The first task is to define the word "fundamentalism". The term is
commonly used in newspapers, television newscasts, backyard arguments, and above all in churches, both in negative and positive ways. The word
means different things to different persons. I suggest that it is best to
distinguish small "f" from capital "F" usages: fundamentalism as a generic
or worldwide phenomenon versus Fundamentalism as a religious movement
specific to Protestant culture in the United States in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.
Generic fundamentalism refers to a global religious impulse,
particularly evident in the twentieth century, that seeks to recover and
publicly institutionalize aspects of the past that modern life has
obscured. It typically sees the secular state as the primary enemy, for
the latter is more interested in education, democratic reforms, and
economic progress than in preserving the spiritual dimension of life.
Generic fundamentalism takes its cues from a sacred text that stands above
criticism. It sees time-honored social distinctions and cultural patterns
as rooted in the very nature of things, in the order of creation itself.
That means clear-cut and stratified roles for men and women, parents and
children, clergy and laity. On the other hand, generic fundamentalism seeks
to minimize the distinction between the state and the church. To hold that
the state should operate according to one set of publicly shared
principles, while individuals should operate according to multiple sets of
privately shared principles, is morally pernicious and ends up harming
everyone, believers and nonbelievers alike. Religious truths are no
different from the truths of medical science or aeronautical engineering:
if they hold for anyone they hold for everyone.
Historic Fundamentalism shared all of the assumptions of generic
fundamentalism but also reflected several concerns particular to the
religious setting of the United States at the turn of the century. Some of
those concerns stemmed from broad changes in the culture such as growing
awareness of world religions, the teaching of human evolution and, above
all, the rise of biblical higher criticism. The last proved particularly
troubling because it implied the absence of the supernatural and the purely
human authorship of scripture.
Social changes of the early twentieth century also fed the flames
of protest. Drawn primarily from ranks of "old stock whites,"
Fundamentalists felt displaced by the waves of non-Protestant immigrants
from southern and eastern Europe flooding America's cities. They believed
they had been betrayed by American statesmen who led the nation into an
irresolved war with Germany, the cradle of destructive biblical criticism.
They deplored the teaching of evolution in public schools, which they paid
for with their taxes, and resented the elitism of professional educators
who seemed often to scorn the values of traditional Christian families.
Fundamentalists fought these changes on several fronts.
Intellectually they mounted a strenuous defense of the fundamentals (as
they defined them) of historic Christian teachings. Thus they insisted
upon the necessity of a conversion experience through faith in Jesus Christ
alone, the accuracy of the Bible in matters of science and history as well
as theology, and the imminent physical return of Christ to the earth where
he would establish a millennial reign of peace and righteousness.
Fundamentalists conveyed their convictions in numerous ways, but most
prominently through the wide dissemination of twelve booklets called The
Fundamentalists also pursued the battle through legislatures,
courts, and denominational machinery. In the 1920s they tried to monitor
public school curricula by presenting anti-evolution bills in the legislatures of eleven states (mostly in the South). Undoubtedly the best-known instance, the so-called "Monkey Trial," pitted the Fundamentalist
politician William Jennings Bryan against the agnostic lawyer Clarence
Darrow in a steamy courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925.
Bryan won in the court but lost in the press. Partisans also fought their
opponents, commonly known as Modernists, in the general conventions of
several mainline denominations, including the Northern Baptists and
Northern Presbyterians. Here too their record proved mixed at best.
Nonetheless, Fundamentalism continued to grow and eventually to
flourish. In the 1930s it moved underground, so to speak, where it built a
network of day schools, colleges, seminaries, and missionary agencies.
More importantly the movement soon established a print and telecast
industry of its own. It also created a system of parachurch organizations
aimed to meet the spiritual needs of numerous socially discrete groups
(youths, unmarrieds, veterans). Above all Fundamentalists found innovative
ways to address the religious concerns of common people. Though it would
be unfair to say that they were anti-intellectual, they made a point, as
evangelist Billy Sunday once said, to keep the cookies on the bottom shelf.
And they proved remarkably successful in passing their beliefs on to their
children. Historic Fundamentalism, largely forged before World War I,
helped to produce the massive evangelical, pentecostal, and charismatic
revivals after World War II, as well as the Christian Right in the 1970s
Guiding Student Discussion
Few persons are neutral about Fundamentalism. You are likely to find that feelings run high. My experience with
college undergraduates suggests that many students, coming from the
outside, will try to dismiss the movement as narrow-minded and even
bigoted. Others, coming from the inside, will try to defend it as the only
valid form of Christianity (or any religion for that matter). In working
with undergraduates I have found it helpful to frame Fundamentalism as a
traditionalist movement, i.e., that it was an effort by earnest
folk to retain a place for old fashioned (or at least what they took to be
old fashioned) values in a rapidly modernizing world. I have also tried to
stress the genuine apprehension or even outright fear that Fundamentalists
experienced as they faced the future. That was particularly true of the
evolution threat, for they saw their most precious possessions, their
children, liable to be taken from them by alien teachings. The main point is
that Fundamentalists proved similar to many other social and religious
groups that looked backward to find resources for dealing with the
troubling changes in the present.
Fundamentalism has benefited from serious attention
by historians, theologians, and social scientists. The most influential
historical treatments remain Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism
(1970) and George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980).
The former casts the tradition as an intellectual movement, a cluster of
ideas about the nature of the Bible and the direction of human history
forged by a small number of well educated men on both sides of the
Atlantic. The latter book sees Fundamentalism as a more broadly based social and religious protest against modernity's threats to
traditional Christianity. The story of American Fundamentalism and its evangelical offspring is carefully traced in a masterful
work by Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (1997).
Grant Wacker holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and is currently Professor of the History of Religion in America at the Duke University Divinity School. He is the author of Augustus H. Strong and the Dilemma of Historical Consciousness (1985) and is coeditor, with Edith Blumhofer and Russell P. Spittler, of Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism (1999). He is working on two books: a monograph to be titled Heaven Below: Pentecostals and American Culture, 1900-1925, and a survey textbook of American religious history with Harry S. Stout and Randall Balmer.
Address comments or questions to Professor Wacker through TeacherServe "Comments and Questions."