Fundamentalism

Origins and Purpose

As a movement, fundamentalism began in the United States as a Protestant movement to repel liberalism and developments perceived as threats to the purity, integrity, and authority of God's word as found in the Bible. In 1878, the Niagara Bible conference drew up 14 fundamentals of the faith, later reduced to five central doctrines: the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus, the death of Christ as atonement, and the physical return of Christ to preside on Judgment Day. The resulting controversy ranged across all denominations, but it was most intense among Baptists and Presbyterians.

In the so-called monkey trial of 1925, a Tennessee teacher, J. T. Scopes, was found guilty of teaching evolution in public schools; other attempts to banish modernism and evolution from schools and society were unsuccessful. Unfavorable press reports quickly turned public opinion against fundamentalists, rendering their victory a short-lived one. Many dissociated themselves from the movement, not wanting to be labeled anti-intellectuals and fanatics. Gradually, the movement lost its cohesiveness and degenerated into splinter (independent) groups. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, fundamentalists redefined themselves in a movement known as neo-evangelicalism and sought broader participation within the U.S. political system. Billy Graham epitomized this new trend in evangelicalism.

Since the 1970s fundamentalists have reaffirmed their beliefs and initiated political actions to shape the nation accordingly. They used the ballot box, the airwaves, the mega-churches, and the power of the purse to restore what they saw as the unquestionable role of religion in society. Their position is that most social institutions of today's secular society and most contemporary social issues—such as abortion, same-sex marriage, family and divorce, the spread of pornography, the ban on school prayer, homosexual lifestyle, feminism, gender equality, priesthood for women, and ordination of gay and lesbian ministers—are incompatible with religion. Consistently, they seek to include the teaching of creationism or “intelligent design” theory in public schools alongside evolution and to defeat politicians they view as liberals contributing to moral decadence in the nation. In their effort to reconstruct society, fundamentalists developed strategies that transcended borders. For example, Jerry Falwell, a fundamentalist Baptist minister, founded the Moral Majority in 1979, which enabled fundamentalist organizations to become a formidable force in U.S. politics. Together with other New Christian Right groups and political conservatives, fundamentalists supported the candidacy of Ronald Reagan and helped elect him president in 1980. Ever since then, they have influenced the U.S. political process.

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