"Dr. Beale is a favorite! He thinks a lot about these topics and is well worth reading. This book is an update of his earlier work, now out of print, In Pursuit of Purity." - Don Johnson
"When I was growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s and ’60s, there was persistent political controversy over proposals to put fluoride in the public water supply. Among the leading opponents was Carl McIntire... the foremost fundamentalist of his day." - RNS
Daniel R. Bare, Black Fundamentalists: Conservative Christianity and Racial Identity* in the Segregation Era (New York University Press, 2021). 260 pp. $30.00 USD
Ever since George Marsden published his landmark work, Fundamentalism and American Culture, in 1980, a steady stream of books on the movement has flowed from the American press. However, virtually all of these books have focused on the movement’s most prominent institutions and leaders, which were white, leaving a generation of readers with the impression that fundamentalism was an exclusively white phenomenon. It was with great interest, then, that I took up Daniel Bare’s new book, Black Fundamentalists, which chronicles the African American contribution to fundamentalism during the crucial years 1920 to 1940.
Republished from Voice, Jan/Feb 2020.
John Fea noted two decades ago that “the term fundamentalism has become the most elusive term on the American religious scene.”1 Today a fundamentalist is often viewed as anyone who holds to a strict religious system.2 The task I have been given here is to note the attempted “hijacking” of the designation “fundamentalist.” While I can, in the main, appreciate the faithful heritage of historic fundamentalism, at the same time I also reject the extremism that can often be found in too much of what I term Movement Fundamentalism. It is easy for me to note the faults within fundamentalism, but at the same time it is hard to take issue with all fundamentalists; many of whom are faithful, sincere, sacrificial and dependable saints.
Over the years I have used a taxonomy to explain to insiders as well as outsiders the nature of contemporary fundamentalism in order to demonstrate the fractured nature of what fundamentalism had become over time. The basis for this present article is my original work which was entitled, “Three Lines in the Sand”3 which enumerated three varieties within contemporary fundamentalism.
Thomas Ice
Republished from Voice, Jan/Feb 2020.
While all fundamentalists have not been premillennial, the overwhelming majority have been. Premillennialism has been a historic staple of fundamentalism. It is often the case that when one abandons the fundamentals of the faith, they also abandon the premillennial hope. Why has that been the case in the past and why should it continue into the future, especially within the IFCA?
Postmillennialism in America arose as the dominant eschatology in the 1720s as a result of the influence of theologians like Jonathan Edwards and dominated evangelicalism until a decade or two after the Civil War. Higher critical liberal scholarship began to cross the Atlantic and make progress in America by the 1880s, which lead to the rise of fundamentalism as a response by conservative evangelicals. “Dispensationalism, or dispensational premillennialism, was the fruit of renewed interest in the detail of biblical prophecy which developed after the Civil War,” observes George Marsden. “Rejecting the prevailing postmillennialism… dispensational premillennialists said that the churches and culture were declining and that Christians would see Christ’s kingdom only after he personally returned to rule in Jerusalem.”1
Republished from Voice, Jan/Feb 2020.
Back in the 1970’s when I was teaching at a Bible college, one of my students asked me, somewhat tongue in cheek, what descriptive terms he should use to describe his ministry views in order for him to be, in his words, “the top dog.” He meant, like “fundamentalist.” So I, also somewhat tongue in cheek, listed “fundamentalist,” “Baptist,” (this was a Baptist college after all), “separatist,” “dispensationalist,” “premillennialist,” and “Republican.” We both chuckled then. But fifty years later I wonder if these descriptive terms are still appropriate. I teach in a nondenominational seminary, but our doctrinal statement is baptistic. I identify myself as a separatist—that it is unbiblical to work together with theological liberals in order to fulfill the Great Commission. I continue to be delighted to call myself a dispensational premillennialist. But what about “fundamentalist”? That seems to be the elephant in the room for some of us.
As a starting place for our brief analysis, let’s define historic fundamentalism as the religious movement within American Protestantism that stresses the literal exposition of the fundamental doctrines of the Bible and the militant exposure of any deviance therefrom. If this definition is acceptable, we can be more specific and investigate three key concepts in the definition.
"The need to define the term seems universal among those trying to get a handle on the history. In Kidd’s piece, he shows how the term evangelical now carries political baggage. He traces this development through recent decades. (Well, they seem recent to a certain set, at least!)" - Don Johnson
