Difference between revisions of "Fundamentalism"

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Fundamentalism is a movement which began within Protestant Christianity in the early 20th century to roll back the modernism in Protestant churches. It has had a major impact on Evangelical Christians.

Birth of the Fundamentalist Movement

Fundamentalism had multiple roots. One emerged out of Dispensationalism, an interpetation of the Bible developed in the late 19th century. It was a premillinnarian theory that divided all of time into different "dispensations," which were seen as stages of God's revelation. The world was on the verge of the last stage in which Christ would return.

A second stream came from Princeton Theology, which developed the doctrine of inerrancy in response to modernist theology and higher criticism of the Bible.

A third strand--and the name itself--came from a 12-volume study The Fundamentals (1910-1915). Thanks to sponsorship, over three million individual volumes were distributed free to clergy, laymen and libraries. This version stressed several points:

• The inerrancy of the Bible
• The Virgin Birth of Christ
• The bodily resurrection of Christ
• The substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross
• The literal nature of the Biblical accounts of Christ's miracles, the Creation account in Genesis, and so on

A fourth strand was opposition to Darwinism.

The most influential treatise was Systematic Theology (1947) by Lewis S. Chafer, who founded the Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924.

Organizing the Fundamentalists

Fundamentalist movements were found in most Protestant denominations by 1919, with the debate between fundamentalists and modernists especially strong in Presbyterian and Baptist churches.

The most important leader in organizing a movement 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 became the leading organizer of the movement for Fundamentalism. He 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, and Riley was president until 1929, after which the WFCA faded in importance.

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 developed and controlled by Riley indicates that fundamentalism 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.^[1]

Fighting evolution

Fundamentalists in the 1920s devoted themselves to fighting the teaching of evolution in the nation's schools and colleges, both public and private.

Riley took the initiative in the Scopes Trial of 1925 to bring in famed orator William Jennings Bryan as an assistant to the local prosecutor. The trial revealed a growing chasm in American Christianity and two ways of finding truth, one "biblical" and one "scientific." Liberals saw a division between educated, tolerant Christians and narrow-minded, tribal, obscurantist Christians.^[2]

Gatewood (1969) analyzes the transition from the antievolution 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.^[3]

Edwards (2000) contradicts the conventional 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, 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 and mainline religious groups to argue for the antievolutionist position.^[4]

The American Civil Liberties Union at first had no objection to a general Christian outlook in the public schools, as long as it was that of no particular sect. By the time of the Scopes Trial, however, the ACLU and other advocates of secular humanism insisted that public education must not assume any religious outlook, laying the groundwork, as Bryan feared, for the triumph of materialism.

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.^[5]

Fundamentalism in various religions

The term slowly came to mean all movements within religions that reject modernizing/liberalizing influences and attempt to stay true to the word of that religion's scriptures. The term has been applied to Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Christian fundamentalism differs from Orthodoxy in its sole reliance on the Bible and disregard for previously established tradition. Similarly, within Islam, the "fundamentalist" movements (such as Wahhabism) seek to remove perceived impurities in Islam and return it to the believed roots. Unlike Christianity, however, these uncovered roots have spawned incredibly amounts of violence. "Fundamentalist" Hinduism is, in a way, a contradiction in terms. Hinduism has no one sacred holy book, and thus no original scriptures to return to, and so the term is instead used to describe those Hindus who are intolerant of the existence of other religions (and occasionally non-Indians) in their communities.

Mormons

The term fundamentalist is also self-applied by a breakaway movement from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, calling itself Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This group, whose leader was convicted on conspiracy charges relating to child rape, claims to continue the original revelations of Joseph Smith. It is held to be apostate by the mainstream church, and cannot truly be called fundamentalist, as it ignores the doctrine of continuous revelation to the leaders of the church.

Jews

There are no fundamentalist Jews, as all movements to return to the basic tenets of Judaism simply result in increased orthodoxy. Judaism may be unique in this regard. Though according to scholars such as Samuel C. Heilman, Menachem Friedman, and Werner Backeberg, there are "truly fundamentalist Jews" who are "a minority of a minority of a minority (that is, approximately 30 percent of Orthodox Jewry, which itself is only about 15 percent of the approximately twelve million members of world Jewry)."^[6][7]

In recent times, the media has taken to describing any conservative non-denominational church or conservative evangelical church as fundamentalist. Indeed these churches do strive to return to the basics of Christianity—its fundamentals.

Israel and Christian fundamentalism

Historically speaking, the vast and overwhelming majority of fundamentalists have been and remain zionists. Fundamentalist-evangelicals rejoiced when part of Jerusalem was annexed after the 1967 six day war, whereas the National Council of Churches (by then a mere puppet of the always highly questionable forces of Christian Liberalism) denounced Israel. Liberal Christianity called for the "internationalization" of Jerusalem throughout the 1960s, while Christian fundamentalists believed and expressed their hope for Biblical prophecy: God promised Jerusalem to Israel.^[8]

Differences between liberal and fundamentalist Christians

There are three main differences between liberal Christian theology and fundamentalism-evangelicalism that affect their respective attitudes toward Jewish people. These differences^[8] are:

1. Fundamentalism's literal interpretation of prophecy versus Liberalism's spiritual interpretation.
2. Fundamentalism's equal weighting of the Old and New Testaments versus Liberalism privileging the New, especially the liberal tendency to interpret critical remarks against Judaism.
3. Fundamentalism's belief in unconverted Israel over against Liberalism's conversion requirement (i.e., so-called replacement theology).

See also

• John Gresham Machen
• Southern Baptist Convention
• Theory of Fundamentalist anti-Semitism

External links

• Online copy of The Fundamentals
• Christian Zionism

Further reading

• Almond, Gabriel A., R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan, EDS. Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World (2003) excerpt and text search
• Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture (2nd ed 2006), the standard scholarly history (by a fundamentalist) excerpt and text search
• Marsden, George M. Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (1991) excerpt and text search
• Ruthven, Malise. Fundamentalism: A Very Short Introduction (2007) excerpt and text search
• Sandeen, Ernest R. The Roots of Fundamentalism (1970)
• Trollinger, William V. God's Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism (1991) excerpts and text search
• Witherup, Ronald D. S.S. Biblical Fundamentalism: What Every Catholic Should Know (2001), 101pp excerpt and text search

Primary sources

• Trollinger, William Vance, Jr., ed. 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, 1995. 221 pp. excerpt and text search

References