Fundamentalist for one set of fundamentals, vs. fundamentalist for another set of fundamentals.
I’m inclined to see “fundamentalist” as not about the supposed fundamentals, but as about the rigidity with which those fundamentals are viewed.
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The same goes for “literalist.”
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I agree with most of your remarks in the post above. I, too, have met “good people” with astoundingly narrow religious views. However, I think your last sentence gets things out of historical order. I think that fundamentalists were often cordoned off from society before the Reagan years, and then became more socially and politically active during those years. But we agree that there are different degrees of political involvement within fundamentalism.
The Scopes Monkey Trial was all about a law that forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools, and that restriction on teaching evolution was a direct result of fundamentalists having political power. Prior to the 60’s and 70’s, American culture and law fit in nicely with fundamentalism. They didn’t have to cordon themselves off because the society they found themselves in fit just fine with their values. However, that started to change with the Civil Rights movement, feminism, Roe V. Wade, and so forth. When they saw society moving away from their “traditional values” they took political action.
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Yes, I agree about the Tennessee law. I’m not saying that fundamentalists never got involved in public matters in the old days; I’m saying that they appear to have become more active later on.
“Fundamentalists despised President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. They saw welfare to the poor and increased taxes on the rich as an indefensible expansion of government powers.”
Yes, but that wasn’t a peculiarity of fundamentalists. There were lots of High Church Episcopalians (nothing like fundamentalists theologically), and members of all the mainstream Protestant denominations who said the same thing; there were also lots of businessmen of all religious beliefs and of none who said the same thing. This is more a “thing” that Americans have about distrusting government, than anything specific to fundamentalist religious belief. Distrust of government is almost baked into the American genome, probably due to America’s revolutionary origins.
“Fundamentalists bitterly opposed the civil rights and feminist movements” – I’m sure many of them did, but they weren’t the only ones, and it also would be interesting to note possible geographical distinctions. For example, were New England fundamentalists as much opposed as, say, fundamentalists in Alabama were? In any case, I think that the opposition to the civil rights movement can be chalked up to generic racial prejudice, and that is not peculiar to fundamentalism but was widespread in American society at the time.
“the Supreme Court’s rulings prohibiting school-sponsored prayer”
Fundamentalists would have been divided over this. Some of them didn’t want religion taught in the schools, because they thought the generic Protestantism there was not truly Biblical. They preferred to have schools teach only secular subjects, and leave the religious instruction to parents and churches.
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Racism and The Baptist Bible Fellowship: Segregation, Anti-Communism and Religious Fundamentalism in the American South 1950-1965
Author: Lavoie, The Reverend Jeffrey D.
https://www.academicapress.com/node/213/
This work also deals deals with the divisive issues which led to the foundation of the Baptist Bible Fellowship out of J. Frank Norris and his World Fundamental Baptist Missionary Fellowship (WFBMF). The study introduces key figures and personalities associated with the early BBF. The final part of this work will reprint a ‘segregation resolution’ decided upon in a BBF meeting on 28 November 1957 at Castleberry Baptist Church in Ft. Worth, TX where this resolution was passed and agreed upon by over 1,000 churches in the BBF to support racial segregation. Since the Baptist conventions are traditionally divided Black and White congregation (although remaining fairly united on basic doctrinal message) the BBF threatened to destroy what dialogue existed between pastors and congregations of different races.
Dr Lavoie also delves into the personal lives and racial views of some early BBF associated figures such as J. Frank Norris, G. B. Vick, Noel Smith, Homer G. Ritchie, and George E. Hodges ( the former having been tragically murdered by his mistress in the church parking lot). The main purpose of this chapter will be to examine these individuals and their views of racial segregation and the confluence of fundamentalist Christianity and political action.
[emphasis added]
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This sounds a lot to me like the attitude of most conservative Anabaptists/Mennonites today, rather than Protestant fundamentalists.
I think it is a common attitude among Mennonites, but it’s also found among fundamentalists. Not all of them, but some of them. Christadelphians, for example, according to one of their websites, won’t do military service. Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t send their kids to university, except for practical subjects. You won’t find a JW majoring in Philosophy at Harvard, for example, or Religious Studies at Princeton. But again, fundamentalism is a mixed bag. I think there are fundamentalists who want to influence the state to formally endorse Christianity, or at least want society to give informal advantages to Christians that aren’t given to other religious groups.
I like all four of your points, and I think what I’m driving at here is connected with your Point 4. While some fundamentalists aggressively push for a Christian America, others tend to withdraw from public life and dwell within their protective congregations and Bible colleges and other associations.
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I remember reading somewhere (was it Marsden?) that what distinguishes evangelicalism from fundamentalism is that it more openly attempts to engage with culture. Thus an evangelical magazine like Christianity Today regularly posts somewhat thoughtful (as opposed to reactionary) reviews of mainstream films and music. There is wider appreciation of common grace (as Reformed people call it). This small step of just trying to be in your opponent’s shoes for a moment makes a world of difference.
Similarly, if you read bible commentaries or books by evangelical scholars (e.g. published by IVP academic), even if they side with the traditional view in the end, they usually also incorporate some historical-critical analysis and don’t shy away from admitting that some majority positions in academia are at odds with the traditional view (e.g. whether Paul authored the Pastoral Epistles).
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It was nonetheless part of fundamentalism in America. As the number of objectionable laws started to mount they increased their political presence.
Is there a reference that discusses this?
Historically, fundamentalism was a reaction to a constellation of liberal trends within the mainline churches and society at large, especially including higher criticism, which skeptically treated the Bible as any other human document; evolution, which posed a challenge not just to Genesis but the basis of the doctrine of soteriology, and the elevation of social justice over personal accountability. The publication of “The Fundamentals” was a defining event, but only reflected a long and broadly based pushback against what fundamentalists saw as a dilution of their churches cardinal teachings. So historically, this is the authentic identity of fundamentalism. Importantly, both fundamentalists and evangelicals have been distinguished from liberal churches in the general focus being on the individual’s redemption to God rather than changing the world through political and social justice.
Sociologists are very interested in studying movements such as this; after all, the discipline had its wellspring in Max Weber’s study of the protestant work ethic and its ramifications for broader society and economics. Thus sociology has distilled, abstracted and generalized the social structures and animus of historic Christian fundamentalism to describe similar movements in diverse religious traditions. For the most part, I do not think fundamentalists themselves would disagree with most of these characterizations. Most notably, fundamentalist groups openly place high demand on adherents, and in return offer a place of belonging and a sense of cohesion in life.
The definitive basis of protestant fundamentalism is the unqualified belief in the Bible as God’s revelation. Every. Last. Syllable. The idea that fundamentalists cannot distinguish figures of speech from narrative is nonsense, but properly interpreted, the literal teaching of scripture is held to be the all sufficient foundation of systematic theology and guide for living. In contrast, the wholesale allegorizating of scripture, the idea that myths may have been incorporated, or that the limits of human authorship might predominate, is verboten. The primacy of scripture has a place in evangelicalism as well, and indeed, fundamentalists and evangelicals have much overlap. The more up to date Venn diagram has the evangelical circle overlapping with the funamentalist circle on one side and the rise of the urban progressive church on the other. So there is a continuum from a KJV only, YEC affirming, the Bible says, I believe it, and that settles it fundamentalist wing, to the The Message paraphrased Bible, consciously inclusive, we are all exploring in a life journey together, milieu of progressive churches (where I currently camp out, in terms of fellowship).
The primacy of the Bible in fundamentalist churches concurs with emphasis on correct doctrine, personal accountability to Biblical standards, prayerful faith and trust in God through life’s ups and downs, spreading the gospel to the world while abstaining from worldliness, commitment to the local church, and the subordination of temporal concerns to the eternal. I was raised in this, and still draw some positives from that upbringing. However, everyone’s experience varies, and I personally paid a price. One is carrying a sense of guilt in never being good enough. The other is that downplaying the significance of life below in the present tends to foster a lack of ambition and planning, and this resulted in some extremely poor choices on my part as a young adult. There was zero encouragement or direction to go out and make something of one’s self, outside of ministry. What ultimately drove the wedge between me and my fundamentalist rearing, though, was that I could not reconcile the all-inclusive church teaching with conflicting information, in science but also more generally. The church had an answer for everything, but it is one thing to have an answer, quite another to have a convincing answer. The more progressive wing of the evangelical church is much more at ease with ambiguity.
So there is my, for what it is worth, somewhat personal take on Christian fundamentalism.
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This discussion is just excellent, Ron – both the historical and sociological observations, and your own personal biographical reflections. Thanks.
(This sort of writing is so much better than just jumping to some online reference books and quoting passages. It’s the sort of answer I was looking for.)
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My point was that it’s not clear that either fundamentalist theology or fundamentalist Biblical exegesis caused the opposition to the New Deal among the fundamentalists. Many of them were owners of small businesses, and often small business owners are very conservative and don’t like government intervention into the economy. So it might have been their way of making their livelihood rather than their religion that caused their opposition. More generally, lots of Americans just don’t like “big government” – and that has nothing to do specifically with fundamentalism.
I can’t think of one specific book or article that discusses it at length, but one group of fundamentalists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, definitely had no love of state-mandated prayers. For example:
“In the years before state-supported prayer was made illegal, religious minorities were made to feel uncomfortable and excluded by mandated prayer. Jews, in particular, chaffed under the requirement to either pray Christian prayers, read from Christian Bibles, or be forced to stand in the hall. Catholics resented the protestant flavor of the public schools. Other minorities (in particular, Jehovah’s Witnesses) were made to feel ostracized by prayers that were not addressed to Jehovah.”
See also the reference to a JW student who objected to being made to participate in school prayers:
See under “Country Reports” in the right-hand column.
You could ask Jonathan Burke what position American Christadelphians took during the period just before the abolition of school prayers, and how they reacted to the court decisions that abolished them, and whether they supported them.
It would not surprise me if Mormons and Adventists had some objections to school prayers as well, but I would not assert that they did.
Again, I’m not saying that there were no fundamentalists who liked the idea of mandated school prayers; there were probably a number of fundamentalists in the Baptist and other churches who fought to keep them. But it wasn’t an automatic thing.
Similarly, as the first passage above shows, many non-fundamentalists weren’t wild about mandated school prayers; Jews wouldn’t like any prayers addressed to Jesus or that even mentioned the Son, and both Catholics and Orthodox wouldn’t have found the Protestant cultural ethos in which the prayers and Bible readings were conducted to be much to their taste.
So you have non-fundamentalists as well as some fundamentalists opposed to school prayers, and on the other side, not just fundamentalists but also non-fundamentalist mainstream Protestants who were in favor of them. It was socially complicated.