Fundamentalism and American Culture

by Marsden, George M. ;

  In mid-1921 it was not yet apparent that fundamentalism would become a major national movement. Its critics still assumed, with some reason, that it was really the premillennial movement in disguise. So The Christian Century, in its first full-length attack on fundamentalism as such, declared that “the cult of fundamentalism with its verbal inspiration and infallibility, is chiliasm or adventism with a new name.”17 The Baptist, the official organ of the Northern Baptist Convention, went so far as to announce editorially in July 1921 that “Fundamentalism is Dead.” This was a case of mistaken identity. The Baptist argued that the creed drawn up by the pre-convention group contained no precise statement on either infallibility of Scripture or the premillennial return of Christ. Hence, “Fundamentalism (using the term in its settled, technical sense, as designating the interdenominational movement to disseminate a certain group of theological ideas and to force a division in the churches along the line of these ideas) was definitely rejected.”18

  This made Curtis Lee Laws furious. He had helped to draw up the moderate creed, and the definition that The Baptist used would have separated him from the movement that he himself had named. Perhaps he was the more furious because the issue was a sensitive one among the Baptist fundamentalists themselves. A rift was developing between those who subscribed to Laws’s brand of Baptist fundamentalism and the supporters of William Bell Riley’s World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, which did indeed include inerrancy and premillennialism in their association’s creed.19 “The Baptist well knows,” retorted the editor of the Watchman-Examiner, “that our Baptist Fundamentals movement has never had any connection whatever with the interdenominational movement.” Within the Baptist denomination. Laws maintained, “aggressive conservatives—conservatives who feel that it is their duty to contend for the faith—have, by common consent, been called ‘fundamentalists.’”20

  While the definition used by The Baptist did point out the most obvious single element of the new “fundamentalism,” Curtis Lee Laws captured the essence of the common attitude and motive that gave the diverse groups cohesiveness as a distinct movement. Fundamentalism was a loose interdenominational coalition of “aggressive conservatives—conservatives who feel that it is their duty to contend for the faith.” This definition embraced the main concerns of the fundamentalist premillennialists, conservative Baptists, Presbyterian traditionalists, and the scattered militants in other denominations, who were beginning to develop a sense of common identity.

  During the next year, as the battles in the churches intensified, fundamentalists began to move on a new front, following the standard of anti-evolution into battle to save the Bible and Bible civilization. As we have seen, this issue was already a leading fundamentalist concern. Late in 1920, it suddenly leapt into new prominence when William Jennings Bryan championed the cause. With prohibition and the women’s question seemingly resolved for the time being, Bryan adopted anti-evolution as his latest crusade and gave the cause wide publicity.21

  Bryan’s reasoning on the subject echoed notes already sounded by other fundamentalist spokesmen. Although he alluded to the superiority of faith over science (“It is better to trust the Rock of Ages, than to know the age of the rocks…”), his principal point was that Scripture was in fact scientific whereas Darwinism was not. “Science,” he affirmed in the best Baconian manner, “is classified knowledge; it is the explanation of facts.” Darwinism was “guesses strung together,” “a mere hypothesis.” He cited the alarming effects of Darwinism on religion, morality, and civilization. Not only did it “destroy the faith of Christians,” it “laid the foundation for the bloodiest war in history” by committing German culture to the philosophy of Nietzsche, a philosophy of materialism and brutal competition. Although it might be true that “some believers in Darwinism retained their belief in Christianity,” so also, said Bryan, “some survive smallpox.” The urgent need to extirpate this brutal atheistic materialism from American schools could hardly be overemphasized.22

  Most of the conservatives in the denominations joined the outcry against the evils of evolution,23 but Darwinism never became a major issue in the church controversies themselves. Anti-evolution usually did not appear on lists of fundamental doctrines to be used as tests of orthodoxy. Rather, those who promoted this aspect of the movement most fervently were the most militant premillennialists, including A. C. Dixon, William B. Riley, John Roach Straton, and J. Frank Norris of Texas.24 In 1921 Riley was already organizing rallies in Kentucky, where Bryan also appeared on behalf of anti-evolution legislation.25 Over the next two years anti-evolution became more and more the principal passion of interdenominational fundamentalists, and the WCFA repeatedly tried to enlist Bryan as its leader, despite his refusal to endorse its supposedly essential doctrine, dispensational premillennialism.26

  The meteoric rise of the anti-evolution issue—which was closely connected with the World War I notion of saving civilization from German theology and its superman philosophy—was swiftly transforming the character of the fundamentalist movement, particularly its premillennialist branch, which found that a social and political question was now virtually its first concern.27 This transformation was involved with an immense surge in popularity; the anti-evolution movement was becoming a national fad. Both the premillennial movement and denominational fundamentalism had been confined mostly to Northern states, but anti-evolution swept through the South and found new constituencies in rural areas everywhere. Many people with little or no interest in fundamentalism’s doctrinal concerns were drawn into the campaign to keep Darwinism out of America’s schools.28 Those premillennialist leaders who had adopted the cause of anti-evolution experienced a radical metamorphosis within the space of a few years. Having gained the attention of the increasingly influential mass media, they seemed to have found the key to the success they had long been seeking. The more clearly they realized that there was a mass audience for the message of the social danger of evolution, the more central this social message became. Several years before, they had been drifting toward becoming a sectarian group, outsiders, and perhaps slightly un-American. Suddenly they appeared in a new guise, prophets at the center of a national movement for reform.

  XIX. Would the Liberals Be Driven from the Denominations? 1922–1923

  Sentiment for the fundamentalist program of recovering lost national foundations was growing rapidly, and the fundamentalists were in the optimal position to push their demand for faithfulness to the Bible in the denominations. In those denominations where there were large parties on each side, schism was widely feared. Everyone concerned seemed to envision the fundamentalists driving the liberals out of these denominations. Although in retrospect the obstacles to such an outcome are obvious, they were not all apparent in the spring of 1922, as the Baptist fundamentalists were laying plans to press their seeming advantage.

  Thus, on May 21, 1922, as the Baptist Convention was approaching, the popular liberal Baptist preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, launched the liberal counteroffensive with a sermon entitled. “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” This sermon so exactly captured the liberal sentiments of the moment that it received wide publicity, appearing in at least three journals as well as in a widely distributed pamphlet.1 Unlike the authors of some other liberal attacks who tried to dismiss fundamentalism by associating it with one or another form of extremism,2 Fosdick showed himself well-informed on the nature of the movement. Fundamentalists, he said, were especially intolerant conservatives. They were strongest in the Baptist and Presbyterian denominations. Their fundamental doctrinal tests were (1) special miracles such as the Virgin Birth (2) the inerrancy of Scripture (which Fosdick took to involve something like stenographic dictation), (3) the “special theory” of substitutionary atonement, and (4) the second coming of Christ to set up a millennial kingdom (a point which Fosdick persisted in identifying with all fundamentalism).3 On all but the third of these points, Fosdick contrasted in some detail the fundamentalist position with that of ot
her “multitudes of reverent Christians’ who saw natural historical processes as God’s way of doing things. He also mentioned in passing fundamentalist efforts to exclude “teaching modern biology” in public schools, a subject on which he had just debated with Bryan in the New York Times.4 But his central concern was for the churches. Repeatedly he emphasized that the fundamentalist goal was to force those with other views out of the churches. The central theme of his message was the urgent need for tolerance on both sides.5

  The fears that Fosdick entertained were somewhat allayed at the 1922 meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention because of the inability of the fundamentalists to settle on a coherent strategy. Most Baptist fundamentalists agreed that they should establish some sort of creedal test of orthodoxy within the denomination, but moderates such as Curtis Lee Laws, J. C. Massee, and Frank M. Goodchild, saw this move as demanding careful preparation and in 1921 had delayed presenting their new creedal proposal. Fundamentalist indecision was still apparent at the 1922 Convention. William B. Riley, however, forced the issue on everyone by proposing the adoption of one of the traditional Baptist creeds, the New Hampshire Confession. The opponents of fundamentalism totally outmaneuvered Riley. In a shrewd countermove, Cornelius Woelfkin, a liberal pastor from New York City, offered as a substitute, “That the New Testament is the all-sufficient ground of our faith and practice, and we need no other statement.” Here was an appeal to a more sacred and seemingly more fundamental Baptist tradition than any creed. After heated debate Woelfkin’s proposal was adopted 1,264 to 637.6

  This dramatic reversal for Baptist fundamentalism, at the very moment when it should have been reaching the height of its power, split the movement irreparably. Apparently each of the conservative parties blamed the strategy of the other for the defeat. Protesting the moderation of the leadership associated with Laws, militants followed Riley in the formation of the Baptist Bible Union. This new agency was very close in both character and personnel to the WCFA, except that the Baptist group did not officially prescribe premillennialism (because of difficulties this would have created for some Southern and Canadian Baptists).7 Presumably in counter-reaction, the more moderate Baptist fundamentalists became even more cautious in succeeding years, and in subsequent disputes stressed the necessity of working within the Convention structures to retain whatever influence they could. They thus became the first of many once-militant fundamentalist groups to drop some of their militancy when faced with the stark alternative of a bitter and devastating battle that would surely lead to schism and leave a denomination in ruins.8

  Despite the Baptist disarray, fundamentalism was advancing elsewhere. At almost the same moment that the Baptist fundamentalist drive was stalled, Presbyterian conservatives entered the conflict in full force. By early 1922 the smallest spark would have sufficed for the fundamentalist furor to renew the raging controversy in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The kindling temperature of conservative Presbyterians had always been low. No mere spark, Harry Emerson Fosdick’s sermon, although addressed primarily to the Baptist situation, hit the Presbyterian Chruch like a bombshell. The Baptist Fosdick was by special arrangement the associate pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New York, where he preached his famous sermon. The conservatives, centered in Philadelphia, had long been appalled by loose practices common in the New York Presbytery. Since the early twentieth century they had been complaining that the New York Presbytery did not demand orthodoxy of its ministerial candidates, and such complaints had led to the declaration of fundamentals by the General Assembly in 1910 and 1916. Fosdick himself had been a particular target for conservative attacks for some time.9 His sermon, together with the implication (not directly stated) that he agreed fully with the liberal views that he described, seemed to be the clearest case of open heresy in a hundred years.

  From William Jennings Bryan, Seven Questions in Dispute (New York, 1924).

  Clarence E. Macartney, pastor of the Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and like Fosdick one of the famed preachers of the day, led the conservative attack. To “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Macartney replied with “Shall Unbelief Win?” in which he showed how Fosdick’s naturalistic alternatives to “fundamentalism” diverged from traditional Christianity. When leaders such as Fosdick were “blasting at the Rock of Ages,” it was certainly time to “contend for the faith.”10 Macartney himself led the drive for a dramatic conservative victory in the Presbyterian denomination. Under his guidance the Presbytery of Philadelphia petitioned the General Assembly to condemn the teachings expressed in Fosdick’s sermon and to instruct the Presbytery of New York to see that further preaching from the First Church conformed to orthodox Presbyterian standards. This proposal became the focal point of intense campaigns of charges and countercharges during the months preceding the General Assembly of 1923.11

  In the first full-fledged test of strength the two sides proved to be closely matched. Militant conservatives (now often referred to as “fundamentalists”) offered William Jennings Bryan as their candidate for moderator. Bryan, maintaining the record of his political heyday, missed election by a narrow margin. This defeat probably signaled only a reluctance of some militants to dwell on the evolution question.12 On the main issue of the Assembly, however. Macartney and Bryan were successful in leading the condemnation of the New York Presbytery’s laxness regarding Fosdick, and the Assembly instructed the Presbytery to report its corrective actions to the 1924 meeting. As part of the same action, the 1923 Assembly reaffirmed, by a vote of 439 to 359, the five-point doctrinal declaration of 1910 and 1916.

  During the year that followed, the Presbyterian controversy approached its peak of intensity. The intellectual position of fundamentalist forces seemed greatly strengthened when Princeton’s impressive New Testament scholar, J. Gresham Machen, turned his attention almost fulltime to the controversy, with the publication of Christianity and Liberalism in 1923. Friends as well as many foes of the movement acknowledged the strength of Machen’s arguments and that he defined the central issue for all fundamentalists with great clarity. Although Machen maintained cordial relations with many premillennialists and revivalists, he was not typical of fundamentalists in a number of ways (the best known was his opposition to prohibition),13 and was sometimes uncomfortable with the title of the movement for which he was a leading spokesman. Yet on the main issue at stake Machen would entertain no compromise and welcomed any allies who would share his stand. “The great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity,” he declared in the opening of Christianity and Liberalism, “is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology.” Liberalism, said Machen, was vulnerable to criticism on two basic grounds. First, it was “un-Christian” and, second, it was “unscientific.” The latter point Machen did not develop at length in Christianity and Liberalism. He did, however, summarize briefly his views on this subject, that Christianity was a religion based on facts, and that these facts were open to scientific investigation. Liberalism, on the other hand, was based on “appeals to man’s will” and on an “indefinite type of religious aspiration.” Hoping to preserve Christianity by adjusting it to the dictates of modern scientific culture, the liberals had separated it from the realm of fact and the scientific. Machen believed that they grossly overestimated the merits of modern scientific civilization. Machen, a rugged individualist and politically an active conservative, saw the drive toward uniformity in modern culture, especially in the reign of the “experts” over American schools, as threatening to turn the nation into “one huge ‘Main Street.’”14

  His major objection to liberalism was that it was simply un-Christian. The human religious aspirations that liberals rescued from the jaws of modern science were not Christian at all. They amounted to paganism. If Christianity was not based on the fact that Christ died to save sinners and rose again, then the Ne
w Testament made no sense and the religion that remained was mere faith in humanity. “If a condition could be conceived in which all the preaching of the Church should be controlled by the liberalism which in many quarters has already become preponderant, then, we believe, Christianity would at last have perished from the earth and the gospel would have sounded forth for the last time.” To Machen the solution seemed clear. Liberals should be forced out of Christian churches. “A separation between the two parties in the Church,” he declared, “is the crying need of the hour.”15

  At this point, it appeared that the logic of fundamentalism, as the Presbyterians had formulated the issue, might prevail. The liberals, said one writer in the Christian Century in August 1923, had simply been outmaneuvered. In choosing the word “fundamentalism,” he felt, they had adopted a “nearly irresistible rallying-cry,” which would appeal to the man in the street, who liked the idea of getting back to essentials. “The Fundamentalists have succeeded in giving the liberal and intelligent leaders of the church the appearance of renegades who are sniping the church from the ramparts.”16

  Even the secular liberal press, the natural ally of the liberal churchmen, was defecting. Within two weeks of the end of 1923 both the Nation and the New Republic published essays arguing that the fundamentalists had logic on their side when they invited the modernists to leave their denominations. The fundamentalists, these formidable political journals each observed, were not denying the rights of the modernists to think as they pleased. They were only claiming that if the modernists wanted to think thoughts which contradicted the creeds that denominations had always affirmed, then it would be only gentlemanly to withdraw and found denominations on some other basis.17