Fundamentalist Movement

Fundamentalist Movement. American fundamentalism emerged within evangelical Protestantism in the early twentieth century in opposition to “modernism,” a term that encompassed liberal theology, the Darwinian theory of evolution, and secular culture. Fundamentalists shared with other American evangelicals an emphasis on the classical Protestant doctrines of salvation, the authority of the Bible, the importance of a personal conversion experience, and a missionary zeal to spread the gospel. What distinguished them from other evangelicals was their strident antimodernism.

The chief pillars of fundamentalist theology, such as biblical inerrancy, reflected this sentiment. The doctrine of inerrancy developed most fully by Presbyterian conservatives at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late nineteenth century in response to “higher criticism,” a sociohistorical approach to the Bible advocated by theological liberals. Believers in inerrancy view the Bible as the infallible product of the Holy Spirit's guidance; as the Word of God it contains no errors of any sort and must be read “literally”.

Strongly tied to biblical inerrancy was dispensational premillennialism, which predicted the imminent return of Jesus Christ to earth. Brought to America in the 1860s and 1870s by John Nelson Darby of Great Britain, this interpretation of end‐time events was theologically antimodernist both in its hyperliteral approach to the Bible and in its view of the role of supernatural forces in controlling all of human history. Dispensationalism also prompted fundamentalists to view the institutional church as apostate and modern civilization as corrupt.

In the late nineteenth century, many evangelicals embraced inerrancy and dispensationalism. But the spread of theological liberalism in the major Protestant denominations, coupled with the growing sense of cultural peril engendered by World War I, propelled some of these Protestant conservatives into becoming militant fundamentalists. Having organized the World's Christian Fundamentals Association in 1919, fundamentalist leaders mounted national crusades to rid Protestant denominations of modernist theology and the public schools of evolutionist teaching. Despite enthusiastic and well‐publicized campaigns, led by such combatants as William Bell Riley of Minneapolis (1861–1947) and J. Gresham Machen of Princeton (1881–1937), the fundamentalists failed to capture control of the Northern Baptist and Northern Presbyterian denominations, where the struggle for control had been fiercest. Moreover, the anti‐evolutionist movement, while experiencing some successes, sputtered and stalled in the years after the Scopes trial of 1925. The end of the 1920s found the fundamentalist movement in retreat.

But these national defeats did not bring about the demise of American fundamentalism. Instead, fundamentalists created a rapidly expanding network of nondenominational organizations, including publishing houses, mission boards, and radio stations. At the center of this fundamentalist network were approximately seventy Bible institutes across the country. These schools, such as Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and Riley's Northwestern Bible Training School in Minneapolis, provided nearby fundamentalist churches with ministers, teaching materials, Bible conferences, church secretaries, and a host of other services.

After flourishing for years at the grassroots level, fundamentalism reemerged in the 1940s on the national scene, using radio, evangelistic campaigns, and youth organizations (such as Youth for Christ, from whose ranks the evangelist Billy Graham arose) to bring the gospel to the masses. This emphasis on national revival, however, exacerbated tensions within the movement. Many fundamentalists had responded to the failures of the 1920s by adamantly refusing to cooperate with those who did not wholeheartedly share their views. In the 1940s and 1950s, a group of somewhat less rigid (and often younger) fundamentalists rejected both this extreme separatism and dispensationalism. By the latter half of the 1950s the fundamentalist movement had divided into two camps: those who called themselves “new evangelicals,” or simply “evangelicals,” and formed associations with evangelicals outside the fundamentalist tradition; and militant separatists who defiantly retained the fundamentalist label.

For the next two decades, fundamentalists concentrated on church‐building and evangelizing. But in the late 1970s and 1980s the fundamentalist movement made a dramatic reappearance on the national scene. Fundamentalism had always been associated with patriotism, militarism, and free‐market economics; in post–Vietnam War, post‐Watergate America, when such sentiments came back into vogue, politically energized fundamentalists, who had long yearned to recreate a “Christian America,” played an important and visible role in the resurgence of the Right.

Framing their involvement in religious and moral terms, fundamentalists rallied to the Reverend Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. Created in 1979 with the goal of electing to public office “pro‐life, pro‐family, and pro‐America” candidates, the Moral Majority contributed to the election and reelection of Ronald Reagan. Its demise in 1986, followed in 1988 by television evangelist Pat Robertson's failed candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, did not mean the end of fundamentalist politics. From the ashes of Robertson's campaign arose the Christian Coaltion. Under Ralph Reed's leadership this organization, which had attracted upwards of a million members by the early 1990s, became a formidable force in American politics, particularly within the Republican party. Besides electoral politics, the fundamentalist movement addressed an array of related issues, aggressively opposing gay rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and, most important, abortion rights.

Aroused by the spread of secularism in the public schools, fundamentalists campaigned for mandatory school prayer and equal time for “scientific creationism”. More in keeping with the separatist side of their heritage, fundamentalists also created thousands of alternative schools for their children and energized the “home schooling” movement. In the 1980s, Southern Baptist fundamentalists successfully captured the levers of power in America's largest Protestant denomination and removed moderates from positions of authority.

Despite periodic predictions of its demise, the fundamentalist movement continued to flourish in cities and rural areas, particularly (but not exclusively) among lower‐middle‐ and working‐class whites. Although fundamentalists often displayed intolerance toward those who did not share their religious and political commitments, they offered believers certainty and community in a culture where both were often in short supply.
See also Baptists; Conservatism; Millennialism and Apocalypticism; Missionary Movement, The, Modernist Culture; Religion; Revivalism; Secularization.

Bibliography

Ernest Sandeen , The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930, 1970.
George M. Marsden , Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth‐Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925, 1980.
Kathleen C. Boone , The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism, 1989.
William Vance Trollinger Jr. , God's Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism, 1990.
George M. Marsden , Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, 1991.
William Martin , With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, 1996.
Joel A. Carpenter , Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism, 1997.

William Vance Trollinger Jr.