American Protestant Fundamentalism

In the North American context, there were at least three social forces that gave rise to the movement that took the name fundamentalism: (1) sweeping economic changes with the industrial revolution, (2) restructuring of gender roles and expectations with the move from rural-agrarian to urban-industrial lifestyles, and (3) the intellectual-theological challenges arising from biblical criticism, historicism, and comparative religion. Nineteenth-century evangelicalism split into two camps, often called modernist and fundamentalist, divided over the proper relationship between religion and culture. Modernists saw religion as a part of culture that changes over time with the changing needs of a changing ...