16 countries, giving him an international reputation. He was one of the founders of the international Council of Christian Churches.
Oswald J. Smith
(1889–1986), reared in rural Ontario and educated at Moody Church
in Chicago, set up his own church in Toronto in 1921. A dynamic preacher and leader in Canadian fundamentalism, Smith wrote 35 books and engaged in missionary work worldwide. The reverend Billy Graham
called him, "the greatest combination pastor, hymn writer, missionary statesman, an evangelist of our time".
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...
and militantly
Church militant and church triumphant
In Christian theology, the Christian Church, or Church Universal, is traditionally divided into:*the Church Militant , comprising Christians on earth who are living; christian militia, who struggle against sin, devil and "..the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in...
asserted that the 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...
of the Bible was essential for true Christianity and was being violated by the modernists.
As an organized movement, it began in the 1920s within Protestant churches — especially Baptist and Presbyterian — in the United States in the early 20th century. Many such churches adopted a "fighting style" and certain theological elements, such as 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,...
. The broader term "evangelical" includes the Fundamentalists as well as people with similar or identical religious beliefs who do not engage the outside challenge to the Bible as actively.
Fundamentalism is a movement, rather than a denomination or a systematic theology; no one is a "member." Since 1930, Fundamentalism has not been an organized movement, and has not had a national body or official statement of beliefs. The Evangelicals, however, have a national organization, 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,...
(NAE).
Terminology
The term fundamentalism was coined by Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws in 1920 to designate Christians who were ready "to do battle royal for the Fundamentals"; the term quickly was adopted by all sides. Laws borrowed the term from the title of a series of essays published between 1910 and 1915 called The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the TruthThe 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...
. The term "Fundamentalism" entered the English language in 1922, and is often capitalized when referring to the religious movement.
The term fundamentalist is controversial into the 21st century; it is often used to attack or ridicule an adherent (labelled "fundy" or "fundie"), even though it was coined by movement leaders. Some who hold these beliefs reject the label of "fundamentalism", seeing it as too pejorative while to others it has become a banner of pride. Such Christians prefer to use the term fundamental, as opposed to fundamentalist (e.g., Independent Fundamental Baptist and Independent Fundamental Churches of America
Independent Fundamental Churches of America
The Independent Fundamental Churches of America was founded in Cicero, Illinois in 1930. The name was officially changed to IFCA International in 1996. It is an association of nearly 1000 independent Protestant churches located largely in the United States and up to three times that number of...
).
This term is sometimes confused with Christian legalism
Legalism (theology)
Legalism, in Christian theology, is a sometimes-pejorative term referring to an over-emphasis on discipline of conduct, or legal ideas, usually implying an allegation of misguided rigour, pride, superficiality, the neglect of mercy, and ignorance of the grace of God or emphasizing the letter of...
.
Fundamentalist movement in the United States
Fundamentalism had multiple roots in British and American theology of the 19th century. One root was DispensationalismDispensationalism
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,...
, a new interpretation of the Bible developed in the 1830s in England. It was a millenarian
End times
The end time, end times, or end of days is a time period described in the eschatological writings in the three Abrahamic religions and in doomsday scenarios in various other non-Abrahamic religions...
theory that divided all of time into seven different stages, called "dispensations," which were seen as stages of God's revelation. At the end of each stage, according to this theory, God punished humanity for having been found wanting in God's testing. 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...
, liberalism, and immorality in the 1920s were believed to be signs that humanity had again failed God's testing. This means that the world is on the verge of the last stage, where a final battle will take place at Armageddon
Armageddon
Armageddon is, according to the Bible, the site of a battle during the end times, variously interpreted as either a literal or symbolic location...
, followed by Christ's return and 1,000 year reign. One important sign is the rebirth of Israel, support for which became the centerpiece of Fundamentalist foreign policy.
A second stream came from Princeton Theology in the mid-19th century, which developed the doctrine of 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...
in response to higher criticism of the Bible. The work of Charles Hodge
Charles 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...
influenced fundamentalists' insistence that the Bible was inerrant because it had been dictated by God and written by men who took that dictation. This meant that the Bible should be read differently from any other historical document, and also that modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
and liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
were believed to lead people to hell just as much as non-Christian religions.
A third strand—and the name itself—came from a 12-volume study The Fundamentals, published 1910-1915. Sponsors subsidized the free distribution of over three million individual volumes to clergy, laymen and libraries. This version stressed several core beliefs, including:
- The inerrancy of the Bible
- The literal nature of the Biblical accounts, especially regarding Christ's miracles, and the Creation account in Genesis.
- The Virgin Birth of Christ
- The bodily resurrection and physical return of Christ
- The substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross
By the late 1920s the first two points had become central to Fundamentalism.
A fourth strand was the growing concern among many evangelical Christians with the fruits of modernism and the higher criticism of the Bible. This strand concentrated on opposition to 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....
.
A fifth strand was the strong sense of the need for public revivals, a common theme among many Evangelicals who did not become Fundamentalists.
Numerous efforts to form coordinating bodies failed, and the most influential treatise came much later, in Systematic Theology (1947) by Lewis S. Chafer, who founded the Dallas Theological Seminary
Dallas Theological Seminary
Dallas Theological Seminary is an evangelical theological seminary located in Dallas, Texas. It is known for popularizing the theological system known as Dispensationalism...
in 1924.
Much of the enthusiasm for mobilizing Fundamentalism came from "Bible Colleges", especially those modeled after the Moody Bible Institute
Moody Bible Institute
Moody Bible Institute is a Christian institution of higher education and related ministries that was founded by evangelist and businessman Dwight Lyman Moody in 1886. Since its founding, MBI's main campus has been located in the Near North Side of Chicago. MBI's primary ministries are education,...
in Chicago. Dwight Moody was also influential in preaching the imminence of the Kingdom of God that was so important to dispensationalism. The Bible colleges prepared ministers who lacked college or seminary experience with intense study of the Bible, often using the 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...
of 1909, which was the King James version with detailed notes explaining how to interpret Dispensationalist passages.
Organizing the fundamentalists
Fundamentalist movements were found in most North American Protestant denominations by 1919, with the attack on modernism in theology launched by the Fundamentalists in the Presbyterian and BaptistBaptist
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...
churches. Fundamentalism was especially controversial among Presbyterians; although it began in the North its greatest popular strength was in the South, especially among Southern Baptists
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...
. By the late 1920s the national media had identified it with the South, largely ignoring manifestations elsewhere.
The leading organizer of the Fundamentalist campaign against modernism was 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...
, a Northern Baptist based in Minneapolis, where his Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School (1902), Northwestern Evangelical Seminary (1935), and Northwestern College (1944) produced thousands of graduates.
Riley created, at a large conference in Philadelphia in 1919, the World's Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA). It became the chief interdenominational fundamentalist organization in the 1920s. Although the fundamentalist drive of the 1920s to take control of the major Protestant denominations failed at the national level, the network of churches and missions fostered by Riley shows the movement was growing in strength, especially in The South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
. Both rural and urban in character, the flourishing movement acted as a denominational surrogate and aimed at a militant orthodoxy of evangelical Christianity. Riley was president until 1929, after which the WFCA faded in importance and was never replaced.
Fighting evolution
Fundamentalists in the 1920s devoted themselves to fighting the teaching of evolution in the nation's schools and colleges, especially by passing state laws that affected public schools. Riley took the initiative in the Scopes TrialScopes 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...
in Tennessee in 1925 to bring in famed politician 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...
as an assistant to the local prosecutor. Liberals saw a division between educated, tolerant Christians and narrow-minded, tribal, obscurantist Christians. In the half century after the Scopes Trial the Fundamentalists had little success in shaping government policy, and generally were defeated in their efforts to reshape the mainline denominations. The Mainline Protestant denominations refused to join the attacks on evolution, and welcomed modern ideas.
However Edwards (2000) challenges the consensus among scholars view that in the wake of the Scopes trial a humiliated fundamentalism retreated into the political and cultural background, a viewpoint evidenced in the movie "Inherit the Wind" and the majority of contemporary historical accounts. Rather, he argues, the cause of fundamentalism's retreat was the death of its leader, Bryan. Most fundamentalists saw the trial as a victory and not a defeat, but Bryan's death soon after created a leadership void that no other fundamentalist leader could fill. Bryan, unlike the other leaders, brought name recognition, respectability, and the ability to forge a broad-based coalition of fundamentalist religious groups to argue for the anti-evolutionist position.
Gatewood (1969) analyzes the transition from the anti-evolution crusade of the 1920s to the creation science
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
movement of the 1960s. Despite some similarities between these two causes, the creation science movement represented a shift from religious to scientific objections to Darwin's theory. Creation science also differed in terms of popular leadership, rhetorical tone, and sectional focus. It lacked a prestigious leader like Bryan, utilized scientific rather than religious rhetoric, and was a product of California and Michigan instead of the South.
Other states
Webb (1991) traces the political and legal struggles between strict creationists and Darwinists to influence the extent to which evolution would be taught as science in Arizona and California schools. After Scopes was convicted, creationists throughout the United States sought similar antievolution laws for their states. These included Reverends R. S. Beal and Aubrey L. Moore in Arizona and members of the Creation Research Society in California, all supported by distinguished laymen. They sought to ban evolution as a topic for study or, at least, relegate it to the status of unproven theory perhaps taught alongside the biblical version of creation. Educators, scientists, and other distinguished laymen favored evolution. This struggle occurred later in the Southwest than in other US areas and persisted through the Sputnik era, which inspired increased faith in evolutionism.Militancy and evangelicals
Fundamentalism is defined by historian George M. Marsden in his seminal work Fundamentalism and American Culture as "militant anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalismEvangelicalism
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:...
." Marsden explains that Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
fundamentalists were American evangelical Christians who in the 20th century opposed "both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorsed. Militant opposition to modernism was what most clearly set off fundamentalism." Other historians agree that militancy is a core characteristic of the movement.
The Fundamentalists from the 1920s insisted on "militant" action to counteract modernism and historians emphasize that theme too. "Militant does not mean "violent", it means "aggressively active in a cause." Recent scholars differentiate "fundamentalists" from "evangelicals" by arguing the former were more militant and less willing to collaborate with groups considered "modernist" in theology. McKim and Wright (1992) argue,"in the 1920s, militant conservatives (fundamentalists) united to mount a conservative counter-offensive. Fundamentalists sought to rescue their denominations from the growth of modernism at home." In the 1940s the more moderate faction of fundamentalists (or "postfundamentalists") maintained the same theology but began calling themselves "evangelicals" to stress their less militant position. Olson (2007) points out, "Most postfundamentalist evangelicals do not wish to be called fundamentalists, even though their basic theological orientation is not very different." A key event, Olson says, was the formation 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,...
(NAE) in 1942. As Hankins (2008) notes, "Beginning in the 1940s....militant and separatist evangelicals came to be called fundamentalists, while culturally engaged and non-militant evangelicals were supposed to be called evangelicals."
For example, American evangelist Billy Graham came from a fundamentalist background, but parted company with that movement because of his choice, early in his ministry (1950s), to cooperate with other Christians. Graham represents a movement that arose within fundamentalism, but has increasingly become distinct from it, known as neo-evangelicalism or New Evangelicalism (a term coined by Harold J. Ockenga, the "Father of New Evangelicalism").
The original Fundamentalist Movement divided along clearly defined lines within conservative Evangelical Protestantism as issues progressed. Many groupings, large and small, were produced by this schism. Neo-evangelicalism, Reformed and Lutheran Confessionalism, the Heritage movement, and Paleo-Orthodoxy
Paleo-Orthodoxy
Paleo-orthodoxy is a broad Christian theological movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries which focuses on the consensual understanding of the faith among the Ecumenical Councils and Church Fathers...
have all developed distinct identities, but none of them acknowledge any more than an historical overlap with the Fundamentalist Movement, and the term is seldom used of them.
Christian right (United States)
The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a surge interest in politics by organized fundamentalists in the U.S. The sparks that ignited their interest were decisions by the United States Supreme Court in 1962 to prohibit state-sanctioned prayer in public schools in the case of Engel v. VitaleEngel v. Vitale
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that determined that it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools....
and in 1963 to prohibit mandatory Bible reading in public schools in the case of Abington School District v. Schempp
Abington School District v. Schempp
Abington Township School District v. Schempp , 374 U.S. 203 , was a United States Supreme Court case argued on February 27–28, 1963 and decided on June 17, 1963...
. By the time Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
ran for the presidency in 1980, fundamentalist preachers, like the prohibitionist ministers of the early 20th century, were organizing their congregations to vote for supportive candidates.
Leaders of the political force included Rob Grant
Robert Grant (Christian Leader)
Dr. Robert G. Grant is one of the early leaders of the Christian Right in America. He served as the chairman of Christian Voice and the American Freedom Coalition....
and Jerry Falwell
Jerry Falwell
Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. was an evangelical fundamentalist Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and a conservative commentator from the United States. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia...
. Beginning with Grant's American Christian Cause in 1974, Christian Voice
Christian Voice (USA)
Christian Voice is an American conservative Christian right advocacy group. In 1980, this group had 107,000 members including 37,000 pastors from 45 denominations. It is a project of the American Service Council...
throughout the 1970s and Falwell's Moral Majority
Moral Majority
The Moral Majority was a political organization of the United States which had an agenda of evangelical Christian-oriented political lobbying...
in the 1980s, the Christian Right
Christian right
Christian right is a term used predominantly in the United States to describe "right-wing" Christian political groups that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies...
began to have a major impact on American politics. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Christian Right was influencing elections and policy with groups such as the Family Research Council
Family Research Council
The Family Research Council is a conservative or right-wing Christian group and lobbying organization formed in the United States in 1981 by James Dobson. It was fully incorporated in 1983...
(founded 1981 by James Dobson
James Dobson
James Clayton "Jim" Dobson, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder in 1977 of Focus on the Family , which he led until 2003. In the 1980s he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesman for conservative social positions in American public life...
) and the Christian Coalition (formed in 1989 by Pat Robertson
Pat Robertson
Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson is a media mogul, television evangelist, ex-Baptist minister and businessman who is politically aligned with the Christian Right in the United States....
) helping conservative polticians, especially Republicans to win state and national elections.
Canada
In Canada, Fundamentalism was less of a force, but it had an aggressive leader in Englishman Thomas Todhunter ShieldsThomas Todhunter Shields
Thomas Todhunter Shields was the aggressive leader of the fundamentalist religious movement in Canada. A self educated immigrant from England, Shields was the longtime pastor of the Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto....
(1873–1955), who led 80 churches out of the Baptist federation in Ontario in 1927 and formed the Union of regular Baptist churches of Ontario and Quebec. He was affiliated with the "Baptist Bible Union", based in the United States. His newspaper, The Gospel Witness, reached 30,000 subscribers in 16 countries, giving him an international reputation. He was one of the founders of the international Council of Christian Churches.
Oswald J. Smith
Oswald J. Smith
Oswald Jeffrey Smith was a Canadian pastor, author, and missions advocate. He founded The People's Church in Toronto in 1928. He was a leading force in * Fundamentalism in Canada....
(1889–1986), reared in rural Ontario and educated at Moody Church
Moody Church
The Moody Church is a historic Protestant church in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. right|thumb|270px|-Building:...
in Chicago, set up his own church in Toronto in 1921. A dynamic preacher and leader in Canadian fundamentalism, Smith wrote 35 books and engaged in missionary work worldwide. The reverend Billy Graham
Billy Graham
William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist. As of April 25, 2010, when he met with Barack Obama, Graham has spent personal time with twelve United States Presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman, and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for...
called him, "the greatest combination pastor, hymn writer, missionary statesman, an evangelist of our time".
Primary sources
- Hankins, Barr, ed. (2008). Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism: A Documentary Reader excerpt and text search
- Torrey, R. A., Dixon, A. C., et al. (eds.) (1917). The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth partial version at web.archive.org. Accessed 2011-07-26.
- Trollinger, William Vance, Jr., ed. (1995). The Antievolution Pamphlets of William Bell Riley. (Creationism in Twentieth-Century America: A Ten-Volume Anthology of Documents, 1903-1961. Vol. 4.) New York: Garland, 221 pp. excerpt and text search
External links
- A. C. Dixon, Chicago Liberals and the Fundamentals by Gerald L. Priest
- Christian Fundamentalism and the Media
- Earliest Written Version of The Five Essentials
- Fundamentalism Profile
- My Half-Year of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists Article in Spiegel Online.
- The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth Online version of "The Fundamentals", not complete at 2011-07-26.