Fundamentalism
Religion
in America
Interest in the Holy
Spirit
■
Liberal and evangelical Protestants: harness the
Holy Spirit
–
“Power for service”
■
Faith healing
–
Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science, 1879
■
Holiness movement in postwar Northern Methodism
–
Theory of outpouring of Holy Spirit
■
Entire sanctification or perfectionism
–
“Second blessing”
–
Church of God, Church of the Nazarene
■
Pentecostalism
–
W.J. Seymour, Azusa Street, L.A., 1906
■
Speaking in tongues, faith healing, prophecy
Interest in
Millennialism
■
Liberal Postmillennialism
–
Walter Rauschenbusch’s Brotherhood of the Kingdom
■
Adventist Charles Taze Russell and Jehovah’s
Witnesses
–
Christ returned 1874, predicted rapture 1878 and Armageddon 1914
■
Dispensational premillennialism
–
John Nelson Darby & Niagara Conferences, 1880s
■
Bible predictions are reliable, precise, plain
■
Baconian science & Common Sense
–
Arranging & classifying “hard facts” of Bible
■
Seven dispensations
■
New concept of the “pretribulation rapture”
■
Current “parenthetical” age not in prophecy
Setting the Stage
for Division
■
Moody dies, 1899
–
Revivalism fragments
–
Billy Sunday
■
World War I, 1914-18 and Russian Revolution,
1917
■
Mainline churches support Wilson’s League of
Nations
–
War to end all wars
–
Another step towards the Millennium?
–
Defeated in the Senate, 1919
■
1920s: Retreat from reform; postmillennialism
dealt a blow
Conservatives define
themselves
■
The Fundamentals, 1910-15
–
Funded by Lyman Stewart, California Presbyterian oil millionaire
–
Quaker Oats’ Henry P. Crowell, Presbyterian millionaire, MBI
director
■
Inerrancy of Scripture
■
Authenticity of miracles: Christ’s virgin birth
■
Christ’s substitutionary atonement
■
Premillennialism
–
Predicted events prove Bible’s truth and reliability
The Fundamentalist
Controversy
■
Harry Emerson Fosdick, Shall the Fundamentalists Win?, 1922
–
“Fundamentals” not fundamental
–
Fundamentalism an intolerant holdover from the past
–
The Bible a record of the unfolding of God’s will
■
Christianity changes and progresses over time
■
Fundamentalists fail at Northern Baptist
convention, 1922
■
Fundamentalists fail at Northern Presbyterian
General Assembly, 1923
■
Division of conservatives; fear of schism
–
Toleration wins; some secede
1925: Aftermath
■
Fundamentalists no longer taken seriously
–
Begin to look like popular stereotype
–
Scopes trial, 1925
–
Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry, 1928
–
Hurt by bizarre incidents
■
Ku Klux Klan
■
J. Frank Norris