Fundamentalism and American Culture

by Marsden, George M. ;

  The furious activities of fundamentalists themselves, especially in the two years following 1925, as they scrambled to raise the banner dropped by the fallen Bryan, lent credibility to such assertions. Fundamentalists across the country had been organizing vociferous anti-evolution lobbies under the leadership of such organizations as the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association and the related Anti-evolution League. George F. Washburn, a friend of Bryan’s, although not previously an active fundamentalist, proclaimed himself “the successor of William Jennings Bryan.” He founded the Bible Crusaders of America, inducing a number of fundamentalist leaders to join the fight “Back to Christ, the Bible, and the Constitution.” Other friends of Bryan undertook massive money-raising drives, with the intention of creating a William Jennings Bryan University. Meanwhile, in California, evangelist Paul W. Rood reported a vision from God calling him to be Bryan’s successor, which led to the formation of the Bryan Bible League. Next, Gerald Winrod of Kansas founded the Defenders of the Christian Faith, another organization using the methods of sensationalism to fight evolution and modernism. Winrod sent a squadron of “flying fundamentalists” through the Midwest and elsewhere to promote the anti-evolution cause. Edgar Young Clarke, a former national organizer for the Ku Klux Klan, attempted to cash in on this trend with the foundation of the Supreme Kingdom, which was structured like the Klan but had fundamentalist anti-modernist and anti-evolutionary goals.9

  All of these efforts either were short-lived or fell far below their founders’ expectations. Anti-evolution political agitation in the United States, although major efforts continued until about 1928, was losing as much support from moderates as it gained from extremists. Its real successes remained confined to handful of states, mainly in the South.10

  The literature of these organizations contained much that was bizarre. The rhetoric of Washburn’s Bible Crusaders is a classic example of what Richard Hofstadter has since designated the “paranoid style” in elements of American thought.11 “Thirty years ago,” announced the Crusaders’ Champion in 1926, “five men met in Boston and formed a conspiracy which we believe to be of German origin, to secretly and persistently work to overthrow the fundamentals of the Christian religion of this country.” Emissaries of this organization, who at times “masqueraded as higher critics” and at others were “posing as fundamentalists,” had led America into a “moral breakdown” evidenced by “a great tidal wave of crime, … Sunday desecration, an alarming increase in divorces, and a tremendous drop in moral standards and ideals.”12 With literature of this sort being cranked from presses around the country, opponents of fundamentalism hardly needed to resort to caricature.

  The activities of some of its established national leaders did not help the fundamentalist image either. J. Frank Norris, the leading fundamentalist organizer in Texas, had already won such notoriety among his fellow Southern Baptists that he had been successively banned from local, county, and state organizations. He kept up an ongoing warfare with the Southern Baptist Convention, which he openly despised. Accusing the conservative body of tolerating modernists and evolutionists, Norris consistently referred to the Southern Baptist leadership as “the Sanhedrin.” He called one leading Texas pastor “the Infallible Baptist Pope,” “the Great All-I-Am,” and “the Holy Father.” Another was “the Old Baboon.” In Fort Worth, Norris pursued civic reforms with a similar combination of colorful rhetoric and personal attack. He preached, for instance, on the theme, “The Ten Biggest Devils in Ft. Worth, Names Given.” In 1926 such a campaign was directed against “Rum and Romanism,” particularly attacking H. C. Meacham, Roman Catholic mayor of the city, on charges of channeling city funds to Roman Catholic institutions. Meacham, said Norris, “isn’t fit to be a manager of a hog-pen.” In response, D. E. Chipps, a friend of Meacham, threatened Norris by phone, and then came to his study. After a heated exchange, Norris shot and killed Chipps. The jury readily ruled it self-defense, but the image of Norris and fundamentalist Christianity was seriously damaged by the incident.13

  A few years later T. T. Shields of Toronto, another of the leading figures in the Baptist Bible Union, became involved in an incident that received sensational national publicity like the Norris case. In 1927 the Baptist Bible Union took over the failing Baptist institution, Des Moines University in Iowa. Fundamentalists at that time were very interested in establishing a bastion of conservative learning. Shields, the president of the Baptist Bible Union, came to Des Moines as acting president of the university. In 1928 he secured H. C. Wayman as the school’s president; but almost at once Shields and Wayman had a falling out. The situation was complicated by charges that Wayman’s academic degrees were phony. The infighting and widespread espionage and accusations by students, faculty, and administration, culminated when in the spring of 1929 Shields was accused of having an affair with Miss Edith Rebman, secretary of the Baptist Bible Union and of the College. Finally, while the college board was meeting, a student riot against Shields brought about the total collapse of Des Moines University. Shields dropped out of active participation in American fundamentalism, and returned to Canada where he remained a notorious opponent of “modernism and Romanism.”14

  These bizarre developments in fundamentalist activities meant that in the years after 1925 it became increasingly difficult to take fundamentalism seriously. Even those not predisposed to ridicule the movement, could hardly ignore so many aberrations. Walter Lippmann argued in 1929 that the fundamentalists were in fact pointing out the central issues in modern civilization, and described Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism as “the best popular argument produced by either side in the current controversy.” Nevertheless, argument could not be wholly detached from practice. “In actual practice,” said Lippmann, “this movement has become entangled with all sorts of bizarre and barbarous agitations with the Ku Klux Klan, with fanatical prohibition, with the ‘anti-evolution laws’ and with much persecution and intolerance.” Such practice, he said, “shows that the central truth, which the fundamentalists have grasped, no longer appeals to the best brains and the good sense of the modern community, and that the movement is recruited largely from the isolated, the inexperienced, and the uneducated.”15

  It would be oversimplification to attribute the decline and the disarray of fundamentalism after 1925 to any one factor. It does appear, however, that the movement began in reality to conform to its popular image. The more ridiculous it was made to appear, the more genuinely ridiculous it was likely to become. The reason was simple. Lippmann was correct that the assumptions of even the best of the fundamentalist arguments were not acceptable to the best educated minds of the twentieth century. Before 1925 the movement had commanded much respect, though not outstanding support, but after the summer of 1925 the voices of ridicule were raised so loudly that many moderate Protestant conservatives quietly dropped support of the cause rather than be embarrassed by association.

  The most solid evidence of the dramatic decline in fundamentalist influence is found in the two denominations where the controversies had been fiercest. From 1922 to 1925 fundamentalists were close to gaining control of the Northern Presbyterian and Northern Baptist groups. Suddenly in 1926 they were much weakened minorities. Perhaps members were simply tired of the acrimony of debate, and the national fundamentalist fad had played itself out. There is no sure explanation for the decline. The simplest explanation lies in the sordid and reactionary cultural image it had acquired.

  “To many people,” observed the Christian Century in mid-1926, “so decisive a rout of fundamentalism was unexpected.” The prevailing liberal understanding of fundamentalism, that the movement was governed by naturalistic principles of social development, should have anticipated the sudden withering of fundamentalism however. “Looking at it as an event now passed,” the victorious Century continued, “anybody should be able to see that the whole fundamentalist movement was hollow and artificial. … If we may use a biological term, fundamentalism has been a sport, and
accidental phenomenon making its sudden appearance in our ecclesiastical order, but wholly lacking the qualities of constructive achievement or survival.” The luxuriant and grotesque flowering of the movement had been based on nothing more than a temporary and abnormal social environment. Some offshoots would be found here and there for some time, but “it is henceforth to be a disappearing quantity in American religious life, while our churches go on to larger isssues. …”16

  With respect to the major denominations, the Christian Century’s estimate appeared to be exactly right. In the Presbyterian Church, the Special Commission—appointed in 1925 as a response to conservative charges against the Presbytery of New York—urged the General Assembly in 1926 and again in 1927 to exercise toleration and rejected Machen’s exclusivist definition of the issue. The exclusivists could do nothing to stem the tide, and the reports were adopted overwhelmingly.17 The inclusivists had mounted a sharp counterattack. In 1926 Machen had been elected by the Princeton Seminary boards to the important chair of apologetics and ethics, and in response to the inclusivist outcry, the Assembly of 1926 delayed his appointment and named a committee to investigate the controversies at Princeton Seminary. As a result, in 1929 the seminary’s government was reorganized to ensure a broader representation of theological positions. Machen and his followers immediately withdrew and founded their own institution, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

  During the next years the Presbyterian exclusivists beat a bitter retreat. In 1933, unable to inhibit the spread of liberal teachings in the foreign mission fields, Machen inaugurated his own Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. With conservative representation reduced to scarcely more than one tenth of the delegates, the Assembly of 1934 moved to ban Presbyterian office-holders from participation on the Independent Board. Machen’s refusal to comply led to a trial in 1935 and suspension from the ministry. In 1936 he and a few followers left to found what became known as “The Orthodox Presbyterian Church.” At the inauguration of the new group Machen declared with relief that it was a “true Presbyterian church at last.”18 Yet few were willing to follow the principle to this conclusion. Almost all the leading figures of the conservative movement, excepting a few younger men, dropped away as the prospect of expulsion or schism appeared. A number of important leaders such as Clarence Macartney continued to proclaim the conservative cause in strong local congregations within the larger Presbyterian Church, but anti-modernism ceased to be a force at the national level. Machen died of pneumonia in the winter of 1937 while singlehandedly attempting to rally handfuls of supporters in the Dakotas—an ironic end to to a life dedicated to bringing Christianity to the centers of culture.19

  By 1925 the Northern Baptist fundamentalists, although numerically strong, were seriously divided over the central issue of whether the movement should take an establishmentarian or a sectarian direction. This tension was aggravated by those premillennialists, with more exclusivist and sectarian leanings, as represented by the radical Baptist Bible Union, formed in 1923. The original “fundamentalists,” who formed the Fundamentalist Federation, were determined on the other hand to work within the denomination. This split continued to grow as J. C. Massee, President of the Federation, pushed the movement in a moderate direction until’ late in 1925 he dropped his fundamentalist affiliations altogether.20 By the 1926 meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention, the militant forces, under the leadership of William B. Riley, were greatly reduced in number. They could now muster less than one fourth of the votes, for the effort to ensure othodoxy in the mission field, and an effort to make immersion a prerequisite for Baptist membership was defeated by a similarly decisive margin.21 In Canada, T. T. Shields, one of the strongest voices in the Baptist Bible Union, was another victim of the fundamentalist decline of 1926. Censured by the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, he withdrew to form his own denomination.

  By 1927 the Northern Baptist Convention was close to peace. Most of the Baptist Bible Union was beginning to move in a separatist direction, while moderate conservatives worked more quietly from within. In 1932 the Baptist Bible Union changed its name to the General Association of Regular Baptists and became a small denomination.22 In the new Association (as within many Baptist churches that simply became independent congregations), separation became a new test of faith as it did among Machen’s followers. Even among the premillennial militants many were unwilling to make this move. Some remained to fight a rear-guard action in the denomination. In 1947, however, there was a repetition of what had happened among the Presbyterians in the 1930s. A Convention ban on a new conservative missions agency led to the formation of a new denomination, the Conservative Baptist Association of America.23 The most famous of those militants who resisted separation was William B. Riley. In the 1930s he had continued the fight through his dwindling World’s Christian Fundamentals Association. By the 40s, however, the aging Riley gave up the effort to control the denomination, and in 1947, the last year of his life, he resigned his membership in the Northern Baptist Convention. Although he did not know it, he had by this time established the link between his work and the resurgent non-separatist fundamentalism (eventually to be known as neo-evangelicalism or evangelicalism) by securing the young Billy Graham to succeed him as president of the Northwestern School in Minneapolis. In 1947, however, to anyone who equated American religious life with the major denominations, fundamentalism was a bizarre American episode now fast fading into oblivion.

  Fundamentalism, while fading from the reputed centers of American life since 1925, was in fact taking solid root in other, less conspicuous areas. The movement had entered into a distinct new phase. The effort to purge the leading denominations having failed, the leadership now re-emphasized working through local congregations and independent agencies, such as Bible schools and mission organizations. Local pastors, often independent from major denominations either formally or simply in practice, built fundamentalist empires both large and small.24 With all the variety fostered by American religious free enterprise, countless groups were formed to promote the causes that national fundamentalism had recently publicized. Radio, peculiarly suited to the revivalist style, gave new impetus to the movement. Bible schools flourished, with twenty-six new schools founded during the depression years of the 1930s. Other important new institutions of learning, such as Dallas Theological Seminary and Bob Jones University, became significant centers for branches of the movement, Wheaton College was for several years during the 1930s the fastest growing liberal arts college in the nation. A network of similar colleges grew in size and influence. Fundamentalist publications increased in circulation; summer Bible conferences and other youth movements attracted the young; mission agencies continued to grow. In general, although the rest of American Protestantism floundered in the 1930s, fundamentalist groups, or those at least with fundamentalist sympathies, increased. As Joel Carpenter remarks in explaining this upsurge, fundamentalism played a role parallel to that of neo-orthodoxy among intellectuals. It “provided ordinary people with as compelling a critique of modern society.”25

  Among the denominations, fundamentalism had a perceptible impact on many groups that had never been at the center of American religious life. The Southern Baptist Convention, which in the 1920s had manifested substantial affinities to fundamentalism, gained almost one and a half million members during the next fifteen years.26 At the same time, some explicitly fundamentalist separatist groups flourished in opposition to the more moderately evangelical revivalism of the Southern Baptist Convention. Fundamentalism began to take on more of a Southern accent as such leading figures as Bob Jones and John R. Rice established headquarters in the South. Other groups outside the traditional centers of influence in American cultural life were attracted by the fundamentalist emphases. Holiness and Pentecostal groups, in spite of their different dynamics, shared common background with fundamentalists and were influenced by anti-modernist tendencies. In many places the two traditions began to me
rge and become part of a discernable new subculture.27

  Many from immigrant groups were attracted to fundamentalist principles. Perhaps militant anti-modernists’ ambivalence toward aspects of American culture resembled theirs. Cutting across a variety of previous traditions, fundamentalist movements and influences grew among a variety of new Americans. Baptists, Methodists, Free Church movements, Lutherans, and Reformed all had fundamentalist offshoots. The Evangelical Free Church and the Swedish Baptists, for example, which came to play important roles in the new movement, lost much of their Scandinavian identity and became Americanized by taking on fundamentalist characteristics. Other denominations, including the Missouri Synod Lutheran and the Christian Reformed, were also Americanized to an extent by adopting some fundamentalist ideals while retaining other distinctive features of their European traditions.28 Some older sects, such as the Quakers and Mennonites, which had always maintained their own distinctive characteristics, were now affected by some fundamentalist influences, and new groups, like the Evangelical Mennonites and the Evangelical Friends, were formed.29 The evidence is somewhat sketchy, but there is little doubt that many independent Bible churches attracted considerable numbers of northern European ethnics, who found a congenial form of Americanism there.30 The loosely organized fundamentalist-evangelical movement was perhaps not the largest in American Protestantism; it now had, however, a solid base of growing institutions which paralleled the older denominational establishments.31