Fundamentalism

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The Fundamentals

Before Fundamentalism became identifiable as a self-aware movement, American evangelicalism passed through a period of transition that could be labeled proto-fundamentalism. Stretching from just after 1870 until nearly 1920, the proto-fundamentalist period combined a number of important influences. Several of those influences found expression in what may be the most typical representation of the proto-fundamentalist decades, a series of volumes called The Fundamentals.

Eventually The Fundamentals comprised ninety essays in twelve volumes. The project was financed by Lyman and Milton Stewart, founders of Union Oil. The original editor was A. C. Dixon, who was later succeeded by Louis Meyer and then by R. A. Torrey. Initially published between 1910 and 1915, the books were sent free of charge to pastors, missionaries, and Christian workers. They are still being reprinted and read a century later.

The essays in The Fundamentals covered a variety of topics. The most frequent topic—more than a quarter of the articles—had to do with the doctrine of Scripture. Especially emphasized were issues related to inspiration and biblical criticism.

A second large bloc of essays dealt with the person and work of Christ. Several more covered issues in apologetics such as evolution or the existence of God. A handful of essays addressed current “isms” such as Romanism and Christian Science. The remainder consisted of personal testimonies, exhortations to Christian service, and studies in ministry methods.

The following press release is reprinted from Central Baptist Seminary. It appears here unedited.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Liberalism

After the Civil War, American evangelicalism entered a period of change. Developments occurred in the areas of eschatology, evangelism, missions, education, and personal piety. From about 1870 to about 1920, evangelicals were building an entire infrastructure of churches, schools, conferences, missions, and other institutions. It is this network that constituted what, in retrospect, can be called proto-fundamentalism.

One very significant influence upon proto-fundamentalism was the rise of theological liberalism. The proto-fundamentalist period occurred during just those decades when modernist and liberal theologies (I will not distinguish the two) were working themselves into the denominational structures. Proto-fundamentalists were forced to deal with the initial manifestations of the new theology.

Liberal theology originated with F. D. E. Schleiermacher, who realized that the cultured and educated people of his day almost universally despised Christianity. What Schleiermacher tried to do was to relocate the center of Christian faith from the Bible and doctrine to religious experience. Doctrines and Scripture were no longer viewed as authoritative statements about external realities but as varied expressions of a common inward experience.

God was thought to be entirely immanent, both in the created order and within historical process. Since all humans somehow participated in the divine, liberals had no trouble speaking of the divinity of Jesus. One liberal, accused of denying the divinity of Christ, responded, “I have never denied the divinity of anyone.” What the liberals could not do, however, was to affirm that Jesus Christ is God in any unique sense.

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Personal Piety

Historical periodization is a subjective business. People do not just go to sleep in one period and wake up in another. Usually they do not even realize that a significant change has occurred except in retrospect. For historians to impose periods upon history is necessarily subjective and somewhat arbitrary.

Nevertheless, since history is linear and progressive, it is possible to trace development. The movement from one period to the next does result in change. Examining the record, a historian can detect these changes and can discern when some significant transition has taken place.

In the history of American Fundamentalism, the years from about 1870 to about 1920 seem to comprise a distinct period. During this period, Fundamentalism was not yet a discernable, self-aware movement. All the same, changes were taking place across American evangelicalism, and these changes strongly shaped Fundamentalism when it emerged in 1920.

In previous essays, I have posited that this proto-fundamentalist period was characterized by eschatological fascination, evangelistic fervor, and an emphasis upon worldwide missions. Secondary characteristics included a minimizing of denominationalism, the growth of the faith missions movement, and the development of the Bible institute as an important venue for proto-fundamentalist education. These influences, however, are only part of the story.

Another major influence during this period was a resurgence of personal piety. This resurgence was necessary because American Christians—indeed, American society—had become preoccupied with personal comfort and affluence. This was the gilded age, and businessmen were riding the crest of the second industrial revolution to amass fortunes. These individuals may have been a small minority, but they captured the imagination of the country and established an ethos that governed much of American culture.

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Missions and Education

Proto-fundamentalism, the parent movement out of which Fundamentalism emerged around 1920, was characterized by an interest in evangelism. This interest led to massive evangelistic campaigns that were spearheaded by celebrity evangelists. It led to pastors who emphasized evangelism in their congregations. It led to the establishment of rescue missions and other forms of social programs as mechanisms to gain a hearing for the gospel.

The interest in evangelism also resulted in a fresh outpouring of involvement in worldwide missions. Among the early proto-fundamentalists were many who had heard Adoniram Judson during the 1840s. Judson had communicated a burden for missions that had never entirely gone away. This enthusiasm had been suppressed during the years surrounding the Civil War. It had also become institutionalized under the denominational mission boards. During the 1870s, however, interest in missions began to grow again.

The renewed vision for world evangelism gained urgency from the new premillennialism. The version of premillennialism that dominated proto-fundamentalism was one that stressed an imminent rapture. Many American evangelicals developed a sense that the time of the Lord’s return could be near and that the opportunity to evangelize the world might be drawing to a close. The sense of urgency seems to have been infectious, and in the long run it was shared even by Christians who rejected the new eschatology.

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Evangelism

Proto-fundamentalism was the broad movement of American evangelicalism out of which Fundamentalism emerged in about 1920. The proto-fundamentalist period began after the American Civil War, and it ended with the eruption of the Modernist-Fundamentalist Conflict. A correct perspective on proto-fundamentalism is necessary in order to understand the origin, nature, and direction of the Fundamentalist movement to which it gave birth.

Proto-fundamentalism was strongly influenced by a renascence of chiliastic eschatology. Proto-fundamentalist theology saw a dramatic shift away from post- and amillennialism and toward a premillennial understanding of Jesus’ second coming. While not initially distinguishable, the theology that became known as dispensationalism was increasingly evident during this period. The eschatological shift brought with it a strong emphasis upon the imminence of Jesus’ return, which in turn sent a shock-wave of spiritual urgency across American evangelicalism.

One manifestation of that urgency was an increased focus upon evangelism. America had already seen two periods of remarkable evangelistic fervor: the Great Awakening (during the 1730s and 1740s) and the Second Great Awakening (from roughly 1790 into the 1840s). In the years leading to the Civil War, however, attention had been diverted from evangelism into church controversies. Of course, the greatest controversy was over slavery, but controversies also raged over the New Haven theology, missions, Freemasonry, Landmarkism, Stone-Campbell Restorationism, temperance, and even Bible versions. Many American denominations split during this period.

It would be untrue to suggest that no evangelism occurred from 1840 until 1870. Particularly on the frontiers souls were being reached, and churches were being organized. Nevertheless, the perspective of most American Christians was not strongly dominated by a concern for the lost.

Premillennialism

The connection between Fundamentalism and premillennialism has become a commonplace of Fundamentalist historiography. Ernest R. Sandeen’s book, The Roots of Fundamentalism, is sub-titled British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930. Timothy P. Weber writes extensively about the relationship between Fundamentalism and premillennial eschatology in Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming. To suggest that premillennialism has strongly influenced Fundamentalism is nothing new.¹

To suggest that Fundamentalism and premillennialism were one and the same, however, is far too simplistic. T. T. Shields, pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, was one of the most visible Fundamentalists of his day, but his eschatology was strongly amillennial and anti-dispensational. The most prominent of the Presbyterian Fundamentalists was J. Gresham Machen. While Machen argued for a form of “eschatological liberty” that would permit premillennial views in his Presbyterian Church of America, he himself rejected premillennialism and emphatically opposed dispensationalism.

Shields and Machen were widely acknowledged as leaders by their Fundamentalist contemporaries. Even a rather populist Baptist such as David Otis Fuller could look to Machen as a model, as his correspondence reveals. If premillennialism is a sine qua non of Fundamentalism, it becomes difficult to explain the prominence of these leaders.

Nevertheless, premillennialism was such a powerful influence among Fundamentalists that the two can be difficult to disentangle. Granting that some within Fundamentalism did not accept premillennial eschatology, the fact remains that even they were forced to respond to premillennialism. Harry Hamilton, first president of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, once complained of Shields’s tendency to “rave against the Scofield Bible.” Machen saw his fledgling church run into deep controversy over the issue of premillennialism.

Evidently, one can be a Fundamentalist without being premillennial. Equally evidently, no one can explain Fundamentalism without taking premillennialism into account. Even those who rejected the eschatology often imbibed its spirit.

The proto-fundamentalist period runs roughly from 1870 to 1920. The period opened with the vast majority of American Christians holding a postmillennial or an amillennial view. By the end of the period, however, premillennialism had become by far the most important eschatology within American evangelicalism.

Eschatology

American Fundamentalism burst on the scene as an identifiable movement in 1920. It first became visible at the Buffalo, New York, meeting of the American Baptist Convention. Something unheard of occurred at that convention. People prepared to take measures that they had never taken before. Reflecting upon those people and their measures, Curtis Lee Laws coined the name “Fundamentalist.”

Both Laws and the Northern Baptist Convention deserve extended discussion, and they will receive it later in this series. What must be remarked now, however, is that Fundamentalism did not appear out of thin air. While it represented a new coalition with a new arrangement of ideas and a new agenda, it grew out of an older and broader movement.

The people who called themselves “Fundamentalists” owed a great deal to that older movement. In fact, it is impossible to understand Fundamentalism without understanding the movement out of which it developed. Sometimes (as in George Dollar’s A History of Fundamentalism in America), the older, broader movement is regarded as the first stage in the historical development of Fundamentalism. Whether it was or not, its influence continued to be felt for decades.

Perhaps the older movement should be labeled Proto-Fundamentalism. This term appears in the title of David Rausch’s “Proto-Fundamentalism’s Attitude toward Zionism, 1878-1918” (Ph.D. dissertation, Kent State University, 1987), and has been scattered through the subsequent literature.¹ It both denotes and connotes the right thing.

Proto-Fundamentalism represents the realignment of American Christianity in the years following the Civil War. The Proto-Fundamentalist movement became distinguishable somewhere between 1870 and 1875. Its most important leaders died around the turn of the century, but Proto-Fundamentalism survived and even flourished. It found its voice in the collection of essays known as The Fundamentals. It was the most dominant segment of American Christianity until the end of the First World War. Proto-Fundamentalism is the shape that most of American Christianity took between the Civil War and the War to End All Wars.

Resolution on Separation
Resolution 09-04

From its founding in 1941, the American Council of Christian Churches has devoted its resources and energy to following the exhortation of Jude to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3)