| Part ofa series on |
| Protestantism |
|---|
 |
 Christianity portal |
| Part ofa series on |
| Christianity |
|---|
 |
Christian fundamentalism, also known asfundamental Christianity orfundamentalist Christianity, is areligious movement emphasizingbiblical literalism.[1] In its modern form, it began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amongBritish andAmerican Protestants[2] as a reaction totheological liberalism and culturalmodernism.Fundamentalists argued that19th-century modernist theologians had misunderstood or rejected certaindoctrines, especiallybiblical inerrancy, which they considered the fundamentals of theChristian faith.[3]
Fundamentalists are almost always described as upholding beliefs inbiblical infallibility and biblical inerrancy,[4] in keeping with traditional Christian doctrines concerningbiblical interpretation, the role ofJesus in theBible, and the role of the church in society. Fundamentalists usually believe in a core of Christian beliefs, typically called the "Five Fundamentals". These arose from thePresbyterian Church issuance of "The Doctrinal Deliverance of 1910".[5] Topics included are statements on thehistorical accuracy of the Bible and all of the events which are recorded in it as well as theSecond Coming of Jesus Christ.[6]
Fundamentalism manifests itself in variousdenominations which believe in various theologies, rather than a singledenomination or asystematic theology.[7] The ideology became active in the 1910s after the release ofThe Fundamentals, a twelve-volume set of essays,apologetic andpolemic, written by conservative Protestant theologians in an attempt to defend beliefs which they considered Protestantorthodoxy. The movement became more organized within U.S. Protestant churches in the 1920s, especially amongPresbyterians, as well asBaptists andMethodists.[8] Many churches which embraced fundamentalism adopted a militant attitude with regard to their core beliefs.[2]Reformed fundamentalists lay heavy emphasis on historicconfessions of faith, such as theWestminster Confession of Faith, as well as upholdPrinceton theology.[9] Since 1930, many fundamentalist churches in the Baptist tradition (who generally affirmdispensationalism) have been represented by theIndependent Fundamental Churches of America (renamed IFCA International in 1996), while many theologically conservativeconnexions in the Methodist tradition (who adhere toWesleyan theology) align with theInterchurch Holiness Convention; in various countries, national bodies such as theAmerican Council of Christian Churches exist to encourage dialogue between fundamentalist bodies of different denominational backgrounds.[10] Other fundamentalist denominations have little contact with other bodies.[11]
A few scholarslabelCatholic activist conservative associations who reject modernChristian theology in favor of more traditional doctrines as fundamentalists.[12][13][14] The term is sometimes mistakenly confused with the termevangelical.[15]
The termfundamentalism entered the English language in 1922, and it is often capitalized when it is used in reference to the religious movement.[1] By the end of the 20th century, the termfundamentalism acquired a pejorative connotation, denotingreligious fanaticism orextremism, especially when suchlabeling extended beyond the original movement which coined the term and those who self-identify as fundamentalists.[16]
Some who hold certain, but not all beliefs in common with the original fundamentalist movement reject the labelfundamentalism, due to its perceivedpejorative nature, while others consider it a banner of pride. In certain parts of theUnited Kingdom, using the termfundamentalist with the intent to stir up religious hatred is a violation of theRacial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006.
The movement has its origins in 1878 in a meeting of the "Believers' Meeting for Bible Study" (Niagara Bible Conference) in the United States, where 14 fundamental beliefs were established by evangelical pastors.[17]
Fundamentalism draws from multiple traditions in British and American theologies during the 19th century.[18] According to authors Robert D. Woodberry and Christian S. Smith,
Following theCivil War, tensions developed between Northern evangelical leaders overDarwinism and higherbiblical criticism; Southerners remained unified in their opposition to both. ... Modernists attempted to updateChristianity to match their view of science. They denied biblical miracles and argued that God manifests himself through the social evolution of society. Conservatives resisted these changes. These latent tensions rose to the surface afterWorld War I in what came to be called thefundamentalist/modernist split.[19]
However, the split does not mean that there were just two groups: modernists and fundamentalists. There were also people who considered themselves neo-evangelicals, separating themselves from the extreme components of fundamentalism. These neo-evangelicals also wanted to separate themselves from both the fundamentalist movement and the mainstream evangelical movement due to their anti-intellectual approaches.[19]
From 1910 until 1915, a series of essays titledThe Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth was published by the Testimony Publishing Company of Chicago.[20][21]
The Northern Presbyterian Church (nowPresbyterian Church in the United States of America) influenced the movement with the definition of thefive "fundamentals" in 1910, namely
ThePrinceton theology, which responded tohigher criticism of the Bible by developing from the 1840s to 1920 the doctrine of inerrancy, was another influence in the movement. This doctrine, also called biblical inerrancy, stated that the Bible was divinely inspired, religiously authoritative, and without error.[25][26] ThePrinceton Seminary professor of theologyCharles Hodge insisted that the Bible was inerrant because God inspired or "breathed" his exact thoughts into the biblical writers (2 Timothy 3:16). Princeton theologians believed that the Bible should be read differently than any other historical document, and they also believed that Christianmodernism andliberalism led people toHell just like non-Christian religions did.[27]
Biblical inerrancy was a particularly significant rallying point for fundamentalists.[28] This approach to the Bible is associated withconservative evangelicalhermeneutical approaches to Scripture, ranging from thehistorical-grammatical method tobiblical literalism.[29]
TheDallas Theological Seminary, founded in 1924 inDallas, would have a considerable influence in the movement by training students who will establish various independentBible Colleges and fundamentalist churches in the southern United States.[30]
In the 1930s, fundamentalism was viewed by many as a "last gasp" vestige of something from the past[31] but more recently,[when?] scholars have shifted away from that view.[32][33]
In the early 1940s, evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians began to part ways over whether to separate from modern culture (the fundamentalist approach) or engage with it.[34] An organization very much on the side of separation from modernity was theAmerican Council of Christian Churches, founded in 1941 by Rev.Carl McIntire. Another group "for conservative Christians who wanted to be culturally engaged" was theNational Association of Evangelicals (NAE) founded in 1942, byHarold Ockenga.[34]
The interpretations given the fundamentalist movement have changed over time, with most older interpretations being based on the concepts of social displacement or cultural lag.[32] Some in the 1930s, includingH. Richard Niebuhr, understood the conflict between fundamentalism and modernism to be part of a broader social conflict between the cities and the country.[32] In this view the fundamentalists were country and small-town dwellers who were reacting against the progressivism of city dwellers.[32] Fundamentalism was seen as a form of anti-intellectualism during the 1950s; in the early 1960s American intellectual and historianRichard Hofstadter interpreted it in terms of status anxiety, social displacement, and 'Manichean mentality'.[32][35]
Beginning in the late 1960s, the movement began to be seen as "a bona fide religious, theological and even intellectual movement in its own right".[32] Instead of interpreting fundamentalism as a simpleanti-intellectualism, Paul Carter argued that "fundamentalists were simply intellectual in a way different than their opponents".[32] Moving into the 1970s, Earnest R. Sandeen saw fundamentalism as arising from the confluence of Princeton theology andmillennialism.[32]
George Marsden defined fundamentalism as "militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism" in his 1980 workFundamentalism and American Culture.[32]Militant in this sense does not mean 'violent', it means 'aggressively active in a cause'.[36] Marsden saw fundamentalism arising from a number of preexisting evangelical movements that responded to various perceived threats by joining forces.[32] He argued that Christianfundamentalists were American evangelical Christians who in the 20th century opposed "both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorsed. Militant opposition to modernism was what most clearly set off fundamentalism."[37] Others viewing militancy as a core characteristic of the fundamentalist movement include Philip Melling, Ung Kyu Pak and Ronald Witherup.[38][39][40]Donald McKim and David Wright (1992) argue that "in the 1920s, militant conservatives (fundamentalists) united to mount a conservative counter-offensive. Fundamentalists sought to rescue their denominations from the growth of modernism at home."[41]
According to Marsden, recent scholars differentiate "fundamentalists" from "evangelicals" by arguing the former were more militant and less willing to collaborate with groups considered "modernist" in theology. In the 1940s the more moderate faction of fundamentalists maintained the same theology but began calling themselves "evangelicals" to stress their less militant position.[42]Roger Olson (2007) identifies a more moderate faction of fundamentalists, which he calls "postfundamentalist", and says "most postfundamentalist evangelicals do not wish to be called fundamentalists, even though their basic theological orientation is not very different". According to Olson, a key event was the formation of theNational Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942.[43] Barry Hankins (2008) has a similar view, saying "beginning in the 1940s....militant and separatist evangelicals came to be called fundamentalists, while culturally engaged and non-militant evangelicals were supposed to be called evangelicals."[44]
Timothy Weber views fundamentalism as "a rather distinctive modern reaction to religious, social and intellectual changes of the late 1800s and early 1900s, a reaction that eventually took on a life of its own and changed significantly over time".[32]
Fundamentalist movements existed in most North American Protestant denominations by 1919 following attacks on modernist theology inPresbyterian andBaptist denominations. Fundamentalism was especially controversial among Presbyterians.[45]
In Canada, fundamentalism was less prominent,[46] but an early leader was English-bornThomas Todhunter Shields (1873–1955), who led 80 churches out of the Baptist federation in Ontario in 1927 and formed the Union of Regular Baptist Churches of Ontario and Quebec. He was affiliated with the Baptist Bible Union, based in the United States. His newspaper,The Gospel Witness, reached 30,000 subscribers in 16 countries, giving him an international reputation. He was one of the founders of the international Council of Christian Churches.[47]
Oswald J. Smith (1889–1986), reared in rural Ontario and educated atMoody Church in Chicago, set up The Peoples Church in Toronto in 1928. A dynamic preacher and leader in Canadian fundamentalism, Smith wrote 35 books and engaged in missionary work worldwide.Billy Graham called him "the greatest combination pastor, hymn writer, missionary statesman, an evangelist of our time."[48]
A leading organizer of the fundamentalist campaign againstmodernism in the United States wasWilliam Bell Riley, aNorthern Baptist based in Minneapolis, where hisNorthwestern Bible and Missionary Training School (1902), Northwestern Evangelical Seminary (1935), and Northwestern College (1944) produced thousands of graduates. At a large conference in Philadelphia in 1919, Riley founded theWorld Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA), which became the chief interdenominational fundamentalist organization in the 1920s. Some mark this conference as the public start of Christian fundamentalism.[49][50] Although the fundamentalist drive to take control of the major Protestant denominations failed at the national level during the 1920s, the network of churches and missions fostered by Riley showed that the movement was growing in strength, especially inthe U.S. South. Both rural and urban in character, the flourishing movement acted as a denominational surrogate and fostered a militant evangelical Christian orthodoxy. Riley was president of WCFA until 1929, after which the WCFA faded in importance.[51] TheIndependent Fundamental Churches of America became a leading association of independent U.S. fundamentalist churches upon its founding in 1930. TheAmerican Council of Christian Churches was founded for fundamental Christian denominations as an alternative to theNational Council of Churches.
Much of the enthusiasm for mobilizing fundamentalism came from Protestant seminaries and Protestant "Bible colleges" in the United States. Two leading fundamentalist seminaries were the dispensationalistDallas Theological Seminary, founded in 1924 byLewis Sperry Chafer, and theReformedWestminster Theological Seminary, formed in 1929 under the leadership and funding of formerPrinceton Theological Seminary professorJ. Gresham Machen.[52] Many Bible colleges were modeled after theMoody Bible Institute in Chicago.Dwight Moody was influential in preaching the imminence of the Kingdom of God that was so important to dispensationalism.[53] Bible colleges prepared ministers who lacked college or seminary experience with intense study of the Bible, often using theScofield Reference Bible of 1909, aKing James Version of theBible with detailed notes which interprets passages from a dispensational perspective.
Although U.S. fundamentalism began in theNorth, the movement's largest base of popular support was in the South, especially amongSouthern Baptists, where individuals (and sometimes entire churches) left the convention and joined other Baptist denominations and movements which they believed were "more conservative" such as theIndependent Baptist movement. By the late 1920s the national media had identified it with the South, largely ignoring manifestations elsewhere.[54] In the mid-twentieth century, several Methodists left the mainlineMethodist Church and established fundamental Methodist denominations, such as theEvangelical Methodist Church and theFundamental Methodist Conference (cf.conservative holiness movement); others preferred congregating in Independent Methodist churches, many of which are affiliated with theAssociation of Independent Methodists, which is fundamentalist in its theological orientation.[55] By the 1970s Protestant fundamentalism was deeply entrenched and concentrated in the U.S. South. In 1972–1980General Social Surveys, 65 percent of respondents from the "East South Central" region (comprisingTennessee,Kentucky,Mississippi, andAlabama) self-identified as fundamentalist. The share of fundamentalists was at or near 50 percent in "West South Central" (Texas toArkansas) and "South Atlantic" (Florida to Maryland), and at 25 percent or below elsewhere in the country, with the low of nine percent in New England. The pattern persisted into the 21st century; in 2006–2010 surveys, the average share of fundamentalists in the East South Central Region stood at 58 percent, while, inNew England, it climbed slightly to 13 percent.[56]
In the 1920s, Christian fundamentalists "differed on how to understand the account of creation in Genesis" but they "agreed that God was the author of creation and that humans were distinct creatures, separate from animals, and made in the image of God."[57] While some of them advocated the belief inOld Earth creationism and a few of them even advocated the belief inevolutionary creation, other "strident fundamentalists" advocatedYoung Earth Creationism and "associated evolution with last-days atheism."[57] These "strident fundamentalists" in the 1920s devoted themselves to fighting against theteaching of evolution in the nation's schools and colleges, especially by passing state laws that affected public schools.William Bell Riley took the initiative in the 1925Scopes Trial by bringing in famed politicianWilliam Jennings Bryan and hiring him to serve as an assistant to the local prosecutor, who helped draw national media attention to the trial. In the half century after the Scopes Trial, fundamentalists had little success in shaping government policy, and they were generally defeated in their efforts to reshape themainline denominations, which refused to join fundamentalist attacks on evolution.[27] Particularly after the Scopes Trial, liberals saw a division between Christians in favor of the teaching of evolution, whom they viewed as educated and tolerant, and Christians against evolution, whom they viewed as narrow-minded, tribal, and obscurantist.[58]
Edwards (2000), however, challenges the consensus view among scholars that in the wake of the Scopes trial, fundamentalism retreated into the political and cultural background, a viewpoint which is evidenced in the movieInherit the Wind and the majority of contemporary historical accounts. Rather, he argues, the cause of fundamentalism's retreat was the death of its leader, Bryan. Most fundamentalists saw the trial as a victory rather than a defeat, but Bryan's death soon afterward created a leadership void that no other fundamentalist leader could fill. Unlike the other fundamentalist leaders, Bryan brought name recognition, respectability, and the ability to forge a broad-based coalition of fundamentalist religious groups to argue in favor of the anti-evolutionist position.[59]
Gatewood (1969) analyzes the transition from the anti-evolution crusade of the 1920s to thecreation science movement of the 1960s. Despite some similarities between these two causes, the creation science movement represented a shift from religious topseudoscientific objections to Darwin's theory. Creation science also differed in terms of popular leadership, rhetorical tone, and sectional focus. It lacked a prestigious leader like Bryan, utilized pseudoscientific argument rather than religious rhetoric, and was a product of California and Michigan rather than the South.[60]
Webb (1991) traces the political and legal struggles between strict creationists and Darwinists to influence the extent to which evolution would be taught as science in Arizona and California schools. After Scopes was convicted, creationists throughout the United States sought similar anti-evolution laws for their states. These included Reverends R. S. Beal and Aubrey L. Moore in Arizona and members of the Creation Research Society in California, all supported by distinguished laymen. They sought to ban evolution as a topic for study, or at least relegate it to the status of unproven theory perhaps taught alongside the biblical version of creation. Educators, scientists, and other distinguished laymen favored evolution. This struggle occurred later in the Southwest than in other US areas and persisted through the Sputnik era.[61]
In recent times, the courts have heard cases on whether or not the Book of Genesis's creation account should be taught in science classrooms alongside evolution, most notably in the 2005 federal court caseKitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.[62] Creationism was presented under the banner ofintelligent design, with the bookOf Pandas and People being its textbook. The trial ended with the judge deciding that teaching intelligent design in a science class was unconstitutional as it was a religious belief and not science.[63]
The original fundamentalist movement divided along clearly defined lines within conservative evangelical Protestantism as issues progressed. Many groupings, large and small, were produced by this schism.Neo-evangelicalism, theHeritage movement, andPaleo-Orthodoxy have all developed distinct identities, but none of them acknowledge any more than an historical overlap with the fundamentalist movement, and the term is seldom used of them. The broader term "evangelical" includes fundamentalists as well as people with similar or identical religious beliefs who do not engage the outside challenge to the Bible as actively.[64]
Writing in 2023, conservative Christian journalistDavid French quotes a former president of theSouthern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission,Richard Land, as identifying fundamentalism as "far more a psychology than a theology," with characteristics shared by competing Christian theologies and competing religions. According French, that psychology is one that shares "three key traits": certainty (of a mind unclouded by doubt), ferocity (against perceived enemies of their religion) and solidarity (of "comrades in the foxhole", a virtue surpassing even piety in importance).[65]
The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a surge of interest in organized political activism by U.S. fundamentalists. Dispensational fundamentalists viewed the 1948establishment of the state of Israel as an important sign of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and support for Israel became the centerpiece of their approach to U.S. foreign policy.[66] United States Supreme Court decisions also ignited fundamentalists' interest in organized politics, particularlyEngel v. Vitale in 1962, which prohibited state-sanctioned prayer in public schools, andAbington School District v. Schempp in 1963, which prohibited mandatory Bible reading in public schools.[67] By the timeRonald Reagan ran for the presidency in 1980, fundamentalist preachers, like the prohibitionist ministers of the early 20th century, were organizing their congregations to vote for supportive candidates.[68]
Leaders of the newly political fundamentalism includedRob Grant andJerry Falwell. Beginning with Grant's American Christian Cause in 1974,Christian Voice throughout the 1970s and Falwell'sMoral Majority in the 1980s, theChristian Right began to have a major impact on American politics. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Christian Right was influencing elections and policy with groups such as theFamily Research Council (founded 1981 byJames Dobson) and theChristian Coalition (formed in 1989 byPat Robertson) helping conservative politicians, especiallyRepublicans, to win state and national elections.[69]
A major organization of fundamentalist,pentecostal churches in Australia is theInternational Network of Churches, formerly known as the "Christian Outreach Centre".[70]
A former influential group was theLogos Foundation. The Logos Foundation, led byHoward Carter, was a controversial Christian ministry in the 1970s and 1980s that promotedReconstructionist,Restorationist, andDominionist theology. They also actively campaigned for several candidates forQueensland, Australia public office that shared their values (e.g., anti-abortion). The Logos Foundation disbanded shortly after an adulterous affair by Carter became public in 1990.[71][70][72][73]
InRussia, Christian fundamentalism is often based around theRussian Orthodox Church or theRussian Orthodox Old-Rite Church. Orthodox Christian fundamentalism was often connected strongly to a sense ofRussian nationalism, since the Russian Orthodox Church often has a strong connection to theRussian state. This Church-state connection has arguably existed since the time ofVladimir the Great's conversion.
In 2013,composer Andrei Kormukhin andathlete Vladimir Nosov founded the Orthodox fundamentalist andconservative Christian organization known as theSorok Sorokov Movement. The Sorok Sorokov Movement was founded in reaction toPussy Riot's 2012 protests, which were themselves against increasinglysocially conservative policies in Russia, including moves towardsdecriminalizing wifebeating andcriminalizing homosexuality. The Sorok Sorokov Movement has received support from manypriests of the Russian Orthodox Church, most notablycelebrate priestVsevolod Chaplin. Chaplin in particular supported the creation of "Orthodox squads" in order to punish people from carrying out "blasphemous acts" in religious places. Some have argues that the Sorok Sorkov Movement has been involved in protecting the construction of Russian Orthodox churches inMoscow, though the facts have been hard to verify with this. Just as many sources have argued that these acts were more in line with violentvigilantism against LGBT people in Russia.[74] The Sorok Sorokov Movement has also been connected to theRussian far-right, includingneo-Nazis andThird Positionists.[74] The Sorok Sorokov Movement has its own political party as well, calledFor the Family.
Manyfar-right RussianChristian nationalists have been highly supportive ofRussia's unprovoked war with Ukraine. One such group supportive of Russian Orthodox Christian fundamentalist-nationalism is theUnion of Orthodox Banner-Bearers. Known for theirbook burnings andpolitical rallies, their primary goal is to seea return of the Russian Tsar as supreme autocrat of Russia.[75] The group as a particular affinity forTsar Nicolas II.[75] The group has at times referred toRussian presidentVladimir Putin as a modern Tsar, though it is unclear as to whether or not this is a message of support for Putin or not.[76]
Bible Baptist Churches, Fundamental Baptist Churches or Independent Baptist Churches refuse any form of ecclesial authority other than that of the local church.[77] Great emphasis is placed on theliteral interpretation of the Bible as the primary method of Bible study as well as thebiblical inerrancy and theinfallibility of theirinterpretation.[78]Dispensationalism is common among Independent Baptists. They are opposed to anyecumenical movement with denominations that do not have the same beliefs.[79] Many Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches adhere to only using theKing James Version, a position known asKing James Onlyism.[80]
Fundamental Methodism includes severalconnexions, such as theEvangelical Methodist Church andFundamental Methodist Conference, along with their seminaries such asBreckbill Bible College.[81] Additionally, Methodist connexions in theconservative holiness movement, such as theAllegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection andEvangelical Methodist Church Conference, herald the beliefs of "separation from the world, from false doctrines, from other ecclesiastical connections" as well as place heavy emphasis on practicingholiness standards.[82]
Innondenominational Christianity of theevangelical variety, the wordbiblical orindependent often appears in the name of the church or denomination.[30] The independence of the church is claimed and affiliation with aChristian denomination is infrequent, although there are fundamentalist denominations.[83]
Reformed fundamentalism includes those denominations in theReformed tradition (which includes theContinental Reformed,Presbyterian,Reformed Anglican andReformed Baptist Churches) who adhere to the doctrine ofbiblical infallibility and lay heavy emphasis on historic confessions of faith, such as theWestminster Confession.[84][9]
Examples of Reformed fundamentalist denominations include theOrthodox Presbyterian Church[84] and theFree Presbyterian Church of Ulster.
Fundamentalists' literal interpretation of theBible has been criticized by practitioners ofbiblical criticism for failing to take into account the circumstances in which the Christian Bible was written. Critics claim that this "literal interpretation" is not in keeping with the message which the scripture intended to convey when it was written,[85] and it also uses the Bible for political purposes by presenting God "more as a God of judgement and punishment than as a God of love and mercy."[86]
In contrast to the higher criticism, fundamentalism claims to keep the Bible open for the people. However, through the complexity of thedispensational framework, it has actually forced lay readers to remain dependent upon the inductive methods of Bible teachers and ministers.[87]
Christian fundamentalism has been linked tochild abuse[88][89][90] as well ascorporal punishment,[91][92] with a number of practitioners believing that the Bible tells them tospank their children.[93] Artists have addressed the issues of Christian fundamentalism,[94][95] with one providing a slogan "America's Premier Child Abuse Brand."[96]
Researchers find evidence anchoring Christian fundamentalism with beliefs inconspiracy theories such asmodern flat Earth beliefs[97][98] and linking extreme religious fervour withmental illness.[99][100] Fundamentalists have attempted and continue to attempt to teachintelligent design, a hypothesis withcreationism as its base, in lieu ofevolution in public schools. This has resulted in legal challenges such as the federal case ofKitzmiller v. Dover Area School District which resulted in theUnited States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruling the teaching of intelligent design to be unconstitutional due to its religious roots.[101]
Statements of faith from fundamentalist churches will often affirm both infallibility and inerrancy.
Hence it is impossible to speak of fundamentalists as a discrete group. Rather, one must speak of fundamentalist Baptists, fundamentalist Methodists, fundamentalist Presbyterians, fundamentalist independents, and the like.
Catholic fundamentalists, like their Protestant counterparts, fear that the church has abandoned the unchanging truth of past tradition for the evolving speculations of modern theology. They fear that Christian societies have replaced systems of absolute moral norms with subjective decision making and relativism. Like Protestant fundamentalists, Catholic fundamentalists propose a worldview that is rigorous and clear cut.
By the beginning of the 1930s [...] fundamentalism appeared to be in disarray everywhere. Scholarly studies sprang up which claimed that fundamentalism was the last gasp of a dying religious order that was quickly vanishing.
[...] in 1970 [...] Ernest Shandeen'sThe Roots of Fundamentalism [...] shifted the interpretation away from the view that fundamentalism was a last-gasp attempt to preserve a dying way of life.
Although fundamentalists differed on how to understand the account of creation in Genesis, they agreed that God was the author of creation and that humans were distinct creatures, separate from animals, and made in the image of God. Some believed than anold earth could be reconciled with the Bible, and others were comfortable teaching some forms of God-directed evolution. Riley and the more strident fundamentalists, however, associated evolution with last-days atheism, and they made it their mission to purge it from the schoolroom.
In fundamentalists circles, both Catholic and Protestant, God is often presented more as a God of judgment and punishment than as a God of love and mercy.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
Media related toChristian fundamentalism at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related toChristian fundamentalism at Wikiquote
