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