Fundamentalism and American Culture

by Marsden, George M. ;

  XXIII. Fundamentalism as a Political Phenomenon

  XXIV. Fundamentalism as an Intellectual Phenomenon

  XXV. Fundamentalism as an American Phenomenon

  PART FIVE

  Fundamentalism Yesterday and Today (2005)

  AFTERWORD

  History and Fundamentalism

  Notes

  Bibliographical Indexes

  Index

  Fundamentalism and American Culture

  Introduction

  From its origins fundamentalism was primarily a religious movement. It was a movement among American “evangelical” Christians, people professing complete confidence in the Bible and preoccupied with the message of God’s salvation of sinners through the death of Jesus Christ. Evangelicals were convinced that sincere acceptance of this “Gospel” message was the key to virtue in this life and to eternal life in heaven; its rejection meant following the broad path that ended with the tortures of hell. Unless we appreciate the immense implications of a deep religious commitment to such beliefs—implications for one’s own life and for attitudes toward others—we cannot appreciate the dynamics of fundamentalist thought and action.

  Yet to understand fundamentalism we must also see it as a distinct version of evangelical Christianity uniquely shaped by the circumstances of America in the early twentieth century. This book analyzes the impact of that cultural experience. It starts with the premise of the centrality of genuine religious faith and takes into account some continuities with other Christian traditions. The focus, however, is primarily on how individuals who were committed to typically American versions of evangelical Christianity responded to and were influenced by the social, intellectual, and religious crises of their time.

  The fundamentalists’ most alarming experience was that of finding themselves living in a culture that by the 1920s was openly turning away from God. “Christendom,” remarked H. L. Mencken in 1924, “may be defined briefly as that part of the world in which, if any man stands up in public and solemnly swears that he is a Christian, all his auditors will laugh.” The “irreligion of the modern world,” concurred Walter Lippmann in his Preface to Morals, is “… radical to a degree for which there is, I think, no counterpart.” “There remains no foundation in authority for ideas of right and wrong,” said Joseph Wood Krutch in a somber requiem for Western Civilization. “Both our practical morality and our emotional lives are adjusted to a world that no longer exists.”1

  Fundamentalists shared with the discontended intellectuals of the 1920s, if little else, a sense of the profound spiritual and cultural crisis of the twentieth century.2 Unlike their more disillusioned contemporaries, however, they had very definite ideas of where things had gone wrong. Modernism and the theory of evolution, they were convinced, had caused the catastrophe by undermining the Biblical foundations of American civilization. “Modernism,” President James M. Gray of Moody Bible Institute stated flatly, “is a revolt against the God of Christianity.” It is a “foe of good government.” “The evolutionary hypothesis,” declared William Jennings Bryan in a similarly sweeping statement, “is the only thing that has seriously menaced religion since the birth of Christ; and it menaces … civilization as well as religion.” Given the seriousness of these threats, the response demanded was clear. In the intellectual battle between true Christianity and the philosophical materialism of modern life, said J. Gresham Machen, “there can be no ‘peace without victory’; one side or the other man must win.”3

  During this period of its national prominence in the 1920s, fundamentalism is best defined in terms of these concerns. Briefly, it was militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism. Fundamentalists were evangelical Christians, close to the traditions of the dominant American revivalist establishment of the nineteenth century, who in the twentieth century militantly opposed both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorsed. Militant opposition to modernism was what most clearly set off fundamentalism from a number of closely related traditions, such as evangelicalism, revivalism, pietism, the holiness movements, millenarianism, Reformed confessionalism, Baptist traditionalism, and other denominational orthodoxies. Fundamentalism was a “movement” in the sense of a tendency or development in Christian thought that gradually took on its own identity as a patchwork coalition of representatives of other movements. Although it developed a distinct life, identity, and eventually a subculture of its own, it never existed wholly independently of the older movements from which it grew. Fundamentalism was a loose, diverse, and changing federation of co-belligerents united by their fierce opposition to modernist attempts to bring Christianity into line with modern thought.4

  Two types of interpretation of fundamentalism have prevailed to date. The most common has been to look on fundamentalism as essentially the extreme and agonized defense of a dying way of life. Opponents of fundamentalists proposed such a sociological explanation in the 1920s, and through the next generation fundamentalism was commonly regarded as a manifestation of cultural lag that time and education eventually would eliminate. But as it became apparent in recent decades that fundamentalism and its new evangelical offspring were by no means disappearing from American life, some later interpreters began to take more seriously the internal history of fundamentalism and its relation to other traditions.5

  By far the most important manifestation of this shift was the interpretation of Ernest Sandeen, presented in its most complete form in 1970. Rejecting social explanations of fundamentalism, Sandeen found its roots in genuine doctrinal traditions. Basically, according to Sandeen, fundamentalism was the outgrowth of the “millenarian” movement that developed in late nineteenth-century America, especially through Bible institutes and conferences concerning the interpretation of Biblical prophecies. The movement’s millenarian teachings, appearing in their most common form as “dispensational premillennialism,” divided all of history into distinct eras or dispensations. The final dispensation would be the “millennium” or one-thousand-year personal reign of Christ on earth. According to Sandeen, these Bible teachers acquired from conservative Presbyterians at Princeton Theological Seminary the newly defined dogma that the Bible was “inerrant” in every detail. Millenarianism, however, was primary. This tradition, rather than the events of the 1920s, Sandeen argues, is crucial in understanding fundamentalism.6

  Sandeen’s thesis has much to recommend it and his impressive study remains valuable. He is certainly correct in supposing that millenarianism and Princeton theology are two of the important keys for understanding fundamentalism. Indeed, avowed “fundamentalists” today are almost all strict millenarians who also insist on Biblical inerrancy. Nevertheless, the meaning of “fundamentalism” has narrowed considerably since the 1920s. If one traces the roots of today’s strictly separatist and dispensationalist “fundamentalism,” Sandeen’s central argument is seen to be basically correct.7 Yet this approach fails to deal adequately with the larger phenomenon of the militantly anti-modernist evangelicalism of the 1920s, known at the time as “fundamentalism.” This broader fundamentalism in turn had wider roots, cultural as well as theological8 and organizational. It is true that the millenarians stood at the center of the fundamentalist coalition of the 1920s, and the development of their thought is crucial to understanding the broader fundamentalist movement. Yet the millenarians themselves were significantly affected by many other influences and traditions. In fact, these other influences were so strong that it is doubtful that premillennialism was really the organizing principle even in their own thought.

  This book is concerned with the broader national movement and the influences that shaped it. It is about the movement that for a time in the 1920s created a national sensation with its attempts to purge the churches of modernism and the schools of Darwinism. This movement included William Jennings Bryan, J. Gresham Machen, and Billy Sunday, in addition to millenarian organizers such as William Bell Riley, Frank Norris, and John Roach Straton.9 Thus in this study we are n
ot only looking for the roots of the separatist and empire-building evangelists who call themselves “fundamentalists” today, but more importantly we are concerned with the background of the wider coalition of contemporary American evangelicals whose common identity is substantially grounded in the fundamentalist experience of an earlier era. The anti-modernism of the 1920s was a major factor in shaping much of subsequent twentieth-century American evangelicalism; though as the subsequent analysis should make clear, evangelicalism is an older tradition that has been shaped by many other factors.

  This inquiry goes beyond both Sandeen and the older sociological interpretations. It views fundamentalism not as a temporary social aberration, but as a genuine religious movement or tendency with deep roots and intelligible beliefs. And it seeks to clarify the way in which this movement and these beliefs were conditioned by a unique and dramatic cultural experience.

  This story begins just after the Civil War, when evangelical Protestantism was still the dominant religious force in American life.10 While there were already signs of the impending demise of this unofficial religious establishment, confidence and unity prevailed. By the end of the 1870s, the beginnings of a major schism were apparent—a split typified by the diverging paths of two friends and associates in pre-Civil-War reform, Henry Ward Beecher and Jonathan Blanchard. More evident than this schism at the time, however, was the positive work of Dwight L. Moody, who built the new revivalist empire that was the base from which much of fundamentalism grew.

  The second section of this book turns from accounts of prominent individuals to discussion of the emergence of the distinctive emphases that came to characterize fundamentalism. Among these, four are especially important—dispensational premillennialism, the holiness movement and its implications for social reform, efforts to defend the faith, and views of Christianity’s relationship to culture. This section brings the story up to the beginning of World War I.

  Before World War I, the emerging fundamentalist coalition was largely quiescent. Few could have predicted the explosion that followed. The war intensified hopes and fears, and totally upset existing balances in American culture. It brought out an aggressive and idealistic theological modernism. It also revealed that the reaction against evangelicalism, which had been proceeding quietly for half a century, was far more general than had been thought. Moreover, the war raised the question of the survival of civilization and morality.

  In a postwar atmosphere of alarm, “fundamentalism” emerged as a distinct phenomenon. Its adherents moved on two fronts. Many fought against the onslaughts of liberalism within the major denominations. Meanwhile, William Jennings Bryan and other fundamentalists campaigned to ban the teaching of Darwinism in American schools. The ridicule heaped on Bryan at the Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925 and his subsequent sudden death marked a turning point for the movement. It quickly lost its position as a nationally influential coalition. Yet as fundamentalists retreated from their notorious national campaigns, they were relocating and building a substantial subculture.

  Three themes recur in this work. First, within fundamentalism we find a strikingly paradoxical tendency to identify sometimes with the “establishment” and sometimes with the “outsiders.” Fundamentalism emerged from an era in which American evangelicalism was so influential that it was virtually a religious establishment; eventually, however, fundamentalism took on the role of a beleaguered minority with strong sectarian or separatist tendencies. During the development of fundamentalism its adherents wavered between these two opposing self-images. This tension reflected an ambivalence in their relationship to the major denominations. It also involved an ambivalence toward American culture which is especially apparent in fundamentalist attitudes toward patriotism and social reform. These fundamentalist attitudes cannot be understood in terms of a consistent ideology. They make sense only in terms of the establishment-or-outsider paradox. Here it will be seen that often premillennialism was not the decisive influence in forming fundamentalist attitudes.

  The second major theme involves the relation of fundamentalism to the earlier American evangelical heritage. Revivalism and pietism were at the center of the traditions carried on by fundamentalism. Its individualism and its effort to return to the “Bible alone” came directly from the pietist and revivalist heritage. Holiness teachings, a major though generally overlooked component of fundamentalism, likewise grew out of this nineteenth-century revivalist heritage. Especially as expounded by D. L. Moody, a key transitional figure, these influences tended toward individualistic, culture-denying, soul-rescuing Christianity. Nevertheless, nineteenth-century American revivalism developed in the context of an older Puritan and Calvinist heritage to which it still had many ties. The Reformed traditions encouraged more positive attitudes toward intellect, the organized church, and the ideal of building a Christian civilization. Fundamentalist ambivalence about these subjects can be better understood if seen as reflecting not only immediate experience, but also the conflict between the pietist and the Calvinistic traditions.

  The third major theme concerns the tension between trust and distrust of the intellect. This involves the strong ambivalence toward culture that provides this book with its recurring motif. During the 1920s, fundamentalists were often regarded as anti-scientific and anti-intellectual. This evaluation was accurate to the extent that most fundamentalists were unwilling to accept the principal assumptions and conclusions of recent science and philosophy. Indeed fundamentalists reflected many of the popular, sentimental, and sometimes anti-intellectual characteristics of the revivalist heritage. Nevertheless they stood in an intellectual tradition that had the highest regard for one understanding of true scientific method and proper rationality. In science they were steadfastly committed to the principles of the seventeenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon: careful observation and classification of facts. These principles were wedded to a “common sense” philosophy that affirmed the ability to apprehend the facts clearly, whether the facts of nature or the even more certain facts of Scripture. This philosophy, essentially the “Scottish Common Sense Realism” (see Chapter I) that had dominated mid-nineteenth-century America, was the basis of much of the unity in fundamentalist thought. These largely unspoken assumptions, as well as their faith in the Bible, separated the fundamentalists so entirely from most of the rest of twentieth-century thought that their ideas appear simply anomalous. Thus in the fifty years following the 1870s, the philosophical outlook that had graced America’s finest academic institutions came to be generally regarded as merely bizarre.

  In the late nineteenth century the evangelical heritage of Christian doctrines and ideals had been developing in some innovative and vigorous ways. Now it was tested by a confluence of severe cultural, religious, and intellectual crises. These and other factors transformed significant aspects of America’s evangelicalism into a new phenomenon known as fundamentalism.

  PART ONE

  Before Fundamentalism

  I. Evangelical America at the Brink of Crisis

  In 1870 almost all American Protestants thought of America as a Christian nation. Although many Roman Catholics, sectarians, skeptics, and non-Christians had other views of the matter, Protestant evangelicals considered their faith to be the normative American creed. Viewed from their dominant perspective, the nineteenth century had been marked by successive advances of evangelicalism, the American nation, and hence the kingdom of God. Although many saw some unmistakably ominous portents, few expected evangelical progress to cease. The Civil War, widely interpreted as “a true Apocalyptic contest,” had been the greatest test of American evangelical civilization. For many Northerners the victory confirmed, as one Presbyterian observer put it, that “we as individuals, and as a nation, are identified with that kingdom of God among men, which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”1 Mission enthusiasts foresaw similar advances worldwide. “The sublime idea of the conversion of the world to Christ,” said Professor Samuel Harris of Yale in
1870, “has become so common as to cease to awaken wonder.”2

  The seemingly inexhaustible power of spiritual awakenings was foremost among the factors that generated such confidence. America, lacking many older institutions, had been substantially influenced by revivalism. The negative associations of revivals primarily with excess or with the frontier were only distant memories. Awakenings were now most respectable and even necessary signs of vitality in cities as much as in the countryside, among the educated as certainly as among the unlettered. The most immediate common memories were of the popular revivals that had swept through army camps, both Northern and Southern, but the outstanding model for renewal was the great revival of 1857–58. These awakenings, centered in the cities, grew out of noonday prayer meetings led by businessmen and bankers. Revival was not confined to the poor or the ignorant. Most college-educated Americans had attended schools where periodically intense spiritual outpourings were expected among the student body. “Revivalism” in 1870 suggested such names as Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, Lyman Beecher, and especially Charles Finney (whose career was near its end)—all with strong New England ties and all distinguished educators known by their title “President.”

  The examples set by these illustrious forebears, who had met the challenges of Enlightenment “infidelity” with spirituality and intellect, gave confidence for the new era. This confidence was the prevailing mood at the international meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in New York in 1873. The ideas expressed at this meeting provide a fair sample of the conventional evangelical wisdom of the day. “At critical times” and in the presence of “hosts of unbelief,” in the words of a typical spokesman, “the spiritual interests of the nation have been saved by revivals.” Skepticism might again be growing, yet “if still there are Pentecostal effusions, primitive Christianity survives … and will yet vindicate its reality and potency by a repetition of early victories.”3