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Thefundamentalist–modernist controversy is a majorschism that originated in the 1920s and 1930s within thePresbyterian Church in the United States of America. At issue were foundational disputes about the role ofChristianity; theauthority of the Bible; and thedeath,resurrection, andatoning sacrifice ofJesus Christ.[1] Two broad factions withinProtestantism emerged:fundamentalists, who insisted upon the timeless validity of each doctrine of Christianorthodoxy; andmodernists, who advocated a conscious adaptation of the Christian faith in response to the new scientific discoveries and moral pressures of the age. At first, the schism was limited toReformed churches and centered around thePrinceton Theological Seminary, whose fundamentalist faculty members foundedWestminster Theological Seminary when Princeton went in a liberal direction. However, it soon spread, affecting nearly everyProtestant denomination in the United States. Denominations that were not initially affected, such as theLutheran churches, eventually were embroiled in the controversy, leading to a schism in the United States.
By the end of the 1930s, proponents of theological liberalism had, at the time, effectively won the debate,[2] with the modernists in control of allmainline Protestant seminaries, publishing houses, and denominational hierarchies in the United States.[3] More conservative Christians withdrew from the mainstream,[3] founding their own publishing houses (such asZondervan), universities (such asBiola University), and seminaries (such asDallas Theological Seminary andFuller Theological Seminary). This would remain the state of affairs until the 1970s, when conservative Protestantism emerged on a larger scale in the United States, resulting in the rise of conservatism among theSouthern Baptists,Presbyterians, and others.
American Presbyterianism had gone intoschism twice in the past, and these divisions were important precursors to thefundamentalist–modernist controversy. The first was theOld Side–New Side controversy, which occurred during theFirst Great Awakening and resulted in the Presbyterian Church in 1741 being divided into an Old Side and New Side. The two churches reunified in 1758. The second was theOld School–New School controversy, which occurred in the wake of theSecond Great Awakening and which saw the Presbyterian Church split into two denominations starting in 1836–1838.
In 1857, the New School Presbyterians divided overslavery, with the southern New School Presbyterians forming the United Synod of the Presbyterian Church. In 1861, the Old School Presbyterians split, with the Southern Presbyterians taking on the name thePresbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America (PCCSA). In 1864, the United Synod merged with PCCSA, with the Southern New School Presbyterians ultimately being absorbed into an Old School denomination. In 1869, the Northern New School Presbyterians returned to the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.
Although the controversies involved many other issues, the overarching issue had to do with the nature of church authority and the authority of theWestminster Confession of Faith. The New Side/New School opposed a rigid interpretation of the Westminster Confession. Their stance was based on spiritual renewal/revival through an experience with theHoly Spirit based on scripture. Therefore, they placed less emphasis on receiving a seminary education and the Westminster Confession (to the degree Old Side/Old School required). Their emphasis was more on the authority of scripture and a conversion experience, rather than on the Westminster Confession. They argued the importance of an encounter with God mediated by the Holy Spirit. They saw the Old Side/Old School as being formalists who fetishized the Westminster Confession andCalvinism.
The Old Side/Old School responded that the Westminster Confession was the foundational constitutional document of the Presbyterian Church and that since the Confession was simply a summary of the Bible's teachings, the church had a responsibility to ensure that its ministers' preaching was in line with the Confession. They accused the New Side/New School of being lax about the purity of the church and willing to allowArminianism,unitarianism, and other errors to be taught in the Presbyterian Church. They criticized the New Side/School's revivals as being emotionally manipulative and shallow. Another major division had to do with their attitude towards other denominations: New Siders/Schoolers were willing to set upparachurch ministries to conductevangelism andmissions and were willing to cooperate with non-Presbyterians in doing so. The Old Siders/Schoolers felt that evangelism and missions should be conducted through agencies managed by the denomination and not involving outsiders, since it would involve a watering down of the church's theological distinctives. The two sides also had different attitudes towards their seminary professors:Princeton Theological Seminary, the leading institution of the Old School, demanded credal subscription and dedicated a large part ofits academic theology to the defense of Calvinist orthodoxy; while the New School'sUnion Theological Seminary was more willing to allow non-Presbyterians to teach at the school and was more broadminded in its academic output.
The first major proponent of higher criticism within the Presbyterian Church wasCharles Augustus Briggs, who had studied higher criticism in Germany (in 1866). His inaugural address upon being made Professor ofHebrew at Union Theological Seminary in 1876 was the first salvo of higher criticism within American Presbyterianism. Briggs was active in foundingThe Presbyterian Review in 1880, withArchibald Alexander Hodge, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, initially serving as Briggs' co-editor. In 1881, Briggs published an article in defense ofWilliam Robertson Smith which led to a series of responses and counter-responses between Briggs and thePrinceton theologians in the pages ofThe Presbyterian Review. In 1889,B. B. Warfield became co-editor and refused to publish one of Briggs' articles, a key turning point.
In 1891, Briggs was appointed as Union's first-ever professor ofBiblical theology. His inaugural address, entitled "The Authority of Holy Scripture", proved to be highly controversial. Whereas previously, higher criticism had seemed a fairly technical, scholarly issue, Briggs now spelt out its full implications. In the address, he announced that higher criticism had now definitively proven thatMoses did not write thePentateuch; thatEzra did not write Ezra,Chronicles orNehemiah;Jeremiah did not write thebooks of Kings or theLamentations;David did not write most of thePsalms;Solomon wrote not theSong of Solomon orEcclesiastes but only a fewProverbs; andIsaiah did not write half of thebook of Isaiah. The Old Testament was merely a historical record that showed man in a lower state of moral development, with modern man having progressed morally far beyondNoah,Abraham,Jacob,Judah, David, and Solomon. At any rate, according to Briggs, the Scriptures as a whole were riddled with errors and the doctrine ofscriptural inerrancy taught at Princeton Theological Seminary "is a ghost of modern evangelicalism to frighten children."[4]
Henry van Dyke, a modernist who had been a major supporter of Briggs in 1893, now headed a movement of modernists and New Schoolers to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith. Since 1889, Van Dyke had been calling for credal revision to affirm that all dying infants (not justelect dying infants) go to heaven, to say that God loved the whole world (not just the elect), and to affirm that Christatoned for all mankind, not just the elect. In 1901, he chaired a 25-man committee (with a New School majority). Also in 1901, he drew up a non-binding summary of the church's faith. It mentioned neither biblical inerrancy norreprobation, affirmed God's love of all mankind, and denied that thePope was theAntichrist. It was adopted by General Assembly in 1902 and ratified by the presbyteries in 1904.
As a result of the changes, the Arminian-leaningCumberland Presbyterian Church petitioned for reunification, and in 1906, over 1000 Cumberland Presbyterian ministers joined the Presbyterian Church in the USA. The arrival of so many liberal ministers strengthened the New School's position in the church.
In 1909, there was heated debate in the New York Presbytery about whether or not to ordain three men who refused to assent to the doctrine of thevirgin birth of Jesus. (They did not deny the doctrine outright but said that they were not prepared to affirm it.) The majority eventually ordained the men; the minority complained to the General Assembly, and it was that complaint that would form the basis of the subsequent controversy. Under the order of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, the General Assembly was not authorized to accept or dismiss the complaint. It should have demitted the complaint to the presbytery and could have done so with instructions that the presbytery hold a heresy trial. The result of the trial could then be appealed to the Synod of New York and from there to the General Assembly. However, the 1910 General Assembly, acting outside its scope of authority, dismissed the complaint against the three men and at the same time instructed its Committee on Bills and Overtures to prepare a statement for governing future ordinations. The committee reported, and the General Assembly passed the Doctrinal Deliverance of 1910, which declared that five doctrines were "necessary and essential" to the Christian faith:
The five propositions would become known to history as the "Five Fundamentals" and by the late 1910s, theological conservatives rallying around the Five Fundamentals came to be known as "fundamentalists".
In 1910, a wealthy Presbyterian layman,Lyman Stewart, the founder ofUnion Oil and a proponent ofdispensationalism as taught in the newly publishedScofield Reference Bible, decided to use his wealth to sponsor a series of pamphlets to be entitledThe Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. These twelve pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915 eventually included 90 essays written by 64 authors from several denominations. The series was conservative and critical ofHigher Criticism but also broad in its approach, and the scholars who contributed articles included several Presbyterian moderates who would later be opposed to "fundamentalism" such asCharles R. Erdman Sr. andRobert Elliott Speer. It was apparently from the title of the pamphlets that the term "fundamentalist" was coined, with the first reference to the term being an article byNorthern Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws.
Several leading Presbyterians, notably Robert E. Speer, played a role in founding theFederal Council of Churches in 1908. This organization (which received 5% of its first year's budget fromJohn D. Rockefeller Jr.) was heavily associated with theSocial Gospel, and with theProgressive movement more broadly. The Council's Social Creed of the Churches was adopted by the Presbyterian Church in 1910, but conservatives in General Assembly were able to resist endorsing most of the Council's specific proposals, except for those calling forProhibition andsabbath laws.
In response toWorld War I, the FCC established the General War-Time Commission to coordinate the work of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish programs related to the war and work closely with theDepartment of War. It was chaired by Speer and liberalUnion Theological Seminary professor William Adams Brown. Following the war, they worked hard to build on this legacy of unity. The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions consequently called for a meeting of Protestant leaders on the topic and in early 1919 theInterchurch World Movement (IWM) was established withJohn Mott as its chairman. The Executive Committee of the Presbyterian Church offered millions of dollars' worth of support to help the IWM with fundraising. When the IWM collapsed financially, the denomination was on the hook for millions of dollars.
However, the debate between modernists and conservatives over the issue of the IWM was small compared to the Church Union debate. In 1919, the General Assembly sent a delegation to a national ecumenical convention that was proposing church union, and in 1920, General Assembly approved a recommendation which included "organic union" with 17 other denominations – the new organization, to be known as the United Churches of Christ in America, would be a sort of "federal government" for member churches: denominations would maintain their distinctive internal identities, but the broader organization would be in charge of things like missions and lobbying for things like prohibition. Under the terms ofpresbyterian polity, the measure would have to be approved by the presbyteries to take effect.
The plans for Church Union were roundly denounced by the Old School Princeton Theological Seminary faculty. It was at this point in 1920 that Princeton professorJ. Gresham Machen first gained prominence within the denomination as afundamentalist opponent of Church Union, which he argued would destroy Presbyterian distinctives, and effectively cede control of the denomination to modernists and their New School allies. However, chinks were starting to show in the Princeton faculty's armor. Charles Erdman and the president of the seminary, William Robinson, came out in favor of the union.
Ultimately, the presbyteries defeated church union by a vote of 150–100 in 1921.
The splits between fundamentalists and modernists had been bubbling in the Presbyterian Church for some time. The event which was to bring the issue to a head wasHarry Emerson Fosdick's sermon of May 21, 1922, ""Shall the Fundamentalists Win?"" Fosdick was ordained as a Baptist, but had been given special permission to preach inFirst Presbyterian Church inNew York City.
In this sermon, Fosdick presented the liberals in both the Presbyterian and Baptist denominations as sincere evangelical Christians who were struggling to reconcile new discoveries in history, science, and religion with the Christian faith. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, were cast as intolerant conservatives who refused to deal with these new discoveries and had arbitrarily drawn the line as to what was off limits in religious discussion. Many people, Fosdick argued, simply found it impossible to accept the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine ofsubstitutionary atonement, or the literalSecond Coming of Christ in the light of modern science. Given the different points of view within the church, only tolerance and liberty could allow for these different perspectives to co-exist in the church.
ConservativeClarence E. Macartney, pastor ofArch Street Presbyterian Church inPhiladelphia, responded to Fosdick with a sermon of his own, entitled "Shall Unbelief Win?" which was quickly published in a pamphlet. He argued that liberalism had been progressively "secularizing" the church and, if left unchecked, would lead to "a Christianity of opinions and principles and good purposes, but a Christianity without worship, without God, and without Jesus Christ."
Throughout the proceedings, Fosdick's defense was led by lay elderJohn Foster Dulles.
A giant of Old School Presbyterianism at Princeton,Charles Hodge, was one of the few Presbyterian controversialists to turn their guns onDarwinism prior toWorld War I. Hodge published hisWhat is Darwinism? in 1874, three years afterThe Descent of Man was published, and argued that ifCharles Darwin's theory excluded thedesign argument, it was effectively atheism and could not be reconciled with biblical Christianity.
Asa Gray responded that Christianity was compatible with Darwin's science. Both he and many other Christians accepted various forms oftheistic evolution, and Darwin had not excluded the work of the Creator as a primary cause.[8]
William Jennings Bryan, a former lawyer who had been brought up in the ArminianCumberland Presbyterian Church (part of which would merge with the PC-USA in 1906) and who was also aPresbyterian ruling elder, was elected to Congress in 1890, then became theDemocraticpresidential candidate for three unsuccessful presidential bids in1896,1900, and1908. After his 1900 defeat, Bryan re-examined his life and concluded that he had let his passion for politics obscure his calling as a Christian. Beginning in 1900, he began lecturing on theChautauqua circuit, where his speeches often involved religious as well as political themes. For the next 25 years until his death, Bryan was one of the most popular Chautauqua lecturers and he spoke in front of hundreds of thousands of people.
By 1905, Bryan had concluded that Darwinism and the modernism of Higher Criticism were allies in promoting liberalism within the church, thereby in his view undermining the foundations of Christianity. In lectures from 1905, Bryan spoke out against the spread of Darwinism, which he characterized as involving "the operation of the law of hate – the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak", and warned that it could undermine the foundations of morality. In 1913, he becameWoodrow Wilson'ssecretary of state, then resigned in 1915 because he believed that the Wilson administration was about to enterWorld War I in response to thesinking of the RMSLusitania and he opposed American intervention in a European war.
When the US did finally join World War I in 1917, Bryan volunteered for the army, though he was never allowed to enlist. At a time of widespread revulsion at alleged German atrocities, Bryan linked evolution to Germany,[9] and claimed that Darwinism provided a justification for the strong to dominate the weak and was therefore the source of Germanmilitarism.[10] He drew on reports by theentomologistVernon Kellogg of German officers discussing the Darwinian rationale for their declaration of war,[11] and thesociologistBenjamin Kidd's bookThe Science of Power which contended thatNietzsche's philosophy represented an interpretation of Darwinism,[10] to conclude thatNietzsche's and Darwin's ideas were the impetus for Germannationalism and militarism. Bryan argued that Germany's militarism and "barbarism" came from their belief that the "struggle for survival" described in Darwin'sOn the Origin of Species applied to nations as well as to individuals,[10] and that "The same science that manufactured poisonous gases to suffocate soldiers is preaching that man has a brute ancestry and eliminating the miraculous and the supernatural from the Bible."[11]
Bryan was, in essence, fighting what would later be calledSocial Darwinism,[12] social and economic ideas owing as much toHerbert Spencer andThomas Malthus as to Darwin, and viewed by modern biologists as a misuse of his theory.[13] Germany, or so Bryan's argument ran, had replaced Christ's teachings with Nietzsche's philosophy based on ideas ofsurvival of the fittest, and the implication was that America would suffer the same fate if unchecked.[9] This fear was reinforced by the report of thepsychologistJames H. Leuba's 1916 study indicating that a considerable number of college students lost their faith during the four years they spent in college.
Bryan launched his campaign against Darwinism in 1921 when he was invited to give the James Sprunt Lectures at Virginia'sUnion Theological Seminary. At the end of one,The Menace of Darwinism, he said that "Darwinism is not a science at all; it is a string of guesses strung together" and that there is more science in the Bible's "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature..."[14] than in all of Darwin.[15]
The Auburn Affirmation (1923–1924)
36 clergymen met inSyracuse, New York, and, using Nichols' paper as a base, ultimately issued a declaration known as theAuburn Affirmation.
The most significant conservative preparation for the General Assembly of 1924 actually occurred slightly before the 1923 General Assembly. This was the publication ofJ. Gresham Machen'sChristianity and Liberalism. In this book, Machen argued that liberalism, far from being a set of teachings that could be accommodated within the church, was in fact antithetical to the principles of Christianity and was currently engaged in a struggle against historic Christianity.
At the same time he had been campaigning against Darwinism (largely unsuccessfully) within the Presbyterian Church, William Jennings Bryan had also been encouraging state lawmakers to pass laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Several states had responded to Bryan's call, includingTennessee, which passedsuch a law in March 1925. (Given the present-day contours ofthe evolution–creation debate, in many states in 1925, evolution continued to be taught in church-run institutions at the same time that its teaching was banned in state-run public schools.)
TheACLU was seeking a test case to challenge these anti-evolutionary laws. This led to the famoustrial of John Scopes for teaching evolution in a public school inDayton, Tennessee. The ACLU sent in renownedlawyerJohn Randolph Neal Jr. to defend Scopes.
Baptist pastorWilliam Bell Riley, founder and president of theWorld Christian Fundamentals Association, persuaded William Jennings Bryan to act as its counsel. Bryan invited his major allies in the Presbyterian General Assembly to attend the trial with him, but J. Gresham Machen refused to testify, saying he had not studied biology in enough detail to testify at trial, while Clarence Macartney had a previous engagement. In response to the announcement that Bryan would be attending the trial, renowned lawyer and committedagnosticClarence Darrow volunteered to serve on Scopes' defense team.
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In 1930, as a result of widespread second thoughts about missions in general,[16] a group ofBaptist laymen at the request ofJohn D. Rockefeller Jr. concluded that it was time for a serious re-evaluation of the effectiveness of foreign missions. With Rockefeller's financial backing, they convinced seven major denominations – theMethodist Episcopal Church, theNorthern Baptist Convention, theReformed Church in America, theCongregational church, theEpiscopal Church in the United States of America, thePresbyterian Church in the United States of America and theUnited Presbyterian Church of North America – to participate in their "Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry". They commissioned a study of missionaries inIndia,Burma,China, andJapan and launched a separate inquiry under the chairmanship of the philosopher andHarvard professorWilliam Ernest Hocking. These two inquiries led to the publication of a one-volume summary of the findings of the Laymen's Inquiry entitledRe-Thinking Missions: A Laymen's Inquiry After One Hundred Years in 1932.[17]
Re-Thinking Missions argued that in the face of emergingsecularism, Christians should ally with other world religions, rather than struggle against them.[citation needed]
The seven denominations who had agreed to participate in the Laymen's Inquiry now distanced themselves from the report. ThePresbyterian Board of Foreign Missions issued a statement reaffirming the board's commitment to the evangelistic basis of the missionary enterprise and to Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior.
Pearl S. Buck now weighed into the debate. In a review published inThe Christian Century, she praised the report, saying it should be read by every Christian in America and, ironically mimicking theBiblical literalism of the fundamentalists, "I think this is the only book I have ever read that seems to me literally true in its every observation and right in its every conclusion."[17] Then, in a November 1932 speech before a large audience at theAstor Hotel, later published inHarper's,[18] Buck decried gauging the success of missions by the numbers of new church members. Instead she advocated humanitarian efforts to improve the agricultural, educational, medical, and sanitary conditions of the community.[19] She described the typical missionary as "narrow, uncharitable, unappreciative, ignorant". In theHarper's article along with another inCosmopolitan published in May 1933, Buck rejected the doctrine oforiginal sin, saying "I believe that most of us start out wanting to do right and to be good." She asserted that belief in thevirgin birth or thedivinity of Christ was not a prerequisite to being a Christian. She said that the only need is to acknowledge that one cannot live without Christ and to reflect that in one's life.[18][19][20][21]
Disapproving of General Assembly's decision not to appoint a new slate of conservatives to the Board of Foreign Missions,J. Gresham Machen, along withH. McAllister Griffiths, announced that they were forming anIndependent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions to truly promote biblical and Presbyterian work. Macartney refused to go along with Machen in setting up an independent missions board.
As a result of the departure of Machen and the denominational conservatives, especially of the Old School, the shape of the Presbyterian Church in the USA as a modernist, liberal denomination was secured. The PCUSA would eventually merge with theUnited Presbyterian Church of North America in 1958 to form theUnited Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and in 1983, the UPCUSA would merge with thePresbyterian Church in the United States (the "Southern Presbyterians" who had split with the PCUSA in 1861 due to the Civil War) to form the currentPresbyterian Church (USA).
The dispute between the fundamentalists and modernists would be played out in nearly every Christian denomination. By the 1920s, it was clear that every mainstream Protestant denomination was going to be willing to accommodate modernism, with the exception of the Presbyterians, Southern Baptists, and theMissouri Synod Lutherans, where the situation was still unclear. The departure of Machen and other conservatives brought the Presbyterians into the camp willing to accommodate modernism, leaving theSouthern Baptists and the Missouri Synod as the only large, national denominations where orthodox Protestants were still active within the denomination. The conflict continued to roil both churches for most of the 20th century and the triumph of orthodox Protestantism in those denominations would not be secure until theSeminex schism in the Lutheran church and theSouthern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence of 1979–1990.
