The Day Christian Fundamentalism was Born

[southernhybrid]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/opinion/the-day-christian-fundamentalism-was-born.html?searchResultPosition=1

The OP is from the title of the linked article that I read a few days ago. I don't know if this is worthy of discussion or not, but as a person who was raised by two converts to fundamentalist Christianity, this piece had a lot of significance to me, and I learned some things that I never knew before.

For many Americans, it was thrilling to be alive in 1919. The end of World War I had brought hundreds of thousands of soldiers home. Cars were rolling off the assembly lines. New forms of music, like jazz, were driving people to dance. And science was in the ascendant, after helping the war effort. Women, having done so much on the home front, were ready to claim the vote, and African-Americans were eager to enjoy full citizenship, at long last. In a word, life was dazzlingly modern.

But for many other Americans, modernity was exactly the problem. As many parts of the country were experimenting with new ideas and beliefs, a powerful counterrevolution was forming in some of the nation’s largest churches and Bible institutes. A group of Christian leaders, anxious about the chaos that seemed to be enveloping the globe, recalibrated the faith and gave it a new urgency. They knew that the time was right for a revolution in American Christianity. In its own way, this new movement — fundamentalism — was every bit as important as the modernity it seemingly resisted, with remarkable determination.

Beginning on May 25, 1919, 6,000 ministers, theologians and evangelists came together in Philadelphia for a weeklong series of meetings. They heard sermons on everything from “Christ and the Present Crisis” to “Why I Preach the Second Coming.” The men and women assembled there believed that God had chosen them to call Christians back to the “fundamentals” of the faith, and to prepare the world for one final revival before Jesus returned to earth. They called their group the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association.

I always wondered why it seemed as if the US had taken a step backwards, after the social justice movements that were often lead by atheists and liberal Christians in the 1800s and early 1900s, primarily abolitionist moment and voting rights for all. Now, I have some answers, and sadly, it appears to me, as if the same thing is happening today. After successful attempts to give women more rights, and choices regarding their reproductive options, and people with minority sexual orientation and gender identities, it appears to me as if fundamentalist extremism has once again raised its ugly head and is attempting to destroy much of the progress that was made recently.

And, as an individual that was parented by two people who were sucked in by Billy Graham, this piece gave me an understanding of his rise and the development of what is now commonly referred to as evangelical Christianity.

In 1947, William Bell Riley lay on his deathbed. An aspiring young evangelist sat at his side. The veteran fundamentalist told the rookie preacher that God had destined him to lead the fundamentalist movement forward, to take the mantle from Riley. The young evangelist was Billy Graham.

In the years after World War II, Graham and his fundamentalist allies began calling themselves “evangelicals.” But little else changed.

I was born in 1949 and forced to attend the "Billy Graham Crusades" in New York City during the 1950s. I had no idea during my youth, how destructive and influential Graham would become.

There was racism involved in this movement:

The men and women at the conference were all white. On questions of race, fundamentalists defended the status quo. African-American and Latino Christians, even when they shared the same theology as their white counterparts, were systematically excluded from fundamentalists’ churches and organizations.

And this:

The political positions embraced by early fundamentalists, all of which flowed logically from their apocalyptic understanding of the biblical text, hardened over time. They called for limited government and battled anything that seemed to threaten Christians’ rights and freedoms. They fretted about changes in the culture, and especially those that upended what they saw as traditional gender roles. In foreign policy, they championed isolationism and, when they did want the United States to intervene around the world, they called on American leaders to act unilaterally. They also became some of the country’s most ardent and unapologetic Zionists.

So, these Christians, thought they were losing their rights, which reminds me of some of the claims today's evangelicals make. Anyway, I found the article very interesting and suggest anyone interested, read the entire article, which was written by a history professor, who has written a couple of books on the subject.

 

[Treedbear]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/opinion/the-day-christian-fundamentalism-was-born.html?searchResultPosition=1

... Anyway, I found the article very interesting and suggest anyone interested, read the entire article, which was written by a history professor, who has written a couple of books on the subject.

Sorry, can't. Pay wall.

 

[steve_bank]

I thought Christianity was always that way. The colonies except maybe Rhode Island had state support religion. You could get into trouble preaching against prevailing regional interpretations.

When Ben Franklin demonstrated lightning was a natural phenomena it caused a theological response.

Lightning came from above where god was. If it hit your house it was a sign. Preachers preached lightning rods were an abomination against god.

Thee was revival of which Billy Graham was part of. Revival meetings traveling from town to town.

 

[southernhybrid]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/opinion/the-day-christian-fundamentalism-was-born.html?searchResultPosition=1

... Anyway, I found the article very interesting and suggest anyone interested, read the entire article, which was written by a history professor, who has written a couple of books on the subject.

Sorry, can't. Pay wall.

I'm so sorry. In the past, the NYTimes always permitted others to read articles that were linked. I guess they may be limiting people to the ten free articles per month. Maybe I can give a better summary when I have time.

 

[southernhybrid]

I thought Christianity was always that way. The colonies except maybe Rhode Island had state support religion. You could get into trouble preaching against prevailing regional interpretations.

When Ben Franklin demonstrated lightning was a natural phenomena it caused a theological response.

Lightning came from above where god was. If it hit your house it was a sign. Preachers preached lightning rods were an abomination against god.

Thee was revival of which Billy Graham was part of. Revival meetings traveling from town to town.

I think perhaps the professor used the term, "birth", instead of rebirth, was because the Christians, ( Puritans ) were here long before the US became a country. It was just a colony at that time. Christianity was more moderate/liberal for quite awhile prior to 1919. I'm not an expert on history, so I assume the man who wrote this article and some books on the subject knows more than I do. Even if some Christians were quite extreme, fundamentalism didn't become so mainstream in many parts of the country prior to this movement, and Graham certainly helped it along.

It seems as if we are once again having to deal with the rise of this version of Christianity, which is trying to push extreme views on the rest of us.

 

[lpetrich]

The  World Christian Fundamentals Association was indeed founded in 1919. But  Christian fundamentalism emerged before that, in the late 19th cy. and early 20th cy., as a reaction to modernist trends like Darwinism and biblical criticism.

One of its founding documents was  The Fundamentals, a collection of 90 essays written by various theologians over 1910 - 1915.

The volumes defended orthodox Protestant beliefs and attacked higher criticism, liberal theology, Roman Catholicism (called Romanism by many Protestants of the time), socialism, modernism, atheism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Millennial Dawn (whose members were sometimes known as Russellites, but which later adopted the name Jehovah's Witnesses), spiritualism, and evolutionism.

It was originally in 12 volumes, then later reprinted as 4 volumes. It defended such beliefs as

• The inerrancy of the Bible
• The literal nature of the biblical accounts, especially regarding Christ's miracles and the Creation account in Genesis
• The virgin birth of Christ
• The bodily resurrection and physical return of Christ
• The substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross

Not surprisingly, they were young-earth creationists.

 

[southernhybrid]

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674048362

The first comprehensive history of modern American evangelicalism to appear in a generation, American Apocalypse shows how a group of radical Protestants, anticipating the end of the world, paradoxically transformed it.

Matthew Avery Sutton draws on extensive archival research to document the ways an initially obscure network of charismatic preachers and their followers reshaped American religion, at home and abroad, for over a century. Perceiving the United States as besieged by Satanic forces—communism and secularism, family breakdown and government encroachment—Billy Sunday, Charles Fuller, Billy Graham, and others took to the pulpit and airwaves to explain how Biblical end-times prophecy made sense of a world ravaged by global wars, genocide, and the threat of nuclear extinction. Believing Armageddon was nigh, these preachers used what little time was left to warn of the coming Antichrist, save souls, and prepare the nation for God’s final judgment.

The link is about the writings of the author who wrote the NYT piece. There is a link in this link to the NYT article, and if anyone is still interested in reading the entire article, I'm pretty sure you can access it from the linked Harvard summary.

 

[lpetrich]

Titled link: American Apocalypse — Matthew Avery Sutton | Harvard University Press I used the Firefox extension "Copy URL to Clipboard", and one can select a variety of formats for the URL and its text: HTML, BBCode, Wikipedia, plain text, ...

This whole bit of expecting the end of the world goes all the way back to the origins of Xianity. We find in Matthew 16:28 that Jesus Christ tells us that the Messiah ("Son of Man") will come in the lifetimes of some of his listeners ("Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." NASB). The  Book of Revelation describes in gory detail what will happen when Jesus Christ does his Second Coming.

But as Jesus Christ continued to fail to make his Second Coming, some of his interpreters started claiming that one should not expect him to show up anytime soon. Thus 2 Peter 3:8 ("But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day." NASB). Thus was born  Amillennialism. It became the consensus of early Xian theologians, and Xian Church Councils soon endorsed it.

Amill'ism continued to be accepted by most later Xian Churches, and several of them continue to accept it to this day. After the East-West split of 1054, both sides continued to believe it, and the Eastern Churches continue to believe it to this day.

The first Protestants split off from the Catholic Church around 500 years ago, and the Protestant factions that became national or major regional churches continued to believe in amill'ism to this day, as does the Catholic Church. Of the less successful Protestant factions, only some of them continued to believe in amill'ism. The others came to believe in various millennial notions, like Jesus Christ being likely to return any day now. Thus reviving an early Xian notion that had been discarded for over a millennium.  Christian eschatological views has a nice comparison diagram for several variants.

Churches with such millennial beliefs became popular among the less-well-off Britons, and those that moved to Britain's North American colonies, they took those churches with them. Thus starting off the US's evangelical and fundamentalist churches.

 

[lpetrich]

Opinions of the  Book of Revelation have had some interesting variations. It was the last book to be accepted into the New Testament canon, and the eastern churches tended to believe that it does not belong. The earliest Protestant leaders, Martin Luther and John Calvin, did not think much of it either. So amill Xians seem to have a rather low opinion of this book.

But the Protestants who believe in various millennial beliefs seem to have a high opinion of that book, working out elaborate future-history scenarios based on it with additions like the Rapture, and even interpreting it as an elaborate allegory of current events. Thus we see the sight of fundies doing allegorical interpretation in a big way.

 

[J842P]

I thought Christianity was always that way. The colonies except maybe Rhode Island had state support religion. You could get into trouble preaching against prevailing regional interpretations.

When Ben Franklin demonstrated lightning was a natural phenomena it caused a theological response.

Lightning came from above where god was. If it hit your house it was a sign. Preachers preached lightning rods were an abomination against god.

Thee was revival of which Billy Graham was part of. Revival meetings traveling from town to town.

I think perhaps the professor used the term, "birth", instead of rebirth, was because the Christians, ( Puritans ) were here long before the US became a country. It was just a colony at that time. Christianity was more moderate/liberal for quite awhile prior to 1919. I'm not an expert on history, so I assume the man who wrote this article and some books on the subject knows more than I do. Even if some Christians were quite extreme, fundamentalism didn't become so mainstream in many parts of the country prior to this movement, and Graham certainly helped it along.

It seems as if we are once again having to deal with the rise of this version of Christianity, which is trying to push extreme views on the rest of us.

I think the author of the article is more using that sort of language for rhetorical effect for a title. Of course, the revival he is describing is the proximal cause of the contemporary Evangelical movement. But there have been many similar religious 'awakenings' or 'revivals' in American history, and they've all been of a very fundamentalist persuasion. They are all really reactions against the enlightenment and modernisation. The world went through many changes during the 18-20th Century, and change seems to only be accelerating in the 21st. All of this was happening in Europe as well. American Christianity is an extension of Northern European Protestantism, which has always been pretty fundamentalist by any reasonable standard. Keeping in mind that there was a lot of diversity too.

 

[southernhybrid]

I've also considered that television, which became available to most Americans around the time that Graham took over this movement may have had a big influence on the rise of 20th Century fundamentalism. That gave these extremists the opportunity to spread their beliefs over a very large audience. Having attended Graham's so called Crusades as a child, I'm well aware of the deep emotional appeals that he used to manipulate people. My parents were volunteer counselors when he was in New York. He would ask people to come forward to be "saved". The aisles would always be full of desperate people looking for hope.

And, these days, we have online social media being used to entice desperate or easily manipulated people into the cult, along with the televangelists.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The fundamentalists pioneered use of AM radio to spread their variety of Christianity. After numerous pitched battles in various church denominations of Bible literalism et al, the fundamentalists left the churches en masse and founded their own churches, seminaries and other organizations. Probably the most far reaching fundamentalist efforts were the successful founding of numerous seminaries that have graduated generations of fundamentalist preachers and pastors.

 

[lpetrich]

Ed Babinski makes a curious claim: that the most conservative Xian universities are all recent, that all the older ones have moderated. There may be some counterexamples, but he does cite some examples of this trend among big-name universities.

Agnosticism: Anthony Flew's Conversion

And not just Bible believing individuals, but entire Bible believing institutions grow more moderate over time with such regularity that all of the most conservative Christian universities were founded in recent times. Over time even the most conservative Christian universities continue to grow more moderate, more liberal. Calvin's college that he founded in Geneva was being run by devil-denying Deists two hundred years after he had founded it. Harvard was founded as a conservative Bible believing seminary, and then Yale had to be founded due to the growing "theological excesses" of Harvard. Machen left Princeton Theological Seminary to found Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 in reaction to Princeton's hiring "modernist" professors during the "fundamentalist-modernist" controversy of the early 1900s--a major controversy that split many denominations in America. But today even some sterling graduates of Machen's Westminster Theological Seminary like Paul Seely, whose articles are published in Westminster Theological Seminary Review, argues that the Bible spoke of the earth as flat; the tower of Babel story was a myth; and the earth is just as old as modern geologists have concluded. Wheaton College (Billy Graham's alma mater) no longer demands that all of its professors agree that Adam and Eve's bodies were created directly from the earth. And Dallas Theological Seminary even has a graduate student whose thesis is that the numbers of the Hebrews who escaped Egypt, as given in the Bible in several places, must be appreciably downsized. Furman University, which was founded by a former president of the South Carolina Southern Baptist Convention, obtained the right to choose its own board members rather than having the Southern Baptist Convention have the last word, and is today a self-governing liberal arts institution.