{"id":18194,"date":"2019-10-10T02:09:06","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T02:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=18194"},"modified":"2019-10-11T16:39:16","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T16:39:16","slug":"fundamentalism-turns-100-a-landmark-for-the-christian-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/fundamentalism-turns-100-a-landmark-for-the-christian-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Fundamentalism turns 100, a landmark for the Christian Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Trollinger<\/a>, University of Dayton<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

These days, the term \u201cfundamentalism\u201d is often associated with a militant form of Islam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the original fundamentalist movement was actually Christian<\/a>. And it was born in the United States a century ago this year.<\/p>\n

Protestant fundamentalism is still very much alive. And, as Susan Trollinger and I<\/a> discuss in our 2016 book<\/a>, it has fueled today\u2019s culture war over gender, sexual orientation, science and American religious identity.<\/p>\n

Roots of Fundamentalism<\/h2>\n

Christian fundamentalism has roots in the 19th century, when Protestants were confronted by two challenges to traditional understandings of the Bible.<\/p>\n

Throughout the century, scholars increasingly evaluated the Bible as a historical text<\/a>. In the process they raised questions about its divine origins, given its seeming inconsistencies and errors.<\/p>\n

In addition, Charles Darwin\u2019s 1859 book \u201cOn the Origin of Species<\/a>\u201d \u2013 which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection \u2013 raised profound questions about the Genesis account of creation.<\/p>\n

Many American Protestants easily squared their Christian faith with these ideas. Others were horrified.<\/p>\n

Conservative theologians responded by developing the doctrine of biblical inerrancy<\/a>. Inerrancy asserts that the Bible is errorless and factually accurate in everything it says \u2013 including about science.<\/p>\n

This doctrine became the theological touchstone of fundamentalism. Alongside inerrancy emerged a system of ideas, called apocalyptic or \u201cdispensational premillennialism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adherents of these ideas hold that reading the Bible literally \u2013 particularly the Book of Revelation \u2013 reveals that history will end soon with a ghastly apocalypse.<\/p>\n

All those who are not true Christians will be slaughtered. In the wake of this violence, Christ will establish God\u2019s millennial kingdom on Earth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Christian fundamentalists have remained consistent in their core beliefs for a century.<\/span>
\nShutterstock<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Setting the stage<\/h2>\n

A series of Bible and prophecy conferences<\/a> spread these ideas to thousands of Protestants across the United States in the late 19th century.<\/p>\n

But two early 20th-century publications were particularly key to their dissemination.<\/p>\n

The first was author Cyrus Scofield\u2019s 1909 Reference Bible<\/a>. Scofield\u2019s Bible included an overwhelming set of footnotes emphasizing that the errorless Bible predicts a violent end of history which only true Christians will survive.<\/p>\n

The second was \u201cThe Fundamentals<\/a>,\u201d 12 volumes published between 1910 and 1915 which made the case<\/a> for biblical inerrancy while simultaneously attacking socialism and affirming capitalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Fundamentals\u201d provided the name of the future religious movement. But there was not yet a fundamentalist movement.<\/p>\n

That came after World War I.<\/p>\n

The birth of the Fundamentalist Movement<\/h2>\n

After Woodrow Wilson\u2019s April 1917 declaration of war on Germany, the government mobilized a huge propaganda campaign<\/a> designed to demonize the Germans as barbarous Huns who threatened Western civilization. Many conservative Protestants traced Germany\u2019s devolution into depravity to its embrace of Darwinism and de-emphasis of the Bible\u2019s divine origins<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Six months after the war\u2019s end, William Bell Riley \u2013 pastor of Minneapolis\u2019 First Baptist Church<\/a> and a well-known speaker on the Bible\u2019s prophecies regarding the end of history \u2013 organized and presided over the World\u2019s Conference on Christian Fundamentals in Philadelphia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This five-day May 1919 meeting attracted over 6,000 people and an all-star lineup of conservative Protestant speakers. It produced the World\u2019s Christian Fundamentals Association<\/a>, which birthed a movement that influences American political and social life today.<\/p>\n

In summer and fall of 1919<\/a> Riley sent teams of speakers to spread the fundamentalist word across the U.S. In addition to promoting biblical inerrancy and apocalyptic premillennialism, they attacked socialism and Darwinism.<\/p>\n

Soon, Riley and his newly minted fundamentalists began trying to capture control of major Protestant denominations<\/a> and eliminate the teaching of Darwinian evolution<\/a> from American public schools.<\/p>\n

The anti-evolution crusade had some success in the South. Five states<\/a> passed laws banning the theory of evolution from classrooms.<\/p>\n

In March 1925 Tennessee made it illegal<\/a> to teach \u201cthat man has descended from a lower order of animals.\u201d Four months later a science teacher named John Scopes was tried and convicted of violating the statute.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A historic marker outside the Dayton, Tenn., courthouse where the 1925 Scopes Trial was held.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Mark Humphrey<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fundamentalism after Scopes<\/h2>\n

Though the Scopes Trial<\/a> brought ridicule by the national media, fundamentalism did not wither away.<\/p>\n

Instead, it continued to advance<\/a> during the 20th century. And it remained remarkably consistent in its central commitments<\/a> of biblical inerrancy, apocalyptic premillennialism, creationism and patriarchy \u2013 the idea that women are to submit to male authority in church and home.<\/p>\n

Fundamentalists also embraced political conservatism. This commitment grew more intense as the 20th century progressed.<\/p>\n

Fundamentalists<\/a> despised President Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal<\/a>. They saw welfare to the poor and increased taxes on the rich as an indefensible expansion of government powers.<\/p>\n

When the Cold War brought the United States into conflict with the Soviet Union, their concerns about the all-encompassing, anti-Christian state intensified<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then came the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n

Fundamentalists bitterly opposed<\/a> the civil rights and feminist movements, the Supreme Court\u2019s rulings prohibiting school-sponsored prayer<\/a> and affirming a woman\u2019s right to an abortion<\/a>, and President Lyndon Johnson\u2019s programs that sought to eliminate poverty and racial injustice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fundamentalists go political<\/h2>\n

Understanding Christian America to be under deadly assault, in the late 1970s these politically conservative fundamentalists began to organize.<\/p>\n

The emergent Christian Right attached itself to the Republican Party, which was more aligned with its members\u2019 central commitments than the Democrats.<\/p>\n

In the vanguard was Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell Sr. His \u201cMoral Majority<\/a>\u201d sought to make America Christian again<\/a> by electing \u201cpro-family, pro-life, pro-Bible morality\u201d candidates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
President Ronald Reagan with pastor Jerry Falwell Sr., in March 1983.<\/span>
\nWhite House\/ Ronald Reagan Presidential Library<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since the 1980s, the movement has become increasingly sophisticated. Christian Right organizations like Focus on the Family and Concerned Women of America<\/a> push for laws that reflect the fundamentalist views on everything from abortion to sexual orientation.
\nBy the time Falwell died, in 2007, the Christian Right had become the most important constituency in the Republican Party<\/a>. It played a crucial role in electing Donald Trump in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After one century, Protestant fundamentalism is still very much alive in America. William Bell Riley, I wager, would be pleased.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n
\n
William Trollinger (with co-author Susan Trollinger) is the author of:<\/header>\n

Righting America at the Creation Museum<\/a>\"The<\/p>\n