Fundamentalist Christianity
Fundamentalist Christianity is a fundamentalist movement, especially within American Protestantism. This term is applied much more broadly to conservative Evangelicals, than Evangelicals apply it to themselves. There is, within the conservative Evangelical movement, a segment which describes itself as Fundamentalist Christianity in the attempt to distinguish itself from other Evangelicals and Christian groups, conservative and liberal, orthodox and heretical.Self-described Fundamentalists frequently consider themselves "non-denominational", and indeed the movement is found in many denominations. They are typically pessimistic in their expectations for the future of the world (see dispensationalism), and committed to separation from what they believe to be theological, scientific and moral error. Fundamentalists often see secular humanism to be a mortal enemy and the work of Satan to deceive society from the true path.
Although the modern movement formed within many of the established denominations, their tendency toward separation swelled the ranks of peripheral spinoff denominations, produced a multitude of new groups, and often made the choice of congregational independence appear to be the more faithful choice.
Christian fundamentalism is characterized as well by a more strict moral code compared to mainstream Protestantism, by which the fundamentalist believer seeks to distinguish himself from the world and identify himself with the community of the faithful. Nevertheless the Evangelical Fundamentalist also places supremely high value on the indivdual, much higher than popular stereotypes can account for, and commonly holds a radically individualistic understanding of sola fide, and sola scriptura.
However, the distinction which self-described Fundamentalists attempted to carve out for themselves has not taken hold in the English language. The term Fundamentalist Christian, against the unheeded objections of nearly all to whom it is popularly applied, now describes any conservative adherent to Christianity, who clings to views of morality, sin, salvation through Christ alone, or other views based on the truth and authority of Scripture, which have been discarded in favor of more skeptical or pluralistic views, by the more widely respected authorities and scholars of religion. Notwithstanding this loose use of the terms, there is some awareness that Fundamentalism has a specific, historical meaning, which does not properly apply to Mormons or Catholics, for example, regardless of similarities.
In addition, Fundamentalism has also been used to describe similarity in beliefs across different religions such as with Islamists. Both groups that have been described as Fundamentalist Christian and Muslim strongly object to this usage, as they strongly deny any connection or similarity with each other.
Within the United States, fundamentalism was originally a movement beginning in the late 19th century of Christian evangelical conservatives, who, in a reaction to modernism, insisted on adhering to a set of core beliefs. Fundamentalists, in this sense, have engaged in criticism of more liberal movements. The original formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs can be traced to the Niagara Bible Conference in 1878. In 1910, these beliefs later became distilled into what were known as the "five fundamentals", which were:
Christian Fundamentalism in the United States
Important early Christian fundamentalists included William Jennings Bryan, John Nelson Darby, Cyrus I. Scofield, Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Lewis Sperry Chafer, John Walvoord, B. B. Warfield. Modern Christian fundamentalists include Hal Lindsey, Jerry Falwell, Jack Chick, Bob Jones, Sr
As the movement developed, and became more pessimistic in the face of its eroding social importance, dispensationalism and separatism began to overwhelmingly characterize the most influential leaders, which has also had an effect on the way that Evangelicals as a whole are perceived by outside observers. Dispensationalism became so successful for a time, that the Fundamentalist movement has practically become identified with its teachings, even though many of the first and most influential Fundamentalists, like B. B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen, were strongly opposed to dispensationalism. Perhaps the modern dispensationalist theologian with the greatest name-familiarity, is Tim LaHaye, co-author of the popular Left Behind series, and author of several non-fiction books about apocalyptic prophecy.
Christian Fundamentalists argued that the Bible must be accepted as the literal word of God, correct not only in its religious or moral teachings, but also in its scientific and historical claims. Typical beliefs are that literal interpretation of the Bible is appropriate, for example that God literally created the world in 6 days; that God created Eve from Adam's rib; that the Garden of Eden was a real place; that Noah was a man who actually lived, built an ark and survived a great flood, and so on. Many other fundamentalists, however, insist that the Bible should instead be interpreted as the original readers would have interpreted it - literally where the context makes it literal, as in the gospels, and figuratively where the context makes it figurative, as in the apocalyptic books.
Almost all fundamentalists believe that macroevolution does not occur, since it contradicts their reading of the Bible. Thus, for example, William Jennings Bryan became an icon of fundamentalism for his part in prosecuting a teacher for teaching evolution in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Though the trial was viewed as publicity stunt by the people of Dayton, Tennessee, Bryan came to represent an emerging, new and politically desparate incarnation of Evangelical religious, political and educational activism. The trial signalled that a dramatic shift of status had already taken place for Evangelicalism, from the Establishment to the Basement of American politics and academia.
Militant distrust of modern science, special bitterness toward Evolution, commitment to Young earth creationism and Flood geology (which accounts for nearly all major geological features by reference to the Flood, described in Genesis), increasingly swept away the earlier Evangelical latitude on these issues, and became tests of orthodoxy in an unprecedented way, in the Fundamentalist movement. This remains predominantly true of broader conservative Evangelicalism, as well; but not nearly as uniformly as among self-described Fundamentalists.
Many Fundamentalists tend to oppose the conclusions of modern scholarship that call into question traditional beliefs about the Bible. For example, they accept the traditional ascriptions of Biblical authorship, which presuppose that individual books had a single author. They may also believe that to suggest that a given book of the Bible was a compilation or the result of an editorial effort would compromise fundamentalist assertions about biblical inerrancy and divine inspiration. They are generally hostile towards higher criticism, a form of literary analysis that attempts to discover the origins and sources of Biblical material. Thus, fundamentalists continue to assert that Moses was the primary or sole author of the first five books of the Old Testament against the documentary hypothesis of modern scholarship of that the Pentateuch was composed and shaped by many people over centuries. Some fundamentalists, on the other hand, may be willing to consider alternative authorship only where the Biblical text does not specify an author, insisting that books in which the author is identified must have been written by that author.
Similarly, Fundamentalists categorically reject any scholarship that undermines their belief in the inerrancy of the Biblical text but tend to be open to scholarship that attempts to resolve apparent contradictions.
King James Only fundamentalism
A subset of self-described Fundamentalists also reject all recent translations of the Bible in favor of the King James Version, and is known among Evangelicals as the King James Only Movement. This movement sprang from the fact that most modern translations of the New Testament come from texts based on Alexandrian manuscripts, and there is some doubt among certain Evangelical scholars as to the veracity of this text. Alexandrian manuscripts have come into wide use because they are among the oldest New Testament texts available. Critics counter that this is because the climate in Egypt lent itself to the preservation of papyri (as opposed to the climate of Turkey and Syria) and also because immediately before the oldest Byzantine manuscripts we have found there was major persecution by the Romans in the region in question which included the burning of many churches and Bibles. At any rate, many fundamentalists prefer the Byzantine manuscripts (called the "Majority Text" tradition or the "Received Text" tradition although these are not strictly identical) over the Alexandrian ones (called the "Critical Text") and so favor the King James Version and New King James Version over other popular translations such as the New International Version (NIV) and New Living Translation (NLT). There are, however, many fundamentalists who do not hold this view.
Christian fundamentalism within Christianity
In Protestant Christian denominations modern Fundamentalism was born in controversy, and militantly perpetuates controversy. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention has had persistent conflicts instigated by fundamentalists attempting, successfully, to resist a drift of their denomination away from commitment to historical Christianity, toward control by liberal factions.
Christian fundamentalism and US public schools
In some American school districts there is still controversy over whether public school students should be taught evolution, creationism, or some mixture of the two. There has been ongoing opposition to the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade. Arguably, an even wider array of issues than these are deeply informed by Fundamentalist religious views in the U.S. Currently, biology textbooks in Georgia are labelled with stickers advising that they contain the "controversial theory of evolution".
Many fundamentalists believe that the public schools have become hopeless corrupted, and rather than attempting to change the curriculum they have withdrawn from the public school system. As a consequence, fundamentalists are also often very active in the homeschooling movement and in advocacy of private schools.
An important part of the political discourse of the United States (and some other countries) is the notion, often touted by political liberals in the U.S., that Fundamentalist political activity in some cases contradicts the doctrine of the separation of church and state. The abortion debate is an example of a still-active issue where the religion-based beliefs which in the past have underlain many laws, are being deliberately replaced by naturalistic assumptions and agnosticism more in keeping with the modern temper and a more pluralistic populace. Fundamentalists believe, and argue militantly, that this drift will end in ship-wreck: for proof of which, they point to the "tragedy of abortion" and its supposed attendant causes in nihilism and moral laxity. Their sometimes agressive interference, and tendency to use military metaphors to describe this as a "culture war", and a "war against the culture of death", leads some alarmed abortion rights advocates to argue that religious beliefs have no place in political discourse.
Christian fundamentalists tend to be very active within the United States Republican Party and make up a group known as the religious right. Within American politics, fundamentalists can be very powerful because they tend to be extremely committed and well-organized. At the same time, fundamentalists are often politically limited by their difficulty in compromising with other groups and their general lack of interest in issues that do not have a religious connection.
Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism, by Joel A. Carpenter, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195129075, 1999
Noll, Mark. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada. Eerdmans, 1992. (pages 311-389)
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture by John Shelby Spong, Harper San Francisco; ISBN 0060675187, 1992
Christian fundamentalism and US politics
Reading
Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; ISBN 0802805396, 1991
