Fundamentalist Christianity

Fundamentalist Christianity, also known as Christian fundamentalism or fundamentalist evangelicalism is defined by its leading historian, George M. Marsden, as "militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism." Marsden explains that fundamentalists were evangelical Christians who in the twentieth century "militantly opposed with modernism and theology in the cultural changes that modernism are [sic] endorse closely related traditions".[1]

As an organized movement it began within Protestant churches—especially Baptist and Presbyterian—in the United States in the early 20th century. Many Evangelical Christians, especially Southern Baptists have adopted its fighting style and key theological elements such as Dispensationalism. It is a tendency found in numerous churches, but it is not an organized movement and has no national body or official statement.

Fundamentalism arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among evangelical Christians[2]. The founders reacted against liberal theology, actively asserted that the following ideas were fundamental to the Christian faith: the inerrancy of the Bible, Sola Scriptura, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent personal return of Jesus Christ.

The term "fundamentalist" is controversial into the 21st century; it is often used to attack or ridicule adherents, although it was coined by movement leaders. Some who hold these beliefs reject the label of "fundamentalism", seeing it as too pejorative[3] 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, Independent Fundamental Baptist Association of Michigan, and Independent Fundamental Churches of America).[4] This term is sometimes confused with Christian legalism.[5][6]

Contents

Fundamentalist Movement in the U.S.

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.

Fundamentalism had multiple roots in British and American theology of the 19th century[7]. One root was Dispensationalism, an interpretation of the Bible developed in the 1830s in England. It was a millenarian theory that divided all of time into different "dispensations," which were seen as stages of God's revelation. The world in this theory is on the verge of the last stage in which Christ would return. An important sign is the rebirth of Israel, support for which is 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[8][9].

A third strand—and the name itself—came from a 12-volume study The Fundamentals, published 1910-1915[10]. Sponsors subsidize the distribution of over three million individual volumes were distributed free to clergy, laymen and libraries. This version[11]. 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. 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.

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.[12]

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.[13]

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.[14]

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.[15]

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.[16]

Variations

The original 20th century 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.

For example, American evangelist Billy Graham came from a fundamentalist background, but parted company with the movement because of his choice, early in his ministry (1950s), to cooperate with other Christians.[17] He 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").

Canada

In Canada Fundamentalism was less of a force[18], but it had an aggressive leader in Englishman Thomas Todhunter Shields (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[19].

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 Billy Graham called him, "the greatest combination pastor, hymn writer, missionary statesman, an evangelist of our time"[20].

Christian right (USA)

The past half-century has witnessed a surge of Christian fundamentalists toward politics. Some attribute this interest to the decisions by the United States Supreme Court in 1962 to prohibit state-sanctioned prayer in public schools in the case of Engel v. Vitale 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, self-described fundamentalists had become more likely to participate in politics than other Christians were.[21]

Credited with this phenomenon are Rob Grant, Jerry Falwell, and other well-known Fundamentalist clergy, who began urging Christians to become involved in politics in the 1970s. 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 major impact on American politics. By the late 1990s, the Christian Right was influencing elections and policy with groups like Christian Coalition and Family Research Council helping the Republican Party to gain control of the White House, both houses of Congress, and a more conservative Supreme Court by the mid-1990s.

Fundamentalist church groupings

Original movement

Modern movement

See also

  • Antinomianism
  • Bible believer
  • Biblical inerrancy
  • Biblical literalism
  • British Conservative Evangelicalism
  • Cafeteria Christianity
  • Christian eschatological differences
  • Christian Reconstructionism
  • Christian Zionism
  • Conservative Christianity
  • Dominionism
  • Elohim
  • Evangelicalism
  • Ex nihilo
  • Higher criticism
  • Islamic fundamentalism
  • Liberal Christianity
  • Moralism
  • Reformed Fundamentalism
  • Restorationism (Christian primitivism)

Bibliography

Primary sources

References

  1. ↑ Marsden adds, "militant opposition to modernism was what most clearly set off fundamentalism." Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980) p. 4
  2. ↑ Sandeen (1970)
  3. ↑ Robbins, Dale A. (1995). What is a Fundamentalist Christian?. Grass Valley, CA: Victorious Publications. http://www.victorious.org/chur21.htm. Retrieved 2009-12-01. 
  4. ↑ Horton, Ron. "Christian Education at Bob Jones University". Bob Jones University. http://www.bju.edu/academics/christian-education.php. Retrieved 2009-12-01. 
  5. ↑ Wilson, William P.. "Legalism and the Authority of Scripture". http://www.ovrlnd.com/Apologetics/Liberalism_and_Scripture.html. Retrieved 19 March 2010. 
  6. ↑ Morton, Timothy S.. "From Liberty to Legalism - A Candid Study of Legalism, "Pharisees," and Christian Liberty". http://www.biblebelievers.com/Morton_legalism-liberty.html. Retrieved 19 March 2010. 
  7. ↑ Ernest Robert Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (1970)
  8. ↑ Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture pp 109-118
  9. ↑ Sandeen (1970) pp 103-31
  10. ↑ Sandeen (1970) pp 188-207
  11. ↑ The Fundamentals A Testimony to the Truth
  12. ↑ William Vance Trollinger, Jr. "Riley's Empire: Northwestern Bible School and Fundamentalism in the Upper Midwest". Church History 1988 57(2): 197-212. 0009-6407
  13. ↑ David Goetz, "The Monkey Trial". Christian History 1997 16(3): 10-18. 0891-9666; Burton W. Folsom, , Jr. "The Scopes Trial Reconsidered." Continuity 1988 (12): 103-127. 0277-1446, by a leading conservative scholar
  14. ↑ Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., ed. Controversy in the Twenties: Fundamentalism, Modernism, & Evolution (1969)
  15. ↑ Mark Edwards, "Rethinking the Failure of Fundamentalist Political Antievolutionism after 1925". Fides Et Historia 2000 32(2): 89-106. 0884-5379
  16. ↑ George E. Webb, "The Evolution Controversy in Arizona and California: From the 1920s to the 1980s." Journal of the Southwest 1991 33(2): 133-150. 0894-8410. See also Christopher K. Curtis, "Mississippi's Anti-Evolution Law of 1926." Journal Of Mississippi History 1986 48(1): 15-29.
  17. ↑ Bob Jones University Drops Interracial Dating Ban | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction
  18. ↑ John G. Stackhouse, Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century (1993)
  19. ↑ C. Allyn Russell, "Thomas Todhunter Shields: Canadian Fundamentalist," Foundations, 1981, Vol. 24 Issue 1, pp 15-31
  20. ↑ David R. Elliott, "Knowing No Borders: Canadian Contributions to American Fundamentalism," in George A. Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll, eds., Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States (1993)
  21. ↑ Zimmerman, Jonathan (2001). "Why Our Fundamentalists Are Better Than Their Fundamentalists". The New Republic. http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2001/12/Why-Our-Fundamentalists-Are-Better-Than-Their-Fundamentalists.aspx?print=true. Retrieved 2009-12-01. 

External links