In The Nick of Time

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

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.

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

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.

The Social Shift, Continued

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10.

The Fundamentalist movement emerged from a broader, “proto-Fundamentalist” evangelicalism in about 1920. It was the result of a combination of influences, some social, some philosophical, and some theological. For the most part, Fundamentalism drew on a version of Christianity that was firmly committed to the popular culture of late Victorianism.

Fundamentalism arose on the cusp of a significant cultural shift. America was moving out of Victorianism and into the Jazz Age. For a while, Fundamentalist leaders like Billy Sunday were able to use this transition to their advantage. Many Americans faced the new direction with anxiety. By mixing their religious appeal with nostalgia for the fading values and fashions of Victorianism, Fundamentalists were able to tap into this anxiety and to rally the dispossessed.

Unfortunately for Fundamentalism, this tactic could succeed only as long as there were Victorians to rally. By the 1930s, however, the Jazz Age had lost some of its rough edges, and its values were quickly being adopted by the nation. Even Fundamentalist churches were beginning to feel the pressure of new perspectives.

The rapid transition was due partly to the dominance of three new technologies: the phonograph, the radio, and the motion picture. Popular culture is commercial culture, and these media made it possible to market the product more widely and effectively than ever before. Entertainment was fast becoming an industry, and the industry sold its mores with its culture. The new media were especially influential among the young, generating an entire youth movement within American culture. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the teenager was an invention of the Jazz Age.

Fundamentalism was committed to popular culture, but the social shift was rapidly making Fundamentalist culture obsolete. Victorianism was no longer culturally relevant: Fundamentalists might as well have been singing Gregorian chants as Rodeheaver songs. In fact, they might have done better, for Gregorian chants could still be taken seriously, while Rodeheaver and his kind seemed increasingly quaint (perhaps even eccentric) to everyone except Fundamentalists.

Read Part Unu.

I’m Back

Romanians know how to hold a graduation service. Combined with a Sunday morning worship service, the commencement lasted, non-stop, somewhere north of four hours. It featured two full-length sermons and a half-dozen or more exhortations and extended testimonies, including one in which the Old Testament professor quoted the entire first psalm in Hebrew from memory. A mixed choir and a mandolin orchestra each presented three musical selections. The service, which ended at 1:00 PM, was followed by a formal dinner and then an afternoon service at 4:00. Uncharacteristically, the Romanians kept the afternoon service under two hours in length, but compensated with another feast afterwards.

Twenty-one men received seminary degrees. These men were almost all pastors, and they came from all across the country of Romania. They minister in different contexts: some to Romanians, some to Hungarians, some to the Roma. A few of them are assistant pastors or co-pastors of large churches, but most of them pastor multiple congregations.

Most Baptists in Romania are affiliated with that nation’s Baptist Union. American missionaries often prefer to limit their contact with Baptist Union pastors. As an educational institution, however, we have chosen to train pastors of Baptist Union churches. The line between Union and unregistered churches was not clear, even under communism. One pastor might be ministering to Baptist Union churches and unregistered churches at the same time. After the dictatorship was overthrown, virtually all of the unregistered churches entered the Baptist Union. Today, Romania has few unaffiliated Baptist churches except those that have been organized under foreign (usually American) auspices.

In fact, Romanian law makes unaffiliated churches impossible. Only recognized church bodies have a legal right to hold property or perform “churchly” functions such as baptism and communion. These laws are not always enforced, but they are on the books. In order to organize unaffiliated churches, missionaries often register them as “religious associations,” a separate, non-church category under Romanian law. Most Romanian Baptist pastors view this tactic as deceitful and unethical, so they prefer to maintain a connection with the Baptist Union.

Sometimes ministry gets in the way of work. I’m not complaining though, because that’s exactly the way it should be. If our work is not directed toward and interruptible by ministry to people, then it has become an idol indeed.

Medieval mystic Walter Hilton wrestled with this phenomenon. Somewhere—I believe in his Scale of Perfection—he pondered the desirability of the contemplative life over against that of the active life. In the end, he argued for what he called the “meddled way,” the middle path. He offered the observation that, if we are on our knees in prayer, and a brother or sister interrupts us with a need, we should respond just as if the Lord Jesus had interrupted us Himself.

By the way, I like the medieval mystics. At least, I like some of them. There is a reason that the older Fundamentalists used to read Thomas à Kempis. And if you enjoy Tozer, then you are getting nothing but a modern paraphrase of the medievals.

That’s beside the point, however. The point is that my work is being interrupted by ministry. That is why there is no In Nick of Time on Fundamentalism this week.

Wait. Another digression. We who are vocational ministers need to plan for our work to be interrupted by ministry. We need to build ministry interruptions into our schedules. I work in a Christian institution (Central Baptist Theological Seminary) that is housed by a Christian church (Fourth Baptist Church) of which I am a member. I could literally go for months on end and never have a serious conversation with an unbeliever. In fact, other than the supermarket and the gas station attendants, I would never even talk to an unbeliever.

I have to plan to make contact with non-Christians. For example, I have become a chaplain in the Civil Air Patrol (the auxiliary of the United States Air Force). Chaplaincy is attractive to me, not because I get to wear a uniform or pin ribbons on my chest, but because it puts me in direct contact with unbelievers. It leads to serious conversations, often of a spiritual nature.

The Social Shift

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, and Part 9.

To hell with the Twentieth Century!
—Billy Sunday, New York City, April 15, 1917

Ideas always precede movements. Movements (by which I mean large numbers of people sharing a common set of concerns and working together toward a common goal) grow out of ideas. As the idea turns into the movement, however, other ideas and influences get mixed in. The result is that movements rarely or never reflect purely the ideas that produced them.

The Fundamentalist Movement embodies the Fundamentalist idea only imperfectly. One of the most common mistakes in discussing Fundamentalism is to confuse the two, to speak of the movement as if it were the idea or vice versa. The idea of Fundamentalism (which we have not yet discussed) is certainly a component in the Fundamentalist movement, but Fundamentalism as a movement has also assimilated other ideas and ceded to other influences.

Attempting to tell the story of Fundamentalism, I have tried to describe some of the intellectual and social influences that shaped the early Fundamentalist movement. Fundamentalism emerged as an identifiable movement around 1920, but it came from and displayed the characteristics of an earlier American evangelicalism. I have suggested that this earlier evangelicalism was deeply influenced by at least three trends: Scottish Common Sense Realism, populism, and sentimentalism. Though not alone in succumbing to these influences, Fundamentalists certainly did evidence them.

My thesis has been that the early Fundamentalist movement was deeply influenced by Common Sense Realism, populism, and sentimentalism. Over the past several essays I have taken a digression, answering certain objections to this thesis. First, I tried to show how Common Sense Realism represented a metaphysical dream that differed substantively from the metaphysical dream of premodernity. Second, I tried to demonstrate how a genuinely historical-grammatical (literal) hermeneutic need not rely upon either Common Sense or populism. Finally, I attempted to explain the difference between congregational polity and that version of church democracy that grows out of American populism.

Because of these three influences, the Fundamentalist movement was never dedicated purely to defending the faith. To some extent, its defense of the faith always presumed and included a defense of the ideals of Common Sense, populism, and sentimentalism. In other words, the early Fundamentalists were men of their times, reflecting their own situatedness and displaying the concerns not only of historic Christianity but also of their own intellectual and social location.