Other Essays

4. History - Part 4

While most American cities were experiencing the profound changes that the Industrial Revolution was bringing to society, the rural America was experiencing a change of its own. At that time, America experienced what historians have called the Second Great Awakening, or, simply, the Great Revival. The first phase of this revival, the southern and western camp meetings, turned the American South into the most distinctively and self-consciously religious region in. The second phase came remarkably close to achieving the evangelical dream of making America a Christian nation.1

The most important theological product of this revival was an emphasis on "sanctification," often called "perfectionism": the belief that Christians should live sinless lives. Perfectionists opposed such vices as alcohol, gambling, fornication, profanity, and dishonesty.2

It is difficult to overstate the impact of the Great Revival on the development of Southern culture. Southern religion, which thoroughly permeated and informed Southern culture, was characterized by its absolute and unquestioning confidence in the Bible, its emphasis on piety and purity, and its unswerving dedication to the primary task of revivals; the winning of lost souls. It tended to ignore or slight intellectual currents that might conflict with evangelical dogma, and to support slavery with the belief that the Bible sanctioned it.3

In the North, after a series of successful revivals in upstate New York and in major population centers along the Eastern Seaboard, Charles Finney came to New York City to write a new chapter in evangelical history. During the first half of the nineteenth century, evangelical Christians were so convinced that their efforts could ring in the millenium, a thousand years of peace and prosperity that would culminate in the glorious Second Advent of Christ, that they threw themselves into fervent campaigns to eliminate war, drunkenness, slavery, subjugation of women, poverty, prostitution, Sabbath-breaking, dueling, profanity, card-playing, and other impediments to a perfect society.4 In the vanguard of these millennialists was a group of wealthy New York entrepreneurs and bankers calling themselves the Association of Gentlemen, who persuaded Finney to join their cause. With their support, Finney preached that "the great business of the church is to reform the world—to put away every kind of sin," and that true Christians must be "useful in the highest degree possible" and are "bound to exert their influence to secure legislation that is in accordance with the law of God".5 Finney's converts became participants in most of the progressive social movements of the era.

By the mid nineteenth century, America had become, more fully than ever before or again, a Christian Republic, and the dominant expression of Christianity was Protestant, evangelistic, and revivalistic. Church membership stood at record levels, with virtually all growth occurring in evangelical ranks.6

However, as the forces of the Great Revival met the forces of the Industrial Revolution, the combines forces of urbanization, industrialization, and immigration, evangelism began to stumble.7 Immigration brought an influx of Jews, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, who weakened the Protestant control of the nation. This brought an increasing amount of secularism, which also alarmed the Protestant leaders.8

Two challenges stood out above others as posing singular threats to American Christianity. The first was the theory of evolution, developed by Charles Darwin, which constituted not only a direct challenge not only to the biblical account of creation, but also to traditional Christian understanding of human nature and destiny. An even more serious threat was came in the form of historical criticism of the Bible. This approach challenged the inspiration and credibility of the entire corpus of the scripture, the bedrock foundation of evangelical Christianity.9 Many Protestants managed to adjust to the changes by creating theories of "theistic evolution," and interpreted "days" in Genesis as "ages." However, most evangelicals chose to ignore the modernist ideas and to declare that they could not possibly be true, no matter what. They became ultra-conservatives, and this led directly to the emergence of the fundamentalism movement.

When the twentieth century brought about the Great War, followed by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Christian fundamentalism received another aspect it needed to survive: religious nationalism.10 Fundamentalist preachers declared that Satan himself was directing the German war effort, and hinted strongly that it was part of the same process that began with the development of biblical criticism in German universities. Modernism, they asserted, turned Germany into a godless nation, and it would do the same thing to America.11 Of course, when Russia became Communist in 1917, and the Red Scare began, their movement received a very powerful boost, which it needed to become a dominant force.

Dwight Lyman Moody was the first leader of the anti-modernist revival, which gave birth to the fundamentalist movement. Dwight Moody did not believe that America was getting any better, or that the era of the millenium was coming any time soon, which was the belief of Charles Finney, and other earlier revivalists. This view was known as postmillenialism, because the Second Coming of Christ would occur after the millenium.12 Instead, Moody believed that the only real hope for Christians lay in Christ's coming back to personally inaugurate the millenium—that is, that the Second Coming would be premillenial. This doctrine holds that careful attention to biblical prophecies can yield clues as to exactly when the Second Coming will occur. In all versions, the relevant "signs of the times" are bad news—political anarchy, earthquakes, plagues, etc.13 As a result, premillennialism fared better in bad times because it offers its followers a shining ray of hope in an otherwise dismal situation. It has also acted as a brake on reform movements, since it regards such efforts as little better than fruitless attempts to thwart God's plan for human history.14 Another idea that became part of the theology of the fundamentalist movement was dispensationalism. According to this idea, human history was divided into a series of distinct eras ("dispensations") in God's dealing with humanity. The triggering action for the beginning of the last dispensation will be "the Rapture," at which point the faithful Christians will be "caught up together to meet the Lord in the air," while the rest of humanity will be forced to face an unprecedented series of calamities known as "the tribulation".15 The main protagonist of the tribulation will be the Antichrist, who will seek total control by requiring every person to wear a number (probably 666, "the mark of the beast"). The tribulation period will end with the Second Coming of Christ and the battle of Armageddon, to be followed by the millenium, the Final Judgement, and an eternity of bliss for the redeemed and agonizing punishment for the wicked.16 One of the most important aspects of dispensationalism is its insistence on biblical inerrancy. The Scripture must be absolutely reliable an all aspects, if it is to provide a precise blueprint for the future. Closely related to this was the encouragement of separatism from all sorts of error. To be fit to ride the Rapturing cloud, one must identify those whose doctrine is impure and "come out from among them".17 This became one of the most important aspects of the Fundamentalist movement.

Moody disagreed with some details of dispensationalism, but he accepted the view that the world was heading toward disaster, so he tried to help as many people as possible to prepare for the event. He started the Chicago Evangelization Society, which was to prepare people to "stand in the gap" for God.18 Other evangelists followed Moody's train, most notable of them being Billy Sunday.

In 1909, another important event took place. Cyrus Scofield, an evangelist working with Dwight Moody published his work on a project to provide notes for the King James Version of the Bible. The work was called the Scofield Annotated Bible, and it had an enormous impact on the fundamentalist movement.19 Since its publishing in 1909 to 1967, an estimated five to ten million copies have been sold, and a revised edition published in 1967 sold an additional three million copies.20 It had outlined the basic ideas of dispensationalist premillennialism in an understandable way for all, which greatly increased the appeal of fundamentalism. The Scofield Annotated Bible became "the Bible" for many fundamentalists.21

Another important document that had a great impact on early fundamentalism was the publishing of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, a set of twelve pamphlets each about 125 pages long, which were distributed free of charge to ministers, seminary professors, theology students, Sunday school directors, and YMCA leaders throughout the country. These booklets, written by prominent religious conservatives, reaffirmed the "essentials" of dispensationalist premillennialism, and denounce evolution, Bible criticism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Spiritualism, and much more.22 Also, in 1919 the World's Christian Fundamentals Association was formed and became the most important fundamentalist organization of the time.

By 1920, the fundamentalist movement, which was thought to be dying in the early 1900s, was gaining momentum due to the energetic sermons of Billy Sunday. Sunday was born in Iowa, and played major league baseball until 1891, when he found Jesus by listening to a street preacher outside a saloon.23 Sunday became one of the most influential ministers of the early 20th century. His sermons were filled with jokes, mimicry, mockery, dialects, homey illustrations, and slangy outbursts which the newspapers called "Sundayisms".24 Sunday preached the same simple Gospel that the more serious and dignified Moody had proclaimed: "With Christ you are saved, without him you are lost".25 He also resented any kind of higher learning, saying that "When the Word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell" and by observing that if he had a million dollars, he would give all but one to the church and the rest to education.26 He was also very supportive of the Prohibitionist movement, and his "booze" sermon was often the high point of his revivals. When the 18th Amendment was passed, Sunday celebrated by having a mock funeral for John Barleycorn. All in all, Billy Sunday revitalized the fundamentalist movement and prepared it for the tests that lay ahead.

The first major test came in 1925, when John T. Scopes, a teacher from Dayton, Tennessee decided to challenge the law that prohibited the teaching of evolution with the help of the ACLU. These kinds of laws were passed in many states due to the fundamentalists' fear of the evolution theory, and any modern ideas (in Kentucky, for example a teacher was dismissed from his job for teaching that the earth was round when the plaintiff proved to the judge that it was flat using the Scripture).27 Scopes was represented by Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer. The fundamentalists' prosecution consisted of William Jennings Bryan and other noted fundamentalist leaders. The trial turned into a public carnival and media circus. Darrow made Bryan look shallow and foolish, and journalists, led by the arch-cynic H. L. Mencken sent derisive reports of Southern and fundamentalist backwardness to newspapers throughout America and Europe.28 Since both judge and jury were solidly against Scopes, he was convicted and ordered to pay a fine of $100. The impact that this trial had on the fundamentalist movement, was hard to underestimate, however. Bryan died within days after the trial, and all laws banning the teaching of evolution disappeared within five years.29

Another challenge, which was less visible to the general public, was the fundamentalists' struggle for dominance of the Presbyterian Church in the USA and the Northern Baptists.30 The fundamentalists had set about to root out error wherever they found it and to separate themselves from its perpetrators. Throughout both denominations, fundamentalists demanded public tests of orthodoxy for ministers and seminary professors, called on liberal editors and officers to resign their posts, and succeeded in getting their denominations to withdraw from the ecumenical Interchurch World Movement. However, the fundamentalists eventually failed in their efforts to cleanse the Presbyterian Church in the USA failed, and in 1929 a group of fundamentalist scholars led by Gresham Machen withdrew from Princeton to establish Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. With him was a young man named Carl McIntire. Together, they continued to attack their denomination until they were expelled in 1936. They formed the Presbyterian Church in America, later renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Within a year, McIntire found Machen to be insufficiently pure and split off to form the Bible Presbyterian Church and Faith Theological Seminary.31

A similar process was observed in the Northern Baptist Church. As the denomination's leading seminaries moved more and more to the liberal camp, the fundamentalists tried to control the denomination and to eliminate the heretics from the mission fields and seminaries.32 They failed, and were kicked out just like their Presbyterian counterparts.

By the end of the 1920s, the fundamentalist movement seemed to be defeated and near death. It lost virtually every confrontation it created, and it was widely ridiculed by mainstream America. In addition to that, the onset of the Great Depression diverted attention from theological wrangling, and it was becoming clear that the victory of Prohibition would soon be overturned.33 It, however, not only escaped the grave, but emerged even stronger by the end of the 1930s.

There were several reasons for that. Since they lost all battles for control of their denominations, they established their own independent congregations, and formed alliances that they hoped will strengthen their movement.34 The fundamentalists also began using publications and the new medium of radio.35 This, however, gave certain fundamentalists an opportunity to spout racist, anti-Semitic, and pro-fascist views virtually without check.

One of these individuals was Gerald Winrod. In 1925, he and a small group of followers founded an association known as the Defenders of the Christian Faith, with the Defender magazine as the primary outlet for his views.36 Winrod called the New Deal a "Red program," and claimed that the Elders of Zion were behind the Depression, and the New Deal, and praised Hitler for "defying Jewish occultism, communism, and finance".37 Although he toned down his anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi views when World War II began, he was still regarded as a threat to national unity security, and was the lead defendant in United States v. Winrod, which ended in a mistrial.

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Footnotes

1Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America,, p. 4

2Ibid, p. 4

3Ibid, p. 4

4Ibid, p. 4

5Ibid, p. 5

6Ibid, p. 5

7Ibid, p. 6

8Ibid, p. 6

9Ibid, p. 6

10Ibid, p. 11

11Ibid, p. 11

12Ibid, p. 7

13Ibid, p. 7

14Ibid, p. 7

15Ibid, p. 7

16Ibid, p. 7

17Ibid, p. 8

18Ibid, p. 8

19Utter and Storey, The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook, p. 72

20Ibid, p. 72

21Ibid, p. 24

22Ibid, p. 25

23Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, p. 8

24Ibid, p. 9

25Ibid, p. 9

26Ibid, p. 9

27Ibid, p. 14

28Ibid, p. 15

29Ibid, p. 15

30Ibid, p. 16

31Ibid, p. 16

32Ibid, p. 16

33Ibid, p. 17

34Ibid, p. 17

35Ibid, p. 18

36Ibid, p. 20

37Ibid, p. 20

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