Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is a relatively new brand of Protestantism
started in America that has attracted a tremendous following, including
many fallen away Catholics. How did this popular movement originate? The
history of Fundamentalism may be viewed as having three main phases. The
first lasted a generation, from the 1890s to the Scopes "Monkey Trial"
of 1925. In this period, Fundamentalism emerged as a reaction to liberalizing
trends in American Protestantism; it broke off, but never completely, from
Evangelicalism, of which it may be considered one wing. In its second phase,
it passed from public view, but never actually disappeared or even lost
ground. Finally, Fundamentalism came to the nation’s attention again around
1970, and it has enjoyed considerable growth.
What has been particularly surprising is that Catholics
seem to constitute a disproportionate share of the new recruits. The Catholic
Church in America includes about a quarter of the country’s inhabitants,
so one might expect about a quarter of new Fundamentalists to have been
Catholics at one time. But in many Fundamentalist congregations, anywhere
from one-third to one-half of the members once belonged to the Catholic
Church. This varies around the country, depending on how large the native
Catholic population is.
Fundamentalist churches in the South have few converts
from Catholicism because there never have been many Catholics in most parts
of the South. In the Northeast and Midwest, where Catholics are more common,
one finds former Catholics making up a majority of some Fundamentalist
congregations. And in the Southwest, with its substantial
Hispanic population, former Catholics are the
congregation. Indeed, it has been estimated that one out of six Hispanics
in this country is now a Fundamentalist. Twenty years ago there were almost
no Hispanic Fundamentalists.
Fundamentalism: Relatively New
While the origin of the term "Fundamentalist" has
a fairly simple history, the movement itself has a more confused origin.
There was no individual founder, nor was there a single event that precipitated
its advent. Of course, Fundamentalist writers insist that Fundamentalism
is nothing but a continuation of Christian orthodoxy. According to this
theory, Fundamentalism flourished for three centuries after Christ, went
underground for twelve hundred years, surfaced again with the Reformation,
took its knocks from various sources, and was alternately prominent or
diminished in its influence and visibility. In short, according to its
partisans, Fundamentalism always has been the Christian remnant, the faithful
who remain after the rest of Christianity (if it can even be granted the
title) has fallen into apostasy.
Until almost 100 years ago, Fundamentalism as we
know it was not a separate movement within Protestantism, and the word
itself was virtually unknown. Those people who today would be called Fundamentalists
were formerly either Baptists, Presbyterians, or members of some other
specific sect. But in the last decade of the nineteenth-century, issues
came to the fore that made them start to withdraw from mainline Protestantism.
The issues were: the Social Gospel, a liberalizing
and secularizing trend within Protestantism that tried to weaken the Christian
message, making it a merely social and political agenda; the embrace of
Darwinism, which seemed to call into question the reliability of Scripture;
and the higher criticism of the Bible that originated in Germany.
To meet the challenge presented by these developments,
early Fundamentalist leaders united around several basic principles, but
it was not until the publication of a series of volumes called The Fundamentals
that the movement received its name.
The basic elements of Fundamentalism were formulated
almost exactly a century ago at the Presbyterian theological seminary in
Princeton, New Jersey, by B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge, among others.
What they produced became known as Princeton theology, and it appealed
to conservative Protestants who were concerned with the liberalizing trends
of the Social Gospel movement, which was gaining steam at about the same
time.
In 1909 the brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart,
whose wealth came from the oil industry, were responsible for underwriting
a series of twelve volumes entitled The Fundamentals. There were
64 contributors, including scholars such as James Orr, W. J. Eerdman, H.
C. G. Moule, James M. Gray, and Warfield himself, as well as Episcopalian
bishops, Presbyterian ministers, Methodist evangelists, and even an Egyptologist.
As Edward Dobson, an associate pastor at Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist
Church, summarized the collaboration, "They were certainly not anti-intellectual,
snake-handling, cultic, obscurantist fanatics."
The preface to the volumes explained their purpose:
"In 1909 God moved two Christian laymen to set aside a large sum of money
for issuing twelve volumes that would set forth the fundamentals of the
Christian faith, and which were to be sent free of charge to ministers
of the gospel, missionaries, Sunday school superintendents, and others
engaged in aggressive Christian work throughout the English speaking world."
Three million copies of the series were distributed.
Harry Fosdick, a theological liberal, wrote an article in The Christian
Century called "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" He used the title of
the books to designate the people he was opposing, and the label he originated
became commonly used to designate those who adhered to The Fundamentals.
The fundamental doctrines identified in the series
can be reduced to five: (I) the inspiration and what the writers call infallibility
of Scripture, (2) the deity of Christ (including his virgin birth), (3)
the substitutionary atonement of his death, (4) his literal resurrection
from the dead, and (5) his literal return at the Second Coming.
The Five Fundamentals
Fundamentalists’ attitude toward the Bible is the
keystone of their faith. Their understanding of inspiration and inerrancy
comes from Benjamin Warfield’s notion of plenary-verbal inspiration, meaning
that the original autographs (manuscripts) of the Bible are all inspired
and the inspiration extends not just to the message God wished to convey,
but to the very words chosen by the sacred writers.
Although the doctrine of the inspiration and inerrancy
of the Bible is most commonly cited as the essential cornerstone of the
Fundamentalist beliefs, the logically prior doctrine is the deity of Christ.
For the Catholic, his deity is accepted either on the word of the authoritative
and infallible Church or because a dispassionate examination of the Bible
and early Christian history shows that he must have been just what he claimed
to be—God.
Most Catholics, as a practical matter, accept his
divinity based upon the former method; many—the apologist Arnold Lunn is
a good example—use the latter. In either case, there is a certain reasoning
involved in the Catholic’s embrace of this teaching. For many Fundamentalists,
the assurance of Christ’s divinity comes not through reason, or even through
faith in the Catholic meaning of the word, but through an inner, personal
experience.
As Warfield put it, "The supreme proof to every
Christian of the deity of his Lord is in his own inner experience of the
transforming power of his Lord upon the heart and life." One consequence
of this has become painfully clear to many Fundamentalists: When one falls
into sin, when the ardor that was present at conversion fades, the transforming
power of Christ seems to go, and so can one’s faith in his deity. This
accounts for many defections from Fundamentalism to agnosticism and secularism;
the tenuous basis for the Fundamentalist’s beliefs does not provide for
the dark night of the soul. When that darkness comes, the Fundamentalist
has no reasonable basis for hope or faith.
As an appendage to the doctrine of the deity of
Christ, and considered equally important in The Fundamentals, is
the Virgin Birth—although some Fundamentalists list this separately, resulting
in six basic doctrines rather than five. One might expect the reality of
heaven and hell or the existence of the Trinity to be next, but the Virgin
Birth is considered an essential doctrine since it protects belief in Christ’s
deity. One should keep in mind, though, that when Fundamentalists speak
of Christ’s birth from a virgin, they mean that Mary was a virgin only
until his birth. Their common understanding is that Mary later had other
children, citing the scriptural passages that refer to Christ’s "brethren."
In reaction to the Social Gospel advocates, who
said Christ gave nothing more than a good moral example, the early Fundamentalists
insisted on their third doctrine, namely, that he died a substitutionary
death. He not only took on our sins, he received the penalty that would
have been ours. He was actually punished by the Father in our stead.
On the matter of the resurrection, Fundamentalists
do not differ from orthodox Catholics. They believe that Christ rose physically
from the dead, not just spiritually. His resurrection was not a collective
hallucination of his followers, nor something invented by pious writers of later years. It really
happened, and to deny it is to deny Scripture’s reliability.
The most disputed topic, among Fundamentalists
themselves, concerns the fifth belief listed in The Fundamentals,
the Second Coming. There is unanimous agreement that Christ will physically
return to Earth, but the exact date has been disputed. Some say it will
be before the millennium, a thousand-year golden age with Christ physically
reigning on earth. Others say it will be after the millennium. Others say
that the millennium is Christ’s heavenly reign and that there will be no
golden age on earth before the last judgment. Some Fundamentalists also
believe in the rapture, the bodily taking into heaven of true believers
before the tribulation or time of trouble that precedes the millennium.
Others find no scriptural basis for such a belief.
Such are the five (or six) main doctrines discussed
in the books that gave Fundamentalism its name. But they are not necessarily
the beliefs that most distinguish Fundamentalism today. For instance, you
rarely hear much discussion about the Virgin Birth, although there is no
question that Fundamentalists still believe this doctrine. Rather, to the
general public, and to most Fundamentalists themselves, today Fundamentalism
has a different focus.
Distinguishing Marks
The belief that is first and foremost the defining
characteristic of Fundamentalists is their reliance on the Bible to the
complete exclusion of any authority exercised by the Church. The second
is their insistence on a faith in Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior.
"Do you accept Christ as your personal Lord and
Savior?" they ask. "Have you been saved?" This is unmodified Christian
individualism, which holds that the individual is saved, without ever considering
his relationship to a church, a congregation, or anyone else. It is a one-to-one
relationship, with no community, no sacraments, just the individual Christian
and his Lord. And the Christian knows when he has been saved, down to the
hour and minute of his salvation, because his salvation came when he "accepted"
Christ. It came like a flash.
In that instant, many Fundamentalists believe,
their salvation is assured. There is now nothing that can undo it. Without
that instant, that moment of acceptance, a person would be doomed to eternal
hell. And that is why the third most visible characteristic of Fundamentalism
is the emphasis on evangelism. If sinners do not undergo the same kind
of salvation experience Fundamentalists have undergone, they will go to
hell. Fundamentalists perceive a duty to spread their faith—what can be
more charitable than to give others a chance for escaping hell?—and they
often have been successful.
Their success is partly due to their discipline.
For all their talk about the Catholic Church being "rule-laden," there
are perhaps no Christians who operate in a more regimented manner. Their
rules—non-biblical rules, one might add—extend not just to religion and
religious practices proper, but to facets of everyday life. Most people
are familiar with their strictures on drinking, gambling, dancing, and
smoking.
Fundamentalists also are intensely involved in
their local congregations. Many people returning to the Catholic Church
from Fundamentalism complain that as Fundamentalists they had no time or
room for themselves; everything centered around the church. All their friends
were members; all their social activities were staged by it. Not to attend
Wednesday evening services (in addition to one or two services on Sunday),
not to participate in the Bible studies and youth groups, not to dress
and act like everyone else in the congregation—these immediately put one
beyond the pale; and in a small church (few Fundamentalist churches have
more than a hundred members) this meant being ostracized, a silent invitation
to conform or to worship elsewhere.
Nevertheless, despite the criticism Fundamentalists
sometimes receive, they do undertake the praiseworthy task of adhering
to certain key Christian tenets in a society that has all too often forgotten
about Christ.
NIHIL OBSTAT:
I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR:
In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
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