LIBERTY UNIVERSITY

THE RISE OF FUNDAMENTALISM

IN DEFENSE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH


A PAPER SUBMITTED TO DR. JERRY SUTTON
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE COURSE
CHHI 525 - HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY II


LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY


BY
GESNER NOEL
STUDENT ID: L22993758


BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2010




TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 3
A WORLDVIEW ........................................................................................................................... 4
THE CONFLICTS .......................................................................................................................... 5
MODERNISM ........................................................................................................................................ 5
LIBERALISM ....................................................................................................................................... 6
CONSERVATISM ............................................................................................................................... 7
FUNDAMENTALISM REACTIONS ........................................................................................... 8
THEOLOGICAL .................................................................................................................................... 9
PREMILLENARISM ........................................................................................................................... 9
HOLINESS MOVEMENT ................................................................................................................. 10
PENTECOSTALISM ......................................................................................................................... 11
FUNDAMENTALISM NATIONAL PROMINENCE ................................................................ 12
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 14










INTRODUCTION

As George Dollar said "Fundamentalism is a movement and not an attitude of
belligerence, a spirit of ugliness, or a negative mentality of some sort as is sometimes depicted
even by those agitating for change from within. Nor does it consist of a posture of self-
aggrandizement or other self-serving attributes. While it is clearly arguable that certain
fundamentalists may have exhibited those characteristics on occasion, it is also demonstrable that
these do not constitute fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is intrinsically a movement and not a
mood."
1

Dollar presents a more balanced view of fundamentalism in that while acknowledging
some occasional negative traits within the group, the idea remains that fundamentalism is a
movement. In doing so, George cleared from people's mind a variety of images such as those of
a radical. For Dollar, Fundamentalism meets the criteria of a movement as defined by David F.
Wells, that is, it has certain ingredients: (1) A commonly held direction; (2) A common basis on
which that direction is held; (3) An esprit that informs and motivates those who are joined in the
common cause.
2

This paper is to show how Fundamentalism rose in its burning zeal to defend the
Christian faith. It begins with a worldview of the time. This is followed by the conflicts with
modernism, liberalism and conservatism. Then the focus shifts to the reactions of the
fundamentalism movement through its theological views. Finally, it concludes with the current
state of the movement at the beginning of the 21st Century.

1
Dollar, George, A History of Fundamentalism in America, Greenville: Bob Jones University Press, 1978, pg 72
2
Wells, David. No Place for Truth, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993, p. 8.
A WORLDVIEW

The late nineteenth century witnessed a revolution in social, religious, and intellectual
arenas that transformed the face of America. Darwins evolutionary hypothesis challenged the
biblical account of creation and the traditional understanding of the providence of God. The rise
of historical criticism led to the questioning of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the
dating of Daniel, and the historical accuracy of significant portions of the Bible.
3
Likewise, the
rise of the social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, and comparative religions,
questioned dearly held notions about absolute truth. In 1918 Henry Adams summarized the vast
changes in the intellectual world, claiming, In essentials like religion, ethics, philosophy; in
history, literature and art; in the concepts of all science, except perhaps mathematics, the
American boy of 1854 stood nearer the year 1 than to the year 1900.
4

On another front, technological innovations in the generation of power, manufacturing,
transportation, and communications created unprecedented economic growth and helped
America become the leading industrial nation in the world by the turn of the century.
5
Degler
continued by saying that Key entrepreneurs, such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and
Cornelius Vanderbilt made unprecedented sums of money while millions of laborers, many of
them women and children, worked sixty and seventy hours a week for minimum wages.
By 1920 America, which at the close of the Civil War had been an overwhelmingly rural
nation, had become a predominantly urban country, with over half of all Americans living in
cities. Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York skyrocketed in population in the closing decades of

3
Ferenc M. Szasz, The Divided Mind of Protestant America: 1880-1930 (University, AL: University of Alabama
Press, 1982),17-19, 26-29, 33-41.
4
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography, Cambridge: Riverside, 1918; reprint,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946, p. 53.
5
Carl Degler, The Age of the Economic Revolution: 1876-1900, 2nd ed., Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1977, p. 17-
18, 28, 30, 32
the nineteenth century as the sense of accountability and community in rural America gave way
to the heterogeneity and anonymity of the city.
6
The economic revolution contributed to
revolutionary social and religious transformations.
THE CONFLICTS

In response to these changes the New Theology, later known as liberalism or modernism,
was born. Drawing on the earlier traditions of Transcendentalism, Unitarianism, and the
evangelicalism of Horace Bushnell, the New Theology sought to reconcile the old faith with the
results of higher criticism and evolutionary thought. Popularized by the likes of Henry Ward
Beecher and systematized by William Newton Clarke and William Adams Brown, liberalism,
by 1900, had become a major force in American mainline Protestantism.
7


MODERNISM
In the face of these challenges listed above, a small number of liberal theologians
turned to Modernism. Modernism was a harmonization between secular science, Christianity,
and the Enlightenment.
8
However, if science or reason appeared to contradict orthodoxy,
orthodoxy was dismissed. The harmonization focused on culture, not faith. Carl Diemer stated
that Modernism is as far left as you can get and still be called, in some way, Christian.
9

This melding of religion and contemporary culture makes it difficult to define specific

6
James T. Patterson, America in the Twentieth Century: A History New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976, p.
26-28, 6-8.
7
William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1976; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 135.
8
Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1994, p. 101.
9
Carl Diemer, CHHI 525: History of Christianity 2, Lesson 23, prod and dir by Liberty University School
of Religion Distance Learning Program, 45 minutes, 2009, DVD.
theological beliefs as they shifted based on what found acceptance in science or culture at the
time. Generally, a Modernists believes Gods kingdom advances by the progress of culture and
not the direct influence of the Almighty.
10
This is why modernists are postmillennialists or,
more often, Amillennialists. Against this movement, James M. Gray, president of Moody Bible
Institute from 1904-1934, stated, Modernism is as revolt against the God of Christianity
LIBERALISM

Liberalism, while a diverse movement, came to emphasize the immanence of God, the
goodness of humanity, a moral interpretation of the atonement, and the importance of experience
and ethics in religion. Since evolution was equated with progress in the liberal worldview,
liberals had an optimistic view of history and looked for the advent of the Kingdom of God on
earth.
However, Liberalism did not go to as many extremes as Modernism. As opposed to
rejecting orthodox beliefs in the face of apparent contradiction, liberals would attempt to find a
new way to interpret Scriptures to remove the contradiction.
11
There are many, especially those
in conservative and fundamental groups, who would use the terms modernist and liberal
interchangeably.
12
They were both attempts to save Protestantism from the attacks of
Darwinian evolution and historical criticisms of the Scriptures. Additionally, liberalism
attempted to balance the historical, sociological, and Freudian psychological ways of
thinkingrevolutionizing thought at almost every level.
13

Liberalism endeavored to provide freedom from what they saw as superstitions held by

10
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed, New York: Oxford University Press,
2006, p. 146.
11
Diemer, Lesson 23.
12
Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, 32.
13
Ibid.
conservative Protestants and Evangelicals. The dedication of Liberals is what drove them to
challenge this intellectual assault on Christianity. As such, this movement was most prominent
in the middle and upper classes who met the confrontation of intellectual issues on a more
regular basis than did the lower classes.
14

CONSERVATISM

Conservatism was a reaction against the liberalism that had spread through the schools
and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century. According to Ferguson and
Packer,
"Conservatism, when used, signifies a rejection of the liberal outlook as a provincial
aberration, neither objective nor scientific nor rational in any significant sense, and with this a
conservationist purpose of handing on the doctrines and disciplines of historic Christianity intact
and undilutedConservatism in this sense implies no particular political stance or eschatological
expectation, though the contrary is often alleged."
15

When conservatism first began to emerge, it was a reaction to Darwinism and to
modernists and liberals which were perceived as selling out Christianity to heresy.
16
More
than a mere rejection of evolution, which was certainly the most publicized issue about which
conservatives reacted, was the concern with the authority of the Scriptures. Their rationale for
defending the Bible grew from history: sola scriptura was the cry of the Reformation. Their
concern was straightforward and profound: if Scripture was not the underpinnings for truth, what
would be? The potential and frightening answers to that question were a collective summons for

14
Justo L. Gonzlez, The Story of Christianity, volume 2, The Reformation to the Present Day, New York:
HarperCollins, 1985, p. 256.
15
Sinclair B. Ferguson and J.I. Packer, New Dictionary of Theology, electronic ed., Downers Grove, IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2000, p. 456
16
Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, p. 36.
conservatives who viewed themselves as descendants of the Reformers to stand against this
heresy.
17

FUNDAMENTALISM REACTIONS

Walter A. Elwell described Fundamentalism as "a movement that arose in the United
States during and immediately after the First World War in order to reaffirm orthodox Protestant
Christianity and to defend it militantly against the challenges of liberal theology, German higher
criticism, Darwinism, and other isms regarded as harmful to American Christianity. Since then,
the focus of the movement, the meaning of the term, and the ranks of those who willingly use the
term to identify themselves have changed several times. Fundamentalism has so far gone through
four phases of expression while maintaining an essential continuity of spirit, belief, and
method."
18

The name fundamentalist, according to Watt, was coined in 1920 to designate those
"doing battle royal for the Fundamentals." Also figuring in the name was The Fundamentals, a
12 volume collection of essays written in the period 1910 - 15 by 64 British and American
scholars and preachers. Three million copies of these volumes and the founding of the World's
Christian Fundamentals Association in 1919 gave sharp identity to fundamentalism as it moved
into the 1920s. Leadership moved across the years from such men as A T Pierson, A J Gordon,
and C I Scofield to A C Dixon and Reuben Torrey, William Jennings Bryan, and J Gresham
Machen.
19


17
Ibid. p 37-38
18
Elwell, Walter. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (2nd ed.). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2001, p. 472
19
David Harrington Watt, "The meaning and end of fundamentalism." Religious Studies Review 33, no. 4
(October 2007): 269-273. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed December 11, 2009).

THEOLOGICAL

Fundamentalists were not trying to reverse the tide of social ills; they were trying, in their
view, to return to the use of the Scriptures to enforce a rubric for Christian living. Elwell
explained that the fundamentalists insist on belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth
and divinity of Jesus Christ, the vicarious and atoning character of his death, his bodily
resurrection, and his second coming as the irreducible minimum of authentic Christianity. This
minimum was reflected in such early declarations as the 14 point creed of the Niagara Bible
Conference of 1878 and the 5 point statement of the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1910.
20

PREMILLENARISM

Premillenarism, developed in response to the Modernist and Liberal perspectives of an
ever-improving society that would usher in the Kingdom of Jesus (postmillennialism). By
contrast, premillenarism demonstrated a society getting worse and continuing its downward
spiral until Jesus would personally return to establish His Kingdom. Jesus physical return is also
a distinctive of premillenarism. This position helped explain some of the turmoil going on the in
the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies.
21
Unfortunately, dispensational premillenarism,
pushed analysis away from the visible present to the invisible future.
22
The premillennialists
tended to replace the miracles with the resurrection and the second coming of Christ, or even
premillenarian doctrine as the fifth fundamental. Another version put the deity of Christ in place
of the virgin birth.

20
Elwell, Walter, p. 473
21
Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, 39
22
Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 133.

HOLINESS MOVEMENT

The Holiness Movement was an endeavor to preserve and propagate John Wesley's
teaching on entire sanctification and perfection. Emphasized that the process of salvation
involves two crises: the first being conversion where one is freed from the sins he has committed
and the second being entire sanctification where one is liberated from the flaw in his moral
nature that causes him to sin. It is process of loving God with all one's heart, soul and mind.
Requires intense, sustained effort and one's life must be marked by constant self-renunciation,
careful observance of the divine laws, a humble steadfast reliance on God's forgiving grace.
Movement criticized for suggesting a second blessing can provide some Christians with a higher
kind of sanctification than that which flows from one's justifying faith.
In the Fundamentalist circles, an interest in the work of the Holy Spirit gave rise to the
Holiness Movement. Many of the early leaders of this movement had Calvinistic tendencies and
emphasized the Spirits work in the present dispensation. Having its roots in Methodism and the
American revivalism of the nineteenth century, this movement considered itself more pragmatic
than dispensationalism since this view focused on how Christians are to live in the world. The
Holy Spirits empowerment was emphasized for conversion, filling, and empowerment for
Christian service.
23

Stressing the importance of allowing God to remove all sin from the lives of Christians,
this faction sought rigorous pursuit of the second blessing of the Holy Spirit and maintaining
custody of it through complete devotion to the Lord. Not to say these Christians are incapable of
imprudent actions, but in their motivation, they considered themselves sinless. Although this

23
Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 72-73.
movement eventually morphed into three forms, Wesleyan, Keswick, and Pentecostal, one part
maintained a most dominant independence into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the
Pentecostal movement.
24

PENTECOSTALISM

Pentecostals, being a part of the aforementioned Holiness wing of the Fundamentalists
movement, equated the second blessing associated with the Holiness movement with the
baptism of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. As such, Pentecostals believe this kind of second blessing,
or baptism, is evidenced by speaking in tongues. This is not to be confused as the languages
the church spoke in Acts 2, but a kind of gibberish that is not understood by anyone except, in
their view, the Holy Spirit.
25

In addition to that, their view of this baptism does not purge them from sin (as the
Holiness movement in general maintains) but empowers them for worship, service, and a
rigorous separation from the ways of the world.
26
Pentecostalism is also noted for an effort to
restore New Testament church practices (specifically those mentioned in Acts) including healing,
tongues speaking, and an enjoyment of a special and unique endowment by the Holy Spirit.
27



24
Ferguson and Packer, 314
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
FUNDAMENTALISM NATIONAL PROMINENCE
It is worth nothing that this movement, Elwell explained, became nationally prominent as
offering an answer for what many regarded as a supreme social, economic, moral, and religious
crisis in America. They identified a new and more pervasive enemy, secular humanism, which
they believed was responsible for eroding churches, schools, universities, the government, and
above all families. They fought all enemies which they considered to be offspring of secular
humanism, evolutionism, political and theological liberalism, loose personal morality, sexual
perversion, socialism, communism, and any lessening of the absolute, inerrant authority of the
Bible. They called Americans to return to the fundamentals of the faith and the fundamental
moral values of America.
28

Leading this phase was a new generation of television and print fundamentalists, notably
Jerry Falwell, the founder of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, Tim La Haye, Hal Lindsey,
and Pat Robertson. Their base was Baptist and southern, but they reached into all denominations.
They benefited from three decades of post World War II fundamentalist and evangelical
expansion through evangelism, publishing, church extension, and radio ministry. They tended to
blur the distinction between fundamentalist and evangelical. Statistically, they could claim that
perhaps one fourth of the American population was fundamentalist - evangelical. However, not
all fundamentalists accepted these new leaders, considering them to be neo-fundamentalists.
The fundamentalists of the early 1980s were in many ways very different people from
their predecessors, and they faced many different issues. But they continued important traits
common to fundamentalists from the 1920s through the early 1980s. They were certain that they
possessed true knowledge of the fundamentals of the faith and that they therefore represented

28
Walter, Elwell, p. 474
true Christianity based on the authority of a literally interpreted Bible. They believed it was their
duty to carry on the great battle of history, the battle of God against Satan, of light against
darkness, and to fight against all enemies who undermined Christianity and America. Faced with
this titanic struggle they were inclined to consider other Christians who were not fundamentalists
as either unfaithful to Christ or not genuinely Christian. They called for a return to an inerrant
and infallible Bible, to the traditional statement of the doctrines, and to a traditional morality
which they believed once prevailed in America. To do all this, they created a vast number of
separate organizations and ministries to propagate the fundamentalist faith and practice.
29

CONCLUSION
Fundamentalism has a great foundation which should not be abandoned, but
rather built upon. We need to build godliness upon the foundation. There is a great need
for Fundamentalism today given all the drifting from God's Word that has occur in
Evangelicalism. Douglas McLachlan writes, "It is no surprise, therefore, that for generations
there have been many who were committed to what is commonly called Fundamentalism. It is
because of the integrity of the foundation, the innate rightness of its principal tenets. Whatever
the faults of Fundamentalism, there is a foundation undergirding her which cannot be matched
by any other theological movement."
30





29
Ibid.
30
McLachlan, Douglas. Reclaiming Authentic Fundamentalism, Independence: American Association of Christian
Schools, 1993, p. 3
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dollar, George, A History of Fundamentalism in America, Greenville: Bob Jones University
Press, 1978.
Wells, David. No Place for Truth, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.
Ferenc M. Szasz, The Divided Mind of Protestant America: 1880-1930 (University, AL:
University of Alabama Press, 1982).
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography, Cambridge: Riverside, 1918;
reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946.
Carl Degler, The Age of the Economic Revolution: 1876-1900, 2nd ed., Glenview: Scott,
Foresman, 1977.
James T. Patterson, America in the Twentieth Century: A History New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1976.
William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1976; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1994.
Carl Diemer, CHHI 525: History of Christianity 2, Lesson 23, prod and dir by Liberty University
School of Religion Distance Learning Program, 45 minutes, 2009, DVD.
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Justo L. Gonzlez, The Story of Christianity, volume 2, The Reformation to the Present Day,
New York: HarperCollins, 1985.
Sinclair B. Ferguson and J.I. Packer, New Dictionary of Theology, electronic ed., Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Elwell, Walter. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (2nd ed.). Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 2001.
David Harrington Watt, "The meaning and end of fundamentalism." Religious Studies Review
33, no. 4 (October 2007): 269-273. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost
(accessed December 11, 2009).
McLachlan, Douglas. Reclaiming Authentic Fundamentalism, Independence: American
Association of Christian Schools, 1993.