The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 64): 20th Century Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (You’re going to learn a few things you didn’t know)

In the past few Worldview posts, we have taken a look at some of the most influential people and events in the first part of the 20^th century: Vladimir Lenin, Margaret Sanger, Adolf Hitler, Sigmund Freud, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kinsey. Lenin and Hitler, and their atrocious regimes, were so inhumane that it can explain why the United States rushed to identify itself as a “Christian nation” in the 1950s.

When it comes to Sanger, Freud, Mead, and Kinsey, though, what I pointed out is that all four essentially followed the same playbook: (1) They claimed there was no God, (2) They claimed that Christian morality was repressive, (3) They appealed to science as the thing that can usher humanity into a new age of enlightenment, and (4) They all pointed to science and evolution (in some form) as justification for advocating radical sexual libertinism. This sort of mentality (properly labeled “secular humanism”) still dominates much of today’s society—just look at what Bill Nye recently did on his Netflix show.

As should be expected, in any society, there is always another strand of thinking that often exists side by side the dominant worldview of the time. As the secular humanistic worldview dominated the stage in the western world in the first part of the 20^th century, there was the inevitable “religious backlash.” In this post, I want to provide a bird’s-eye view of the religious heritage of most Evangelicals today, from the original Fundamentalists to today’s post-“Moral Majority” brand of Evangelicalism. That’s a lot to cover, so we will really just be skimming the surface.

The Original Fundamentalists
Properly understood, at least when talking about Christianity, “fundamentalism” is refers to the specific movement of theological conservative Christians in the beginning of the 20^th century that sought to combat the growing theological liberalism of the 19^th century. If you remember from my past posts on the 19^th century, theological liberalism was very deistic in a lot of ways, did not believe that God really intervened in history, and therefore doubted or denied any of the miraculous in the Bible. Not only that, but they doubted or denied much of the historical claims as well.

The Fundamentalism of the early 20^th century was a reaction to all that. Over the course of the first decade or so in the early 20^th century, twelve books were written that articulated what the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith were. In time, it was boiled down to basically five tenets:

1. The inspiration and the inerrancy of Scripture
2. The virgin birth of Christ
3. Christ’s death as an atonement for sin
4. The physical resurrection of Christ
5. The historical reality of the miracles of Christ

It is worth noting that in the early 20^th century, young earth creationism was nowhere to be found in the Fundamentalist movement. At this point in time in the early 20^th century, the only people who were young earth creationists and tried to mount a scientific case for it were 7^th-Day Adventists. And the reason they were young earth creationists is because their founder, Ellen G. White, claimed to have received a vision from God, where she actually saw Noah’s flood. It was George McCready Price who later wrote on “flood geology,” and who was essentially one of the godfathers of the modern young earth creationist movement.

Another thing to note regarding the original Fundamentalists is that many were not only pastors, but academics and theologians. Furthermore, they were engaging with the surrounding culture and challenging many of the tenets of theological liberalism. Right or wrong in their claims, what I want to emphasize is that the original Fundamentalists were still engaging in the marketplace of ideas.

Nevertheless, the “fundamental” problem with Fundamentalism is that, in its attempt to combat the claims of theological liberalism, it unwittingly accepted the worldview that theological liberalism was based on—that of the Enlightenment, which reduced everything to the question, “Is it factual, historical, and scientifically provable?” In other words, Fundamentalism inadvertently gave the impression that Christianity was all about “believing certain facts” so you could go to heaven when you die. That is a very anemic version of the historical Christian faith.

That, of course, is not to deny the historical reliability of biblical claims. But the historical Christian faith is much more than just trying to “prove certain facts.” As I have tried to show in the course of this Ways of the Worldviews series, it is “fundamentally” and engagement with the world, rooted in the death and resurrection of Christ, and it is through that engagement that it transforms the world, little by little, in a host of different ways.

Colorful Characters
As is true in any time, there tends to be somewhat of a difference between the more academic world of theologians and scholars, and the everyday characters that win the attention of the popular culture. In the early years of the 20^th century, perhaps the biggest two Christian “celebrities” were Billy Sunday, the former baseball player-turned evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson, the founder of the Foursquare Church. Of course, there were many others. But evangelists like Sunday and McPherson appealed to the masses by offering “basic religion” in very practical terms. That, plus they were very entertaining.

Now, this “populist” form of American Christianity focused not only on the “fundamentals” that had recently been articulated, but it also focused on combating the evils of drinking and smoking and promiscuity. And therefore, Christianity was further reduced to (a) believing certain facts, and (b) don’t drink, don’t smoke, and don’t have sex before marriage.

The Scopes Monkey Trial
Perhaps the biggest event in Fundamentalist history was the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. I wrote about this in my book, The Heresy of Ham, and perhaps at one point I will elaborate on it in a separate post, but for our purposes, I want to simply highlight the main things we should take away from the trial.

First, it was not about young earth creationism. William Jennings Bryan was actually an old earth creationist. At this point in time, young earth creationism was the sole territory of 7^th Day Adventism. Second, it is very clear that what Bryan was really objecting to wasn’t the actual scientific theory of evolution itself, but rather the attempt to apply evolution to human beings—Social Darwinism. Indeed, we must remember that in the mid-twenties, eugenics was all the rage, Communism was on the rise, Hitler was writing Mein Kampf. Even the textbook at the center of the trial, A Civic Biology, openly was advocating for eugenics, and the racial superiority of the white race.

That, though, doesn’t get told. What happened instead was that reporters like H.L. Mencken stereotyped the people of Dayton as “yokels,” and ridiculed Christianity and religion as being anti-science. Later on, the movie Inherit the Wind furthered that false narrative. Despite the clear bias in the reporting of the trial, the damage had been done: fundamentalists were roundly ridiculed. And so, as a result, most conservative and fundamentalists Christians retreated from society, and into their own subcultures.

The Rise of the Bible Colleges
The result was an explosion of “Bible Colleges” that were geared solely to conservative and fundamentalist Christians. Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee was founded shortly after the Scopes trial. Bob Jones University was established in 1927; The Masters University was established in 1927—the list can go on. Chances are, if the school’s original name had something like “Bible College” in its name, it was founded at some point after 1925.

The reason why is simple: fundamentalists were convinced that “liberal theology,” evolution, and immorality had taken over “the world,” and therefore they checked out of “the world” and worked hard to establish their own subculture in which they never would have to engage with “the world” much at all.

Billy Graham and the Rise of Evangelicalism
But then a young Southern Baptist minister named Billy Graham launched his first Evangelical Crusade in 1947. The rest, they say, is history. Now the thing to realize is how Billy Graham was the one who began to open the door to where fundamentalists started to interact with the wider world again. He really was the beginning of the Evangelical movement—still every bit as committed to the “fundamentals of the faith,” and still very much focused on addressing the “moral evils” of society. But there was a willingness to reach out to Catholics, and a willingness to at least begin to engage the world again.

The popular magazine, Christianity Today, was a result of Graham’s Evangelical movement. Graham also befriended Martin Luther King Jr., and although they didn’t agree on issues like the Vietnam War, Graham advocated for desegregation and civil rights. Billy Graham became so famous that he met with presidents, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. Simply put, Billy Graham had a huge cultural impact, not only in America, but around the world. For 20 years prior, Fundamentalists had walled themselves up in their own subculture; Graham opened the windows and encouraged many to walk out the door to begin to interact with the world once again.

The Genesis Flood..and Young Earth Creationism
But of course, not everyone was happy with Graham and his new Evangelical movement. Racist schools like Bob Jones University had a problem with him because, not only did he oppose segregation, but Graham had actually extended a hand to the Antichrist’s church—the Catholics!

In addition, in 1961, a civil engineer named Henry Morris teamed up with an Old Testament professor named John Whitcomb, and wrote The Genesis Flood, the “founding document,” if you will, of the modern young earth creationist movement. As the name suggests, it argued that all of the geological phenomena that geologists had been observing for years, and had claimed to have happened over millions of years, was really the result of a world-wide, cataclysmic flood only 4,000 years ago. Simply put, it argued that Genesis 1-11 was historically and scientifically accurate, and that the authority of the Bible depended on it.

Over the next 50 years, the young earth creationist movement took root, not only in the old fundamentalist schools and churches that were suspect of the new Evangelicalism that Billy Graham represented, but in time it also came to take root in within mainstream Evangelicalism as well. As I’ve written about many time, YECism has proven to be, in my opinion, a heresy, in that not only does it simply claim the entire universe is 6,000 years old, but it goes so far as to claim that a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11 is foundational to the Gospel itself. It views modern science as a secular conspiracy to entice people down the road to immorality and godlessness; and it views Christians (especially biblical scholars and theologians) who disagree with YECism as compromisers who are undermining biblical authority. Its ideology and rather militant attitude toward anything “other” threatens to drag modern Evangelicalism back into a cult-like subculture that is paranoid of “the world.”

The Moral Majority…and Bob Jones is Always Lurking in the Background, Like That Creepy, Racist Uncle
Finally, in the 1970s, there was the rise of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and the “Religious Right.” It was Francis Schaeffer, whose book How Should We Then Live? attempted to trace the history of western culture from Roman times to modern America, who sounded the alarm regarding the abortion issue, and called for Evangelical Christians to get involved in politics to work toward overturning Roe vs. Wade. When he took his message across America, Evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (as well as others) united around the abortion issue and become a potent political force in America.

The reason why so many Evangelicals today are typically affiliated with the Republican party can be traced back to the Moral Majority and the abortion issue. What people are not so aware of, though, is that certain segments in regards to the founding of the “Religious Right” had more racial agendas. You can easily find information on this online, but simply put, you can just look at racist Bob Jones University. It was segregationist to the core, and thus after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, it found itself butting heads with the federal government, and losing its tax exempt status for its racist policies. BJU resented the interference of the federal government, plain and simple.

When it became just socially repulsive to openly advocate for segregation anymore, segregationist schools like BJU begrudgingly admitted some black students. But with the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1972, and the growing concern over abortion by many Evangelicals, schools like BJU jumped on board with the Moral Majority, not only opposing abortion, but also “promoting family values,” and fighting against federal intrusion into private institutions. Of course, for BJU, “family values” meant segregation and no “blending of the races.”

Most Evangelicals don’t know any of this—I certainly didn’t. All my life I’ve opposed abortion on demand because I feel that human life is sacred. But it was eye-opening to learn how openly racist institutions like BJU “jumped on the bandwagon” for rather racist reasons.

Incidentally, if you remember the false rumor during the 2000 GOP primaries that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate bi-racial baby—it was a BJU professor who spread the rumor. In fact, it wasn’t until 2000 that BJU allowed inter-racial dating at their school, and it wasn’t until 2008 that BJU issued an apology for its past racist policies. It has only recently regained the tax-exempt status it lost back in 1976, due to its segregationist policies.

Ironically, BJU Press is now one of the leading publishers of YECist literature and curriculum for Christian schools and homeschoolers. Ken Ham now praises BJU for its unwavering stance on biblical authority and its commitment to family values and fighting the culture war. BJU now declares that the Bible is clear: we are all one race, and racism, therefore, is wrong.

Isn’t it ironic? Dontcha think?

In any case, as inadequate as this post may be, I hope I’ve been able to give a broad overview of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism in America, so that as we end this Ways of the Worldviews series, we will be able to revisit Francis Schaeffer’s question, “How Should We Then Live?”