Abstract
Although fundamentalists may have agreed that the intellectual pretensions of their opponents were preposterous, they often had a difficult time on agreeing to much more. In the first few years of the 1920s, both fundamentalists and the wider public struggled to understand the new movement. No less than later historians did, fundamentalists and their contemporaries often disagreed about what fundamentalism meant. Some leading fundamentalists attempted to assert a definition on the movement unilaterally. Other leaders avoided using the term. And many contemporaries used the term to refer to a broad assortment of conservative trends in politics, culture, and religion. As one Baptist editor complained in 1923, “Millions of people have been confused by this controversy.”1
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Notes
Samuel Zane Batten, “The Battle Within the Churches,” The Searchlight 6 (October 26, 1923): 1. Batten was the chairman of the Social Service Committee of the Northern Baptist Convention.
Thomas F. Gieryn, “Boundaries of Science,” in Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. Sheila Jasanoff (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994), 405.
Syntheses of recent work on identity include Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005);
Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: Norton, 2006).
For brief guides to the sociological literature on identity, see Karen A. Cerulo, “Identity Construction: New Issues, New Directions,” Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997): 385–409;
and Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 283–305.
See also Michael Lienesch, In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Lienesch explores the antievolution movement as an enduring social and cultural identity.
See William Vance Trollinger Jr., God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).
See, for example, his defenses of “orthodoxy”: William Bell Riley, “The Challenge of Orthodoxy,” Christian Fundamentals in School and Church [CFSC] 2 (July–September 1920): 365–68;
William Bell Riley, “Address to Denver Conference on Christian Fundamentals,” CFSC 3 (July–September 1921): 6.
William Bell Riley, “Fundamentalism—The Word that has Won Its Way,” CFSC 6 (October–December 1923): 13.
Richard S. Beal, “Fundamentalism: A Call Back to the Bible,” CFSC 6 (October–December 1923): 30.
Barry Hankins, God’s Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996); Trollinger, God’s Empire, 43.
J. E. Conant, “Can Northern Baptists Stay Together?” Searchlight 4 (April 4, 1922): 22.
J. Frank Norris, “The Alabama Baptist Attacks Fundamentalists and Defends Evolution,” Searchlight 6 (February 16, 1923): 1–5.
J. Frank Norris, “World’s Fundamentals Convention,” Searchlight 6 (March 16, 1923): 1.
J. Frank Norris, “Letter to the Editor of the Dallas News,” Searchlight 7 (January 25, 1924): 1;
J. Frank Norris, “The Battle Within the Churches,” Searchlight 6 (October 26, 1923): 1.
Virginia L. Brereton, Training God’s Army: The American Bible School, 1880–1940 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 79–84;
Gene A. Getz, MBI: The Story of Moody Bible Institute (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1969);
Bernard R. De Remer, Moody Bible Institute: A Pictorial History (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1960).
James M. Gray, “Editorial Notes,” Moody Bible Institute Monthly [Moody Monthly] 21 (April 1921): 347;
James M. Gray, “Editorial Notes,” Moody Monthly 22 (May 1922): 1003.
James M. Gray, “Editorial Notes,” Moody Monthly 23 (September 1922): 1, 4.
See Brereton, Training God’s Army, 79–84; and Robert Williams, Chartered for His Glory: Biola University, 1908–1983 (La Mirada, CA: Associated Students of Biola University, 1983).
B. W. Burleigh, “An Open Letter to a Modernist,” The King’s Business 14 (March 1923): 244–45.
See Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Anchor Books, 2007);
Lawrence W. Levine’s Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade, 1915–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).
Frederick F. Shannon, “Bryanism,” The Christian Century 39 (April 6, 1922): 428–31.
Glenn Frank, “William Jennings Bryan: A Mind Divided Against Itself,” The Christian Century 106 (September 1923): 794.
L. M. Aldridge, “Editorial,” Searchlight 8 (August 7, 1925): 1.
William Bell Riley, “Notes,” CFSC 5 (April–June 1923): 24. See also Levine, Defender of the Faith, 264.
William Jennings Bryan, “Misrepresentations of Darwinism and Its Disciples,” Moody Monthly 23 (April 1923): 331.
William Jennings Bryan, Bryan’s Last Speech: Undelivered Speech to the Jury in the Scopes Trial (Oklahoma City, OK: Sunlight Publishing Society, 1925), 46.
C. Allyn Russell, Voices of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 148.
D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 68.
J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1923).
J. Gresham Machen and Charles P. Fagnani, “Does Fundamentalism Obstruct Social Progress?” Survey Graphic 5 (July 1924): 389–92, 425–27.
William Bell Riley, “An Orthodox Premillennial Seminary,” CFSC 5 (January–March 1923): 20;
William Bell Riley, “The Great Objective of the Fort Worth Convention,” CFSC 4 (April–June 1923): 25–26.
John D. Hannah, “Social and Intellectual Origins of the Evangelical Theological College” (PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Dallas, 1988), 212–13, 174–90. Quotation is from page 174.
Evangelical Theological College Bulletin 2 (June 1926): 6–7; Rudolf Albert Renfer, “A History of Dallas Theological Seminary” (PhD disertation, University of Texas–Austin, 1959), 314.
Timothy Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1982 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1987), 238.
W. H. Griffith Thomas, “Fundamentalism and Modernism: Two Religions,” Christian Century 41 (January 3, 1924): 5–6, quoted in Renfer, “A History of Dallas Theological Seminary,” 39.
See Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Grant Wacker, “Travail of a Broken Family: Radical Evangelical Responses to the Emergence of Pentecostalism in America, 1906–16,” in Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, ed. Edith Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 23–50.
J. Frank Norris, “Pentecostal Preacher ‘Fleeces’ Flock,” Searchlight 7 (May 2, 1924): 1;
J. Frank Norris, “J. Frank Norris on ‘Speaking with Tongues,’” Searchlight 7 (May 9, 1924): 4.
Wacker, Heaven Below, 145. See also Edith L. Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1993), 2.
James M. Gray, “What About Mrs. Aimee Semple McPherson,” Moody Monthly 22 (November 1921): 649.
Amzi C. Dixon, “Speaking in Tongues,” King’s Business 13 (January 1922): 14–17.
C. F. Koehler, “What the Bible Says About Speaking in Tongues,” Moody Monthly 22 (February 1922): 808.
Keith Brooks, “Dangerous Methods of Seeking the Holy Spirit’s Power” Moody Monthly 24 (October 1923): 55.
Arno C. Gaebelein, “Christianity vs. Modern Cults,” Moody Monthly 22 (March 1922): 858.
Gary B. Ferngren, “The Evangelical-Fundamentalist Tradition,” in Caring and Curing, ed. Ronald Numbers and Darrel Amundsen (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1998), 486–513;
William Bell Riley, prefatory note to C. I. Scofield, “How God Heals Sickness,” CFSC 3 (April–June 1921): 28.
J. Frank Norris, “Rev. J. Frank Norris Preaches on Divine Healing and Effect,” Fort Worth Record, repr. in Searchlight 2 (April 1, 1920): 2; J. Frank Norris, “Scriptural View on Healing,” Searchlight 2 (April 8, 1920);
A. T. Pierson, “What About Divine Healing? Have Supernatural Signs Ceased during the Church Age?” The King’s Business 12 (March 1921): 231.
Quoted in Milton L. Rudnick, Fundamentalism and the Missouri Synod: a Historical Study of their Interaction and Mutual Influence (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing, 1966), 79.
James M. Gray, “Editorial Notes,” Moody Monthly 22 (June 1922): 1052.
Grant Stroh, “Practical and Perplexing Questions,” Moody Monthly 22 (September 1921): 574.
A. R. Funderburk, “The Ku Klux Klan—Is It of God?” Moody Monthly 23 (March 1923): 291–92;
John Bradbury, “Defending the Ku Klux Klan—A Reply to Mr. Funderburk,” Moody Monthly 23 (May 1923): 420–21.
James M. Gray, “Editorial,” Moody Monthly 23 (February 1923): 240;
James M. Gray, “Editorial Notes,” Moody Monthly 24 (December 1923): 163.
J. Frank Norris, “Judge Wilson, K.C.’s, Ku Klux Klan and Bootleggers,” Searchlight 4 (May 22, 1922): 1; J. Frank Norris, “The Menace of Roman Catholicism in Politics,” Searchlight (August 1, 1924): 1. See also the advertisements for Klan publications and events, Searchlight (September 15, 1922): 4; (March 14, 1924): 3; (December 7, 1924): 3. For his campaign against Governor Ferguson, see especially his Searchlight of August 15, 1924.
See also Shelley Sallee, “‘The Woman of It’: Governor Miriam Ferguson’s 1924 Election.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 100, no. 1 (1996): 1–16.
For the relationship between religious conservatives and other conservatives in the 1930s and beyond, see Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983). Ribuffo’s point about the 1930s is equally applicable to the 1920s: “Within the United States during the 1930s … not all bigots were fundamentalists, and not all fundamentalists were bigots” (249).
Edith L. Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 160.
For one example of a prominent Seventh-day Adventist who considered himself, and all Adventists, to be fundamentalists, see William H. Branson, Reply to Can-right: The Truth About Seventh-day Adventists (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1933), 22.
For a concise historical view of the debate about fundamentalism within Seventh-day Adventism, see Gary Land, “Shaping the Modern Church 1906–1930,” in Adventism in America: A History (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), 139–69. I am indebted to Ronald Numbers for these references.
For George McCready Price’s attitude toward fundamentalism, as well as the attitudes of several leading fundamentalists of the 920s toward Price, see Ronald Numbers, The Creationists (1993), 96–100. The Science editor is quoted on page 73.
Susie C. Stanley, “Wesleyan/Holiness Churches: Innocent Bystanders in the Fundamentalist/Modernism Controversy,” in Re-Forming the Center: American Protestantism, 1900 to the Present, ed. Douglas Jacobsen and William Vance Trollinger Jr. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 172–93.
W. B. McCreary, “How Long Go Ye Limping?” Gospel Trumpet 38 (April 3, 1924): 6.
Maynard Shipley, The Waron Modern Science (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), 47.
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 180–84.
Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 37, 113, 120–22, 216.
Fred “Fritz” L. Harper to Machen, 4 May 1925, Machen Papers; Albert Sidney Johnson to Machen, 19 May 1925, Machen Papers; Machen to Albert Sidney Johnson, 23 May 1925, Machen Papers; Machen to Mark A. Matthews, 4 December 1924, Machen Papers; Frederick Erdman to Leander S. Keyser, 24 March 1928, Machen Papers; Dale E. Soden, The Reverend Mark Matthews: An Activist in the Progressive Era (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2001), 174–75.
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© 2010 Adam Laats
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Laats, A. (2010). What’s in a Name?. In: Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106796_3
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