The Rise of Fundamentalism - Coursework Example

of the Fundamentalism: Its Growth and Influence in the 18th and 19th Century Fundamentalism: Its Growth and Influence in the 18th and 19th Century Christian fundamentalism can be defined as a movement that arose among the British and American Protestants in an effort to protect the core beliefs of Christianity which were shaken by theological liberalism and cultural modernism. 1 In fact, theological liberalism had its birth in the 19th century German Enlightenment, and it is indebted to the teachings of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schleiermacher. The liberalism is an effort to introduce modern developments and science into Christian faith. Liberalism, in its basic form, preached Universal Fatherhood of God, the establishment of God’s Kingdom on Earth, immeasurable value of human soul, human brotherhood and so on. This 19th century movement started influencing the American churches in the beginning of the 20th century. These liberal leaders encouraged higher biblical criticism of modern Biblical scholarship. 2 In the same way, Higher criticism took birth as a result of the 19th century rationalism in Europe. The approach gave more attention to the origin and composition of the Biblical text in a secular manner. Based on rationalism, the higher critics claimed that Bible deserves to be evaluated like any other book and the authorship of various books of the Bible came under attack. This rising criticism posed a threat to the Church as is evident from the fact that Pope Leo XIII expressed his dislike for the secular biblical scholarship.3 One can find the roots of Fundamentalism in Evangelicalism, Dispensationalism, and Princeton theology. All these were efforts to battle the damages caused by liberalism and higher criticism. Evangelicalism proclaimed the authority of Biblical text. Similarly, dispensationalism claimed that God punished humans for failing God’s testing. In addition, it holds that the increasing secularism, liberalism, and immorality are all signs that humans are again failing God’s testing. In the same way, Princeton Theology insisted on the biblical inerrancy. According to this view, Bible is divinely inspired, and hence, error-free. As Bible is not a human creation, it cannot be treated like other historical documents. Moreover, Princeton scholars claimed that modernism and liberalism would lead one to hell like non-Christian groups. 4 The movement received its own name from a set of essays named The Fundamentals, which was aimed at fighting the liberal theology. The Fundamentals insisted on several core principles of Christian faith, including the substitutionary atonement of Christ, bodily resurrection and physical return of Jesus, Virgin Birth of Christ, the literal nature of the Biblical accounts including Creation, and most importantly the inerrancy of Bible.5 One of the leading figures of Fundamentalism in the U.S was William Bell Riley. Through his Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School, Northwestern Evangelical Seminary and Northwestern College, Riley gave birth to thousands of fundamentalist graduates. In addition, he founded the World Christian Fundamentals Association in the year 1919. Similarly, Lewis Sperry Chafer through Dallas Theological Seminary and Gresham J. Machen through Princeton Theological Seminary promoted Fundamentalist ideas. 6 The war of Fundamentalists against modernism can be categorized into three streams. The first stream aimed at regaining control of Protestant denominations, seminaries and missions but the efforts were unsuccessful. In the second stream, the Fundamentalists supported Prohibition, Sunday Blue Laws and other traditional Protestant morality. Finally, there was the effort to stop teaching evolution, resulting in the infamous Scopes Trial.7 Many fundamentalists fought vehemently to stop teaching Darwin’s evolution in schools and colleges. A perfect example is the effort by John W. Butler to introduce a law banning the teaching of evolution theory in schools and colleges. As the head of World Christian Fundamentals Association, he successfully influenced the legislators to introduce the Butler Act. Soon, American Civil Liberties Union took up the matter and a science teacher named John Scopes was tried for violating the Act by teaching evolution theory from a textbook. In the case, William Jennings Bryan appeared for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow appeared for the defense. Thus, based on the law, Scope was declared guilty and fined $100. Many Fundamentalists claimed that teaching evolution is “detrimental to our morality” and an attack on the “very citadel of our Christian religion”. However, this trial gave much publicity to the contradiction between fundamentalism and modernism.8 In fact, William Jennings Bryan is closely linked to another religious movement of the same time, that is, social gospel. The industrialism, urbanization, and mass immigration of the early twentieth century created many social issues in the U.S. To illustrate, industries used cities as a source of cheap labor, and the consequence was a rise in poverty, slums, diseases, and child labor. In order to manage the issues created as a result of industrialism, social gospel took birth. The movement claimed that the industrialized society could be improved by applying the principles of charity and justice. People like Charles Monroe Sheldon and Walter Rauschenbusch wrote about abolishing child labor, limited work schedules, minimum salary and behavior codes in factories. 9 One can trace the origin of this social gospel back to 1870s when Solomon Washington Gladden taught his parishioners to use gospel to deal with the problems in the slums of Columbus, Ohio. Thereafter, this movement grew, but not as a single organized movement. Instead, it had no definite leadership as there were people from different religious beliefs. This social gospel movement was marked by an optimistic attitude towards human morality and social progressivism. Admittedly, adherents of social gospel held a liberal theology, causing troubles for fundamentalism.10 While fundamentalism demanded a retreat back to basic, the social gospel approach aimed at introducing social justice in the world. In fact, before the onset of World War I, the Social Gospel was closely linked to the Progressive Movement. In order to establish social justice, social gospel activists engaged in works of charity like free language classes, employment bureaus, and clinics. Thus, the social gospel was so popular in the first half of the 20th century that it had considerable influence on the New Deal and various labor movements.11 Perplexed by the growth of liberal theology, the conservatives decided to fight back and it was this decision which resulted in the birth of new fundamentalist sources like The Fundamentals and Scofield Reference Bible. Armed with these new weapons, the fundamentalists improved their position, and managed to bring considerable changes like alcohol prohibition and banning Darwinian evolution from schools.12 However, the Butler Act banning evolution theory in school had a very negative impact on the course of fundamentalism. In the famous Scopes Trial that followed, Bryan13 miserably failed to withstand the questions on Bible from the defense. He ended up admitting that Bible may not mean what it says in the early chapters of Genesis. The failure was taken up by the mainstream media and various liberal leaders to mock at the inerrant view of Bible held by Fundamentalists. A perfect example is the movie Inherit the Wind, which presents Darrow14 as a heroic figure. However, this blow was just the beginning of the fall. Soon, in 1933, the prohibition introduced by the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed with the Twenty-first Amendment. The reason was that the prohibition resulted in a sharp increase in organized crime in cities. Thus, the Fundamentalist efforts to bring morality in society backfired, and fundamentalism disappeared from the mainstream for good.15 In total, it becomes evident that Christian Fundamentalism was a movement that took birth in the second half of the 19th century, grew to dominate liberalism in a few decades by becoming a political force, and again disappeared from mainstream as a result of its own folly. The movement was an effort to fight the rapid growth of liberal theology. However, it ended up surrendering its founding principle, that is, the inerrancy of Bible, to the liberals. Bibliography Almond, Gabriel A. et al. Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Melling, Philip. Fundamentalism in America. New York: Routledge, 1999. Noll, Mark. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992. Rauschenbusch, Walter. A Theology for the Social Gospel. Westminster: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. Seat, Leroy Seat. Fed up with Fundamentalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Fundamentalism. Liberty, MO: 4-L Publications, 2007. Smith, Willard H. “William Jennings Bryan and the Social Gospel,” Journal of American History 53 (June 1966): 53. Utzinger, Michael J. Yet Saints Their Watch are Keeping: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and the Development of Evangelical Ecclesiology, 1887-1937. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2006. White, Ronald C., and C. Howard Hopkins. The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976. Read More