FUNDAMENTALISM

Calm before the Storm

In the decades following the Civil War, liberal theology made substantial inroads into Protestant seminaries and universities in the United States. The primary feature of this liberalism was an acceptance of and reliance upon scientific methods for the discovery of truth. This view of truth contrasted sharply with the traditional Christian commitment to revealed truth, especially as the Bible contained it. Instead of looking to the Scriptures to determine the truth of a matter, liberals often held biblical texts up for comparison with scientific theories, such as Darwinian evolution. When they found disagreement, liberals began to reinterpret the Bible not as a source of knowledge about the physical world but as a record of faith composed by human beings at different historical intervals, causing inconsistencies and errors where knowledge had been deficient. This method of reading the Bible became known as the "higher criticism." Many prominent American theologians had spent some time studying at German universities, the intellectual source of this new theology. As a result of this European influence, higher criticism had taken root in most major American seminaries and divinity schools by the turn of the twentieth century. But conservative Protestants, who still looked to the Bible as the source of literal truths about the world, did not stand quietly by while this shift took place. In the last decades of the nineteenth century many Protestant denominations conducted heresy trials against well-known professors who were thought to have gone too far in accepting the "modernist" ideas of the liberals. Conservatives also maintained a firm hold on some of the nation's most illustrious divinity schools, especially Princeton, the bastion of conservative Presbyterianism. But clearly neither side could claim victory; by 1900 it had become apparent that an intractable split had opened up in American Protestantism. To the liberals, the conservatives were dinosaurs whose inflexibility in matters of doctrine threatened to cause massive defections from the faith as more and more people, clergy and lay people alike, came to accept the truth of scientific knowledge. The conservatives, on the other hand, saw the liberals as nothing short of heretics whose theological innovation seemed designed to destroy the faith itself from within. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, an uneasy truce seemed to be in effect between these two sides. They tended to work in their respective spheres, with only a few volleys being fired in their publications. But this was merely the calm before a great storm. The groundwork was being laid, especially on the conservative side, for the massive fundamentalist versus modernist controversy of the 1920s. Although the term Fundamentalism was not officially coined for the movement until 1920, the 1910s clearly saw a conservative marshaling of forces as diverse factions coalesced into a movement of surprising strength and influence.

The Fundamentals.

In August 1909 Union Oil magnate Lyman Stewart heard Amzi Dixon, then pastor of Dwight L. Moody's church in Chicago, preach a sermon in which he lambasted "one of those infidel professors" at the University of Chicago Divinity School, the strong-hold of liberalism in the early twentieth century. Stewart realized that he had found in Dixon a man who could help him to fulfill his aim of publishing sophisticated Christian apologetic literature, works designed to provide "warning and testimony" to anyone who might be seduced by modernist ideas. Stewart and his brother, Milton, offered to put up $250,000 to finance a series of volumes to be edited by Dixon and a committee of his choosing. Dixon agreed, choosing the great revivalist Reuben A. Torrey and a Jewish Christian evangelist, Louis Meyer, as his coeditors. They solicited articles from all the leading scholars of American and British conservative theology, gathering all the contributions into a twelve-volume series titled simply The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. The first volume appeared in February 1910, and the others followed periodically until 1915. The Stewarts distributed three million copies of these volumes free of charge to pastors, professors, missionaries, Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) officials, and other religious professionals. But despite this massive effort, which caused many to regard The Fundamentals as the classic statement of Fundamentalism, these volumes neither attracted significant attention in the religious press nor contained many of the elements that the fundamentalist movement of the 1920s considered essential. Many of the articles consisted of personal testimonies of religious experience, and although the volumes contained pieces attacking a series of "isms"—Russellism (Jehovah's Witnesses), Mor monism, Eddyism (Christian Science), Spiritualism, and Romanism (Roman Catholicism)—they displayed a notable lack of commentary on political and ethical issues. What the articles were about demonstrates the extent to which the editors had boiled the liberal/conservative controversy down to a single fundamental issue, biblical literalism. A full one-third of The Fundamentals was devoted to defenses of scriptural truth and attacks on higher criticism. Creedal loyalty and doctrinal orthodoxy were becoming easier and easier to measure as the issues were painted in ever-simpler terms: one either accepted the Bible or did not. While much of The Fundamentals is moderate in tone, especially when compared to later fundamentalist statements, its publication clearly helped erode whatever middle ground may have been left between liberal and conservative theologians.

FOREWORD

The Committee, to whom the two Christian laymen entrusted the editing and publishing of this scries of books, have been greatly encouraged by the more than 10,000 letters of appreciation, which have come from all parts of the world; and the adverse criticisms have been almost equally encouraging, because they indicate that the books have been read by some who need the truth they contain, and their criticism will attract the attention of others. All we desire is that the truth shall be known, and we believe that the God of Truth will bless it.

This volume goes to about 250,000 pastors, evangelists, missionaries, theological professors, theological students, Y. M. C. A. secretaries, Y. W. C. A. secretaries, college professors, Sunday School superintendents, and religious editors in the English speaking world; and we earnestly request all whose faith is in the God who answers prayer, to pray daily that the truth may "run and be glorified/'

(See Publishers' Notice. Page 127.)

Foreword to volume 2 of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, the series of apologetics that invigorated traditional Protestant Christianity during the 1910s

Christianity and Culture

A diversity of conservative opinions stood behind the silence oí The Fundamentals on some issues, most notably those dealing with the attitude Christians ought to take toward social and political trends in America. The authors of The Fundamentals represented a broad spectrum of views on this question of "Christianity and culture," a question that could include anything from card-playing and dancing to the perceived "menace" of socialism. Among the contributors were some strict "separationists," such as Arno C. Gaebelein, the editor of the independent Our Hope, who saw both modern society and the modern church as thoroughly corrupt and advocated as extensive a withdrawal from both as one could manage. But many of the early fundamentalists had roots in the great revival tradition of nineteenth-century evangelical Christianity, a tradition noted as much or more for its moral crusading as for its theological conservatism. William Jennings Bryan expressed the continuation of this approach to religion in a 1911 Bible conference lecture when he spoke of all the things Christianity had to offer modern civilization by way of moral and social reform. A fellow Presbyterian, J, Gresham Machen of Princeton, gave an address in 1912 in which he explicitly associated the theological battle being fought in the seminaries with the changing cultural conditions of the time. "What is today a matter of academic speculation, begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires," Machen argued, calling for a fullfledged effort to infuse all aspects of culture with the word of God. By 1920 such views would clearly represent the majority opinion within the fundamentalist movement; the battle against modernism would not distinguish its theological from its cultural aspects. World War I had a galvanizing effect on this wing of the movement, pushing it to create by 1919 mature statements about the relationship between Christianity and culture.

The War Years

The war also helped to solidify the influence of premillennialism in the fundamentalist movement, a development related to the clarification of cultural values. Premillennialism was a long-standing Protestant movement, based on a literal reading of prophetic texts from the Bible that led believers to expect the imminent personal return of Christ to initiate his thousand-year reign of peace. Premillennialists were enjoying great success as the European war seemed to testify to the accuracy of their biblically founded prophecies, and liberal theologians launched a major offensive in the religious and secular press to counter the growing influence of this wing of conservative Protestantism. Shirley Jackson Case of the University of Chicago Divinity School led the charge, making a major tactical error when he attempted to paint the premillennialists as German sympathizers. The premillennialists responded in force by pointing out the clear link between American and German liberal theologians. By 1918 German theology, biblical criticism, and philosophy were being blamed by many conservative preachers for what they saw as Germany's moral bankruptcy, evidenced by the war. Howard Kellogg, a staunch premillennialist, gave a speech on this theme in the summer of 1918 at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, an institution supported by Lyman Stewart. He put the issue in the starkest terms possible. "Loud are the cries against German Kultur.…Let this now be identified with Evolution, and the truth begins to be told." Kellogg apparently blamed acceptance of Darwinism for Germany's current appearance as "a monster plotting world domination, the wreck of civilization and the destruction of Christianity itself."

Fundamentalism Takes Shape

This development in premillennial argumentation led to the crystallization of American Fundamentalism in its "classic" form as a movement that was conservative not only theologically but also socially, with a strong commitment to preserving traditional values—preserving a civilization that fundamentalists believed was on the brink of moral, if not actual, collapse. World War I, liberal and conservative Protestants seemed to agree, was being fought to preserve civilization itself. But while the liberals spoke of civilization in terms of democratic values and freedom from tyranny, premillennialists and their fellow travelers identified those same traits as the near anarchy that needed to be eradicated.

The Red Scare

Following the war, fundamentalists found ample reason to transfer their concerns about German civilization to America. With the end of the war, social and economic displacement struck many Americans, leading to an unstable period of labor unrest, violent confrontations, and even scattered terrorist bombings. The threat to American values had a new name—Bolshevism—and fundamentalists became caught up in the Red Scare that gripped the country immediately after the war. Socialism and anarchy were thought to go hand in hand, and the response of many conservative Protestants was to urge strict isolationism in American policy. Many cautioned against joining the League of Nations; they perceived in the reconstruction taking place in Europe the threat of a "World Communist Internationale," as Gaebelein expressed it.

THE FUNDAMENTALS

In 1910 the first of the twelve volumes of The Fundamentals was published by the Testimony Publishing Company in Chicago. Subtitled "A Testimony to the Truth," the book was presented "compliments of two Christian laymen," its title page proclaimed. With Amzi Dixon as editor in chief and the financial backing of oil magnate Lyman Stewart and his brother, Milton, the new publication had both a sweeping goal and the money required to meet that goal. The Stewart brothers expressed the aims of the series in their foreword to the first volume:

This book is the first of a series which will be published and sent to every pastor, evangelist, missionary, theological professor, theological student, Sunday school superintendent, Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. secretary in the English speaking world, so far as the addresses of all these can be obtained.

Two intelligent, consecrated Christian laymen bear the expense, because they believe that the time has come when a new statement of the fundamentals of Christianity should be made.

Their earnest desire is that you will carefully read it and pass its truth on to others.

Source:

George M. Marsden, ed., The Fundamentals: A Testimony to Truth, volume 1 (New York: Garland, 1988).

Culture Wars

Seeing personal and national values as closely intertwined, fundamentalists also redoubled their efforts to combat moral laxity wherever they saw it. Smoking, public dancing, and moving pictures were among the many targets attacked from pulpits and in the pages of fundamentalist publications. Oliver Van Osdel, a pastor in Michigan, gave a sermon in November 1919 in which he argued, "when you find people indulging in worldliness they become loose in doctrine, then apostasy easily creeps in, the union of Christendom becomes possible, and probably will be united through corrupt doctrine under one head, the Pope of Rome," often identified by fundamentalists as the Antichrist. The same ideas had been expressed in May 1919 in Philadelphia by speakers at the first conference of the World's Christian Fundamentals Association, an organization founded by William B. Riley, a Minneapolis pastor. The WCFA was committed to biblical literalism, premillennialism, and the preservation of traditional Christian values as normative in American culture. It held conferences in several cities during 1919, drawing audiences that totaled in the tens of thousands. Fundamentalism had spent the decade of the 1910s finding its voice. With many of the diverse strands of conservative Protestantism united under the program of the WCFA, Fundamentalism—though still a year shy of officially receiving that name—had by 1919 gained the strength it would need to make its voice heard in the raucous debates of the 1920s.

Sources:

George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980);

Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970);

Timothy P. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875-1982, revised edition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academie Books, 1983).

FUNDAMENTALISM

FUNDAMENTALISM is a movement within U.S. Protestantism marked by twin commitments to revivalistic evangelism and to militant defense of traditional Protestant doctrines. By the end of World War I, a loose coalition of conservative Protestants had coalesced into a movement united in defending its evangelistic and missionary endeavors against theological, scientific, and philosophical "modernism." The threatened doctrines had recently been identified in a collaborative twelve-volume series entitled The Fundamentals (1910–1915). Battles over issues—most frequently biblical inerrancy (exemption from error), the virgin birth of Jesus, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, and miracles—soon erupted within several leading denominations, principally among northern Baptists and Presbyterians. Many members separated from their churches to form new denominations committed to defending the fundamentals. Fundamentalists took their campaign into public education, where such organizations as the Anti-Evolution League lobbied state legislatures to prohibit the teaching of evolution in public schools. The former Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan led this effort, which culminated in his prosecution of the Dayton, Tennessee, teacher John T. Scopes, for teaching evolution. The Scopes trial of 1925 attracted national attention, and the ridicule of Bryan's views during the trial by the defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow, helped to discredit fundamentalism.

Over the next three decades the Fundamentalists' twin commitments to evangelism and doctrinal purity produced a flurry of activity that escaped much public notice but laid the groundwork for a resurgence in the late 1970s. Evangelists and missionaries began supplementing earlier revival methods with radio programs. Thousands of independent churches formed, many loosely linked in such umbrella organizations as the Independent Fundamental Churches of America. These churches sent missionaries abroad through independent mission boards. Bible colleges and seminaries trained the missionaries. Internecine squabbles (differences from within) over doctrine marked this period. The dispensational premillennialism outlined in the Scofield Reference Bible began to take on the status of another fundamental. Others formalized a doctrine of separation from the world's corruption.

Such developments prompted some leaders to forge a new evangelical movement that differed little from fundamentalism in doctrine but sought broader ecclesiastical alliances and new social and intellectual engagement with the modern world. By the late 1960s a set of institutions supported a movement centered in Baptist splinter groups and independent churches. Listener-supported Christian FM radio stations began proliferating across the country. Evangelists began television ministries. This burgeoning network reached an audience far broader than the fundamentalist core, allowing Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals to identify a set of concerns that drew them together.

By the early 1970s, Fundamentalists came to believe that an array of social, judicial, and political forces threatened their beliefs. They began battling this "secular humanism" on several fronts, advocating restoration of prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools and swelling the ranks of the prolife movement after Roe v. Wade (1973). In the late 1970s Fundamentalists within the Southern Baptist Convention mounted a struggle, ultimately successful, for control of the denomination's seminaries and missions. At the same time, the fundamentalist Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell mobilized a conservative religious coalition that promoted moral reform by supporting conservative candidates for public office. Many political analysts credited Ronald Reagan's presidential victory in 1980 to the support of Falwell's Moral Majority.

Falwell disbanded his organization in 1988, but activists continued to exert influence into the mid-1990s. Journalists and students tended to label this post-Falwell coalition as "fundamentalist" and applied the term to antimodernist movements within other religions. Sharp differences, however, continued to distinguish Fundamentalists from Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Indeed, Fundamentalists themselves remained divided—separationists denounced efforts to form common cause with other religious groups, and political moderates criticized alliances of groups such as the Christian Coalition with the Republican party.

The minister, broadcaster, and one-time presidential candidate Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition in 1989 to promote traditional Christian values in American life. The group won a smashing victory in 1994 when it helped elect enough Republican congresspeople to give that party its first majority in both houses of Congress in four decades. Some of the measures it proposed became part of the Republicans' Contract with America program. The "contract" called for efforts to end federal aid to the arts and humanities, restore school prayer, restrict abortion, limit pornography, and provide tax breaks for parents who send their children to private or religious schools. It also called for a "Personal Responsibility Act" to limit benefits to welfare recipients who bore children out of wedlock. Few of these measures ever made it into law. However, the Christian Coalition's political clout became abundantly clear when President Bill Clinton decided to sign a welfare reform bill called the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" in 1996.

The late 1990s brought new challenges to the political arm of American Fundamentalism. The Christian Coalition's dynamic director, Ralph Reed, left the organization in 1996 to become a political consultant. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 shifted political discourse away from domestic and moral issues, which had been the Christian Coalition's strong suit, toward domestic security, military intelligence, and foreign relations. In the days after the attacks, Rev. Jerry Falwell attributed the attack on New York City to God's displeasure with homosexuals, abortionists, pagans, and civil libertarians (he later apologized for the comment). Several months later the Christian Coalition's founder, Pat Robertson, resigned from the organization. As a sign of the changed political environment facing Fundamentalists, Ralph Reed joined American Jews in pressuring the government to step up its military support for the beleaguered state of Israel.

At the start of the twenty-first century, Fundamentalists remained caught between the impulse to reform modernity and the impulse to reject and withdraw from it altogether. In some ways, the emergence of a religious marketing among a vast network of Christian publishers and television and radio stations catered to both impulses. A series of novels by Rev. Tim LaHaye depicting the Second Coming of Christ, which sold tens of millions of copies, revealed a deep understanding of a modern world even as it prophesied its destruction. The Fundamentalist movement in America continued to display great resourcefulness in adapting modern communications technology to defend its fundamentals against the modern world's ideas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ammerman, Nancy T. Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism. New York: Knopf, 2000.

Marsden, George. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Marty, Martin E., and R. Scott Appleby, eds. Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Watson, Justin. The Christian Coalition: Dreams of Restoration, Demands for Recognition. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Timothy D.Hall/a. r.

See alsoBaptist Churches ; Evangelicalism and Revivalism ; Millennialism ; Pentecostal Churches ; Presbyterianism ; Protestantism ; Pro-Life Movement ; Religion and Religious Affiliation ; Scopes Trial ; Televangelism ; Terrorism .

Fundamentalism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fundamentalism originally referred to an American Protestant movement occurring at the turn of the twentieth century. It emerged from an interdenominational revivalist movement led by the evangelist preacher Dwight Moody (1837–1899). In the early part of the twentieth century, fundamentalism came to stand for opposition to certain trends in modern society, including the rise of liberal theology, science’s challenge to religious beliefs, and increasing secularization of society in general.

In the early twenty-first century, scholars have referred to a worldwide fundamentalist movement that includes various faith traditions. This more recent use of the term fundamentalism shows its usefulness for capturing the form and functions of a great many religious groups and their agendas. As used by scholars, the term is meant to describe, not evaluate.

At the heart of fundamentalist movements, then, is their revolt against modernism and their call to return to the basic beliefs and practices of their original community and, most importantly, to the basic beliefs found in sacred texts such as the Bible and the Qur’an. Scholars’ composite pictures of fundamentalist groups often represent them as energetic, sometimes aggressive, and, contrary to current stereotypes, only occasionally violent.

Fundamentalists feel that certain developments associated with modernism undermine religious identity and their own religious worldview. They believe these developments undermine the ability to lead a morally pure life and, in some cases, a life that prepares for the afterlife. Their concern is not with developments in technology and science per se but only with those developments that challenge their religious worldview and/or have moral implications—as when Darwinian evolutionary theory spawned social Darwinism with its counter-Christian ethic of survival of the fittest. As this example of social Darwinism indicates, fundamentalists’ complaints about modernism are not altogether different from the complaints of many non-fundamentalists.

In North America, the term fundamentalism has often been used interchangeably with the term evangelical, although more so at the beginning of the fundamentalist movement than in the twenty-first century. Evangelical refers to the winning or saving of souls. To evangelize, then, means to lead others to becoming saved. North American fundamentalists are all about being saved and saving others: saved by believing in Jesus as the Lord and saved by accepting the Bible as the inerrant word of God.

For fundamentalists, being saved involves more than attending church or trying hard to lead a good life. Being saved, say the fundamentalists and evangelicals, entails no less than a total commitment to Christ and a total belief in the Bible. To be a North American, Protestant fundamentalist is, then, to embrace a biblical perspective that is clear, free from contradiction, and rejecting of alternative, non-fundamentalist worldviews. Being ecumenical is not, then, a part of the fundamentalist agenda. Therefore, North American Protestant fundamentalism, like other forms of fundamentalism around the world, runs counter to the dominant worldview in most societies today, a worldview that values pluralism and accepts there being multiple perspectives on what is true and valuable.

Nor is it a fundamentalist agenda to promote a separation of religion and state, a separation that has been central in North American and European democratic traditions. This is even more evident in Arab regions of the world where Islamic fundamentalism works to unite societies under Islamic law and under Islamic religious leadership.

Worldwide fundamentalism has been, then, both separatist and integrationist in spirit and political life. That is, while fundamentalists speak of the need to separate one’s self from the unsaved and from this sinful or corrupt world they also speak of the need for humankind to become a single, religious community.

Fundamentalism is not simply about returning to a distant past or living in the present according to truths and prescriptions revealed in the distant past. It is also about working and waiting for an imagined future. In North American Christian fundamentalism, the imagined future is the Second Coming of Christ or Parousia, a time when sinners (non-believers) will be judged and the Kingdom of God will be established.

This theme of there being a cataclysmic future event or time when sinners will be judged and the righteous and true believers will prevail is not just a theme in North American Protestant Christian fundamentalism. It is also a theme in non-Christian, non-Western fundamentalist movements. All fundamentalist movements uphold the general theme that today’s secular, pluralistic society will be replaced by a mono-religious society.

Non-fundamentalists often negatively stereotype fundamentalists. For example, fundamentalists are often pictured as being less educated on average, more authoritarian and dogmatic, anti-science, militant, and narrow-mindedly literal in their reading of sacred texts such as the Bible. However, the results of responsible research have shown each of these stereotypes to be distortions of the truth. In fact, fundamentalists make up a diverse group with respect to education, personality traits, and views about science and militancy. Furthermore, fundamentalists generally acknowledge the need to reflect and interpret when reading the sacred text. For fundamentalists, in general, discerning the revealed truth in the sacred text does not require taking each word, phrase, sentence, or portion literally.

Fundamentalism has and will continue to appeal to large segments of societies, especially in troubled times and in times of rapid transition. Its greatest appeal is in its offering clarity where there is doubt, order and continuity where there is disorder and discontinuity, and hope for being good and being saved where there is despair over being sinful and being lost. Fundamentalism appeals to a significant and diverse group for its providing a worldview and way of interpreting life that provides meaning, guidance, and personal satisfaction.

Despite these positive attributes, fundamentalism will likely continue to be rejected by the majority and for several reasons. First, its appeal to return to previous ways runs counter to the majority’s desire to develop new ways that reflect new conditions in modern life. Second, its appeal to adopt an uncompromising perspective, one that does not value alternative faith traditions and alternative worldviews, runs counter to the majority’s desire to value cultural and religious diversity so as to live harmoniously in a pluralistic society. Third, its appeal to believe in the inerrant, revealed truth of sacred texts runs counter to the philosophical and scientific ways of thinking that pervade modern academic and political institutions.

SEE ALSO Christianity; Islam, Shia and Sunni

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hood, Ralph W., Peter C. Hill, and Paul Williamson. 2005. The Psychology of Religious Fundamentalism. New York: Guilford Press.

Marsden, George M. 1980. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism 1870–1925. New York: Oxford University Press.

Marty, Martin E., and R. Scott Appleby, eds. 1991–1995. The Fundamentalism Project. 5 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Williamson, W. P. 2002. Another Look at Fundamentalism: A New Model. Psychology of Religion Newsletter: American Psychological Association 36: 1–13.

W. George Scarlett

fundamentalism, deriving from The Fundamentals (1910–15), a twelve‐volume, multi‐authored, theological protest against trends in modern religion and society published in the USA. The use of the term fundamentalism has changed over time and admits of no easy definition. Described as ‘militantly anti‐modernist Protestant evangelicalism’, fundamentalism is regarded by some as a term of abuse and by others as a proud badge of theological orthodoxy. The word itself came into common currency in the USA in the 1920s. It is in that decade also that it came to have some significance in Irish religious life. The populist evangelist W. P. Nicholson has been described as a militant fundamentalist who contributed a hard edge to evangelical orthodoxy. Meanwhile the Revd James Hunter orchestrated a campaign against theological professors in the Presbyterian College in Belfast, culminating in the charge of heresy brought against J. E. Davey and the secession, following his acquittal, of the Irish Evangelical (later the Evangelical Presbyterian) church.

Many of the issues surrounding this split within Presbyterianism were rehearsed in modified forms twenty‐five years later with the founding of the Free Presbyterian church over which Ian Paisley, who thought of himself as the heir of the fundamentalists of the 1920s, quickly established control. To most outsiders Paisley, with his well‐maintained connections with strands of American conservative Protestantism, is the embodiment of fundamentalism in Ulster Protestant culture, but in fact fundamentalist attitudes are not confined within the boundaries of the Free and Evangelical Presbyterian churches. This then raises the problem of how exactly fundamentalism should be defined, given that its advocates are not easily separated from hotter forms of evangelicalism. There is no easy answer to this difficulty, but suffice to say that fundamentalism is usually associated with anti‐Catholicism, anti‐modernism, anti‐liberalism (both theological and ethical), anti‐ecumenism, and anti‐Darwinism. Such a world‐view is not merely the product of rational theological disputation, but has its roots in contests for cultural, political, and religious power. Fundamentalism is therefore as much a cohesive frame of mind as a theological position.

David Hempton

fundamentalism1 In Protestantism, religious movement that arose among conservative members of various Protestant denominations early in the 20th cent., with the object of maintaining traditional interpretations of the Bible and of the doctrines of the Christian faith in the face of Darwinian evolution , secularism, and the emergence of liberal theology.

A group protesting "modernist" tendencies in the churches circulated a 12-volume publication called The Fundamentals (1909–12), in which five points of doctrine were set forth as fundamental: the Virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus, the infallibility of the Scriptures, the substitutional atonement, and the physical second coming of Christ. The debate between fundamentalists and modernists was most acute among the Baptists and the Presbyterians but also arose within other denominations. In a highly publicized case, the so-called Monkey Trial (1925), the fundamentalist leader William Jennings Bryan won Tennessee's case against J. T. Scopes, for teaching evolution in the public schools (see Scopes trial ). Other attempts, however, by fundamentalists in the 1920s to rid the churches of modernism and the schools of evolution failed.

By the 1930s many fundamentalists began to withdraw into independent churches and splinter denominations, and fundamentalism became identified in the public mind with anti-intellectualism and extremism. Many fundamentalists rejected this image, and a movement was begun in the late 1940s to present their position in both a more scholarly and popular way. This movement, known as neoevangelicalism (or, more simply, evangelicalism), sought a wider following from the major denominations through its various schools, youth programs, publications, and radio broadcasts. The separatists saw these efforts as compromising fundamentalist views and sought to disassociate themselves from these religious institutions and such well-known evangelical fundamentalists as Billy Graham .

Since the late 1970s fundamentalists have embraced electoral and legislative politics and the "electronic church" in their fight against perceived threats to traditional religious values: so-called secular humanism, Communism, feminism, legalized abortion, homosexuality, and the ban on school prayer. They have continued to oppose the teaching of evolution in the schools or have sought to have creationism or intelligent design taught as well. In recent years some fundamentalists have also attacked the teaching of scientific theories on the origins of the universe (see cosmology ). Those Americans who describe themselves as fundamentalists (approximately 25% of the U.S. population) have become a political bloc in their own right. During the 1980s they made up a large portion of the new Christian right that helped put Ronald Reagan into the White House, and early in the 21st cent. they aided significantly in the election of George W. Bush to the presidency. The Moral Majority, founded by the fundamentalist Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell in 1979, was the most visible example of this new trend in the 1980s; the most prominent current group is the Christian Coalition, headed by Pat Robertson . Moderate fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals continue to forge new alliances, for example in the Southern Baptist Convention, to wield political and denominational control.

Bibliography: See N. Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy, 1918–1931 (1954, repr. 1963); L. Gasper, The Fundamentalist Movement, 1930–1956 (1963); E. R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (1970); M. Ellingsen, The Evangelical Movement (1988); W. H. Capps, The New Religious Right (1990); J. B. Flippen, Jimmy Carter, the Politics of Family, and the Rise of the Religious Right (2011).

2 In other religions. In Islam, the term "fundamentalism" encompasses various modern Muslim leaders, groups, and movements opposed to secularization in Islam and Islamic countries and seeking to reassert traditional beliefs and practices. After the Shiite revolution (1979) led by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, the term was applied to a number of ultra-conservative or militant Islamic movements there and in other countries, such as the Taliban of Afghanistan. There are both Shiite and Sunni fundamentalist leaders and groups, such as the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Muslim Brotherhood . The term has also been applied to Hindu nationalist groups in India (see Hinduism ; Bharatiya Janata party ).

Fundamentalism, conservative religious movement of various Protestant denominations during the 20th century, embodying a protest against the incursions of science into revelation. Its object is to maintain traditional interpretations of the Bible and fundamental doctrines of Christian faith. The five points of the doctrine whose literal acceptance is demanded are the Virgin birth, physical resurrection of Christ, inerrancy of the Scriptures, vicarious atonement, and the physical second coming of Christ. The struggle against the teaching of evolutionary theories, which are considered to threaten orthodoxy, became a national issue in the Scopes trial in Tennessee (1925), in which Clarence Darrow defended J.T. Scopes, a public‐school teacher who expounded evolution, while William Jennings Bryan upheld the Fundamentalist point of view, winning the case for the prosecution. The trial was the subject of the play Inherit the Wind (1955) by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Fundamentalist views have been widely revived and extended during the 1980s and 1990s by some ministers in their churches and allied institutions and on their television programs, becoming a political force under the rubric “The Moral Majority.” As in the past, the theory of evolution is challenged, as is the practice of abortion, while they fulminate against or urge censorship of books, films, and the media whose expression or values they disapprove.

fundamentalism Term applied to strictly conservative religious belief; in Christianity it holds the entire Bible in its original languages to be free from historical, theological, and scientific error. Fundamentalists oppose the teaching of evolution and all concessions to modern thought embraced by liberal Christianity. They tend to emphasize the demands of personal morality rather than social issues. The term derives from a series of tracts which began to appear in the USA in 1909 and which affirmed five fundamentals of faith: the verbal inerrancy of scripture, the divinity of Christ, his birth of a virgin, a substitutionary theory of the atonement, and the physical resurrection and bodily return of Christ. Christian Fundamentalists maintain that being inspired by God (who cannot err) the Bible offers totally accurate history. The authority exercised by Jesus among his disciples is available in the Bible, so that the OT account of the origin of creation is more acceptable than a theory of evolution by natural selection. God has not revealed everything, but what he has revealed we can know with certainty. Fundamentalists distance themselves from theological sophistication.

Fundamentalism. In general, a description of those who return to what they believe to be the fundamental truths and practices of a religion. It can thus be applied to this attitude in all religions (e.g. the resurgence of conservative Islam is sometimes called ‘Islamic fundamentalism’). But this use is often resented by such people, because of its more usual identification with those, in Christianity, who defend the Bible against charges that it contains any kind of error. More specifically, it denotes the view of Protestant Christians opposed to the historical and theological implications of critical study of the Bible.

To avoid overtones of closed-mindedness, Christians in the Fundamentalist tradition often prefer to be called Conservative Evangelicals.

The word (Arab. equivalents are salafiyya and uṣūliyya) is used of Muslims, when it refers to those who assert the literal truth of the Qurʾān and the validity of its legal and ritual commandments for modern people.

fundamentalism n.
1. a form of Protestant Christianity that upholds belief in the strict and literal interpretation of the Bible, including its narratives, doctrines, prophecies, and moral laws.

2. strict maintenance of ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion or ideology, notably Islam.
fundamentalist n. & adj.
Modern Christian fundamentalism arose from American millenarian sects of the 19th century, and has become associated with reaction against social and political liberalism and rejection of the theory of evolution. Islamic fundamentalism appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries as a reaction to the disintegration of Islamic political and economic power, asserting that Islam is central to both state and society and advocating strict adherence to the Koran (Qur'an) and to Islamic law (sharia), supported if need be by jihad or holy war.

fundamentalism Movement within some Protestant denominations, particularly in the USA, which originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a reaction against biblical criticism and contemporary theories of evolution. The name is derived from The Fundamentals, a series of 12 tracts published in 1909–15 by eminent US evangelical leaders. The doctrines most emphasized are the inspiration and infallible truth of the Bible, the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, atonement by Christ bringing expiation and salvation for all, the physical resurrection and the second coming. Fundamentalism has been loosely used to refer to any extreme orthodox element within a religion.

fun·da·men·tal·ism / ˌfəndəˈmentlˌizəm/ • n. a form of Protestant Christianity that upholds belief in the strict and literal interpretation of the Bible, including its narratives, doctrines, prophecies, and moral laws. ∎  strict maintenance of ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion or ideology, notably Islam. DERIVATIVES: fun·da·men·tal·ist n. & adj.

fundamentalism (religious) A movement or belief calling for a return to the basic texts or ‘fundamentals’ of revealed religion–usually contrasted, therefore, with modernism and liberalism in religion. The term has been applied to Protestant trends within Christianity, since the 1920s, and recently to trends within Islam. Despite its theological character it is usually linked to projects of social reform and the acquisition of political power.

fundamentalism a form of Protestant Christianity which upholds belief in the strict and literal interpretation of the Bible, including its narratives, doctrines, prophecies, and moral laws. Also, strict maintenance of ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion or ideology, notably Islam.

fundamentalism See CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM.