FUNDAMENTALISM The arrival of fundamentalism as a movement within American Christianity is usually dated from 1910 and the publication of a series of booklets entitled The Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truth. The booklets, printed by two wealthy Presbyterians, Los Angeles oilmen Lyman Stewart (1840–1923) and Milton Stewart (1838–1923), were distributed freely and were the textbooks for what in the 1920s became the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Fundamentalism so defined is usually viewed as a reaction to modernism, asserting traditional standards against the new theology and its search for scientific compatibility. While there is much truth in that definition, it is limited. It misses the essentially affirmative nature of fundamentalism and the century-old movement, of which early twentieth-century fundamentalism is but one passing phase. Fundamentalism was, in its best form, an affirmative assertion of certain ideas concerning Bible truth. At its beginning, it was a discovery by clergy and laymen of American Protestant churches of the dispensational theology of John Nelson Darby, discussed early in this chapter. Conservative and evangelical, fundamentalism became a rallying point for church leaders and, during the late nineteenth century, was one of the major thrusts of Christianity in America. In the mid-nineteenth century, the ideas of William Miller (1782–1849) brought to public consciousness the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ and the dispensational theology of Darby, with its emphasis upon the premillennial literal return of Jesus. In America, Darby found that people accepted his ideas without leaving their own church to join the Brethren. Outstanding Christian leaders became vocal exponents of dispensational theology. Possibly none was as effective as evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who had been deeply affected by Brethren evangelist Henry Moorhouse Leading ministers—Adoniram J. Gordon, Arthur T. Pierson (1837– 1911), William G. Moorehead (1836–1914), and James H. Brooks—were all changed by Brethren thinking. In 1869 a group of ministers associated with a millennial periodical, Waymarks in the Wilderness, held the first of what became the Believers Meeting for Bible Study. The ministers met to promote belief in the “doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Bible, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the atonement of (Christ’s) sacrifice, the priesthood of Christ, the two natures in the believer, and the personal imminent return of our Lord from heaven.” In 1883 the annual meetings were moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and thus became known as the Niagara Conference on Prophecy. Part of the aim of the Niagara Conference was to manifest the primitive idea of the ecclesia, the church. Thus the conference was the ministers’ means of forming what Darby called the church, a gathering of believers free of denominational systems. However, the ministers did not leave their mainline denominations. They gathered for the informal closeness and doctrinal purity that Darby said should characterize the church. They used the Bible reading as developed by the Brethren, and they accepted Darby’s ideas on dispensationalism and his eschatology. In 1890 a definitive step for the whole course of fundamentalism occurred. The Niagara Conference adopted a “creedal statement.” The 14-point statement was highly determinative of the movement’s future course and set its priorities. The premillennial return of Christ is asserted as the answer to the impossibility of converting the world in this dispensation. The conference accepted the premillennialists’ idea that the world is becoming less Christian, with evolution not bringing real human progress, thus necessitating Christ’s direct intervention before the millennium. The conference was dominated by a mixture of Darby’s ideas (especially on eschatology) and what is termed Princeton theology, a conservative Reformed theology developed at Princeton Theological Seminary. Princeton theology had developed new language to assert the authority of the Bible in the face of challenges by Darwinism, new historical critical approaches to the Bible, and liberal theology. It affirmed that the Bible (in its original text) was inerrant; that all scriptures, including the books of the Jewish Bible (the Old Testament), were Christ-centered; and that all of the books of the Bible are equally inspired. The Niagara statement also included the Reformed theological emphasis on human depravity and salvation by the blood of Christ, which were assertively detailed in six articles. Almost all of the attendees at the Niagara Conference were from churches of the Reformed heritage, and it is not surprising that support for the Niagara statement drew most of its response from churches of the Reformed heritage (Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed, and Congregational). In the 1920s, fundamentalism had its major battleground in the Baptist and Presbyterian churches. Fundamentalists also cut off other conservative Christians who might have offered some support. For example, they denied the second blessing (a major idea of the Holiness movement—the second blessing is a personal religious experience after which the believer is thought to be perfected for life), and two ideas of the Adventists—soul-sleep and annihilationism. Soul-sleep is the idea that the soul exists in an unconscious state from the individual’s death until the general resurrection of the body. Annihilationism is the belief that the wicked cease to exist, instead of existing in torment in hell for eternity. While some Methodists and some Adventists would, in the 1920s, agree on the five fundamentals, the Methodists and Adventists were not prominent in the fundamentalist movement. From the 14-point Niagara statement, five points were lifted up as the most essential, the very fundamental beliefs of anyone who could be considered a Christian. The five fundamentals, as they came to be known, are: (1) the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible; (2) the deity of Christ (including his virgin birth); (3) the substitutionary atonement accomplished in Christ’s death; (4) the literal resurrection of Christ from the dead; and (5) the literal return of Christ in the second advent. These points assume the truth of the ecumenical creeds, the Nicene and Chalcedonian. At the height of the modernist-fundamentalist controversy in the 1920s, the five fundamentals would become the crucial points around which arguments were focused. The group consciousness of the leaders of the Niagara Conference was solidified in the several Bible institutes that were founded in the late nineteenth century. The most influential of these was the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, but others, including the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, Philadelphia Bible Institute, the Toronto Bible Training School, and the Northwestern Bible Training School in Minneapolis, contributed to the cause. These schools institutionalized fundamentalism and, more importantly, helped train its future leaders. In the early years of the twentieth century, the most prominent of the fundamentalist leaders was Arno E. Gaebelein (1861–1945), a former Methodist who left that church after accepting dispensational theology. He began a magazine, Our Hope, in 1899. He also helped finance the work on the Scofield Reference Bible, the single most influential source of Darby’s theology in the modern era. New life flowed into the movement with the publication of The Fundamentals in 1910, and Darbyite fundamentalism came into direct conflict with emerging liberalism in the decade before World War I (1914–1918). The Fundamentals followed the lead of the Niagara Creed in asserting the verbal inerrancy of scripture, the Calvinist doctrine of human depravity, and the imminent Second Coming. As modernist thinking grew, polemics led to polarization within American Protestantism, and polarization was followed by the formation of new denominations. The modernist thinking was highlighted by a theology that accepted the theory of evolution, and by higher biblical criticism, the study of the Bible in the light of the findings of secular historians and archeologists. The new denominations occasioned by the fundamentalist controversy were of two kinds. First, from the several large Protestant bodies arose fundamentalist churches that differed only from their parent bodies by acceptance of a fundamentalist mind-set with which to interpret the parent bodies’ own doctrinal statements (such as the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches). Second, there emerged new religious bodies that encompassed the total fundamentalist thrust and were the truly American form of the Plymouth Brethren tradition discussed earlier in this chapter. These have been referred to as the undenominated churches, since they were organized in loose fellowships. They had a dispensational theology with the Reformed emphasis of Niagara, and became the ecclesiastical products of the Bible institutes (such as the Independent Fundamental Churches of America). Fundamentalism of both kinds split into essentially two parties. One group emphasizes separation from all apostasy and from particular forms of evil, such as communism, the National Council of Churches, and organizations that compromise the faith. It also separated from its former colleagues who chose to remain in the larger liberal denominations. A second group also emerged among those who left the denominations but wanted to retain a relationship with colleagues who for various reasons wished to stay in their post. This group developed a more positive attitude toward the world and articulated a desire to engage modern intellectual thought and culture while retaining an allegiance to a conservative theological stance. Neo-Evangelicalism (or today just Evangelicalism) is the name assumed by this postfundamentalist movement. Its leaders have tried to be honest with natural science, conversant on philosophy and theology, and socially concerned. The separatists have been associated with the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) and the ministry of Dr. Carl McIntire (1906– 2002), whose organ of expression was for many years the Christian Beacon. McIntire founded and headed the Bible Presbyterian Church. Membership in the ACCC is made up largely of small separatist bodies. The more inclusive approach is advocated by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). It includes a wide range of bodies that accept its minimal statement of faith. The NAE accepts not only church bodies, but also conferences and local churches, or groups not otherwise affiliated. The independent magazine, Christianity Today, is the most important periodical of neo-Evangelicalism, though the NAE has its own organ, United Evangelical Action. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, Evangelicals and fundamentalists made common cause on the political front in the United States with the formation of a conservative movement espousing the goal of enacting into law some of their moral ideals, especially as they relate to sexual morality. Motivation for the rise of what has been termed the Christian Right was the 1973 Supreme Court case Row v. Wade, which was widely perceived as legalizing abortion. The same decade saw the rise of the homosexual rights movement. Conservative Christian leaders saw these two issues tied together by the larger issue of widespread disregard of traditional sexual ethics and open support for sexual activity outside of the bounds of heterosexual marriage. The Christian Right movement also grew upon the success of religious broadcasting, the Evangelicals having come to dominate Christianbased radio and television. Many of the leaders of the Christina Right had originally gained a level of fame and public support through their radio and television shows, most notably Jerry Falwell (1933– 2007), Pat Robertson (b. 1930), Tim Lahaye (b. 1926) and Beverly Lahaye (b. 1930), and James Dobson (b. 1936). During the administration (1981–1989) of President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), the Christian Right aligned with the Republican Party, within which it attained a powerful presence. Though unable to push much legislation through Congress or overturn Roe v. Wade, the Christian Right was able to block a variety of legislative initiatives, and during the George W. Bush administration (2001–2009) attained a few of its goals (such as the funding of faith-based charity work) through presidential fiat. Meanwhile, the movement proved unable to stop the slow but steady establishment in law of gay and lesbian rights.
