Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The Rise of Fundamentalism and the Progessive church’s response in a Spiritual but Not Religious World

           In looking at the more recent history of the Christian church, we can learn a lot and improve on what the Fundamentalist Conservative church has done. The Fundamentalist movement was one of the biggest movements of the 20th Century and has shaped the church in a major way. This movement formed in response to societal and intellectual pressures on both the church and the Scriptures It was formed in reaction to the supposed modernist movement of culture of the time, whether that was the earliest 20th century or the 1980’s. This movement was shaped by pietism, or the emphasis on the emotional reaction to God over the intellectual reaction to God; therefore any ideas of thoughts contrary to the words of scripture were viewed with disdain. It was also very reactionary in general, in a way to pull the church away from the extreme liberalization and modernization of the church.
This movement has also shaped the post- modern landscape of the Christian church.  The Fundamentalist church has also made decisions that have caused a large number of Christians to become increasingly disenfranchised from the church. Therefore, it is important that the progressive/moderate respond in such a way that opens up dialogue with those marginalized by the Conservative Fundamentalist church. Therefore, it is important the progressive churches to understand from the Fundamentalist movement, but also improves discourse with those disenfranchised. Whether that means to take a stand on more progressive issues, and not lose our voice , but also to advocate for the embracing of both science and faith, because that is seen as important to so many in today’s world.
            In the early 20th century, many people were going away to school, and learning about the theories of evolution and higher biblical criticism. This left their traditional parents at home somewhat terrified when they would come home believing more about Evolution and Darwinism than in the traditional Genesis creation story, and their parents were of course terrified because of their  supposed dismissal of the Genesis account and the basic theological education they had received while at home. There was also the growth of higher biblical criticism which in their minds was the cause of this increasing awareness of more liberal expressions
According to Linder,
“ Evolution appeared destined to triumph without another major battle—at least not as to the fact of evolution, as opposed to the mechanism by which it occurs, which remained a topic of debate. In theological circles, the rage was “higher criticism,” an approach to determining scriptural meaning by looking at the socio-historical setting of its writers.  The Bible contained important messages, these theologians said, but no serious person can any longer pretend that the Bible, for example, provided an accurate guide to world history.  Literalism seemed headed for virtual extinction”(paragraph 1).
            The teaching of evolution and higher biblical criticism was seen to be taking the forefront in the culture as a whole. With this rise of modern culture in the world, the church was scared of the repercussions. They saw the rise of Modernism to be a major issue in the lives of not only the people of the church, but the world in general. They saw their response as important to the very life’s blood of the church. According to Menzies, “In the United States, Fundamentalism emerged about 1875, reaching the zenith of influence in the 1920’s. It grew out of a shared concern by Evangelical leaders, both church leaders and scholars for a means of responding to the alarming heavy erosion of basic theological scholarship, beliefs that were under heavy assault from liberal theological scholarship”(p.199).  
            There were several main contributors to the Fundamentalist movement of the early 20th century. There was Charles Nelson Darby, Dwight L. Moody, and Charles Rigby. Each contributed to the movement in different ways. All of these people preached against beliefs and theories of Darwin and other scientists at the time. Charles Nelson Darby, founder of the Brethren movement, believed the bible was the beginning of Christian understanding in all things. According to Linder, “Darby insisted biblical prophesies provided “a sure guide to human history—past, present, and future.”  (GE, 27)   After having founded the movement three decades earlier in England, Darby traveled across the Atlantic six times between 1859 and 1874 to spread his doctrine of biblical inerrancy and the imminent return of Christ to establish the millennial kingdom. Everywhere he went, and in his fifty-three volumes of writings, Darby broadcast his message that the Bible represented the inspired, authoritative, faithfully transmitted, and infallible word of God”(paragraph 3). He believed that the scripture was not only basic in understanding, but it was the sole authority in spiritual matters. He believed in the eminent return of Christ was the reason for the church in the world.  There was also Dwight L. Moody, evangelist and founder of the Moody Bible Institute. According to Gonzalez, “Moody was a Chicago shoe salesman who was moved to act by the lack of religious life among the masses of that great city. He began bringing people to the Congregationalist church he attended, but soon founded an independent church” (p.33). Moody was a firm believer in the inerrancy of scripture. He believed that Genesis was foundational to understanding all of Christianity. According to Linder, “To say Moody took the Bible seriously is an understatement.  He rose at five o’clock every morning to engage in several hours of prayerful study of the book [the Bible].  He was especially interested in Genesis, offering the advice: “Spend six months studying Genesis; it is the key to the whole book.”  Although a careful study of the Bible, no one could call Moody a well-rounded reader.  His choice of books followed a simple rule.  “I do not read any book,” he said, “unless it helps me understand the Book” (paragraph 5).  
Another person who was important to the formation of Christian fundamentalism was William B. Riley. William B. Riley was a Baptist minister, and later called a “second Moody” by the press. According to Linder, “Riley’s distinctive brand of fundamentalism combined social activism, puritanical moralism, and a literalist premillennialist theology”(paragraph 8). Riley was also huge in the building of fundamentalism against both society pressures and higher biblical criticism. According to Linder, “Riley invented the label “fundamentalist” and became the prime mover in the movement that took that name.” (paragraph 10) Riley was instrumental in the forming the movement as a whole with the formation of WCFA (World Christian Fundamentalist Association), one of the largest and most influential groups of early fundamentalists.
            Although Riley’s movement was first reactionary to the movement of higher criticism, he soon believed that liberal leaders and theologians were more threatening to the Christian movement. According to Linder, “Although his Fundamentalist movement began as a reaction to the growing popularity of “higher criticism” (the view that the Bible is best understood in the distinct historical and cultural context which produced it), Riley soon identified the growing acceptance by modernist religious leaders of evolution as the infidelity most threatening to Christian values”(paragraph 12)
Scopes Monkey Trial
            One of the most foundational events of the Fundamentalist movement was the Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. In it, after the Tennessee state legislature passed a law against the teaching of evolution in public schools. The American Civil Liberties Union sought to have a test case in Tennessee. The test case was found to occur in Dayton, when the biology teacher (who actually never remembered teaching evolution) was brought up for the teaching of evolution. According to Moran,
“In the 1920’s much of the fundamentalist discontent focused on the issue of evolution which supporters and detractors often labelled Darwinism. Participants in the crusades against evolution clearly aligned themselves with fundamentalist goals. Some fundamentalists, such as William Jennings Bryan denounced evolution for providing a rationale for warfare and buttressing what came to be known as Social Darwinism” (p. 98)
According to Gonzalez,
“The conflict between liberals and fundamentalists was exasperated in the post-war period. This was the time of the famous Scopes Trial, which symbolized the high point of the effort on the part of fundamentalists to ban the teaching of the evolution in public schools—an effort that in some quarters would continue into the twenty-first century. Almost all denominations were divided over the issue of fundamentalism—particularly the inerrancy of Scriptures, which by then had become a hall of fundamentalist orthodoxy.”(p. 476)
This case was eventually overturned on appeal, and given the scrutiny of people at the time on the state of Tennessee, no more teachers would tried for teaching evolution in the public schools. According to Menzies, “Following the famous Scopes Monkey Trial over the teaching of Evolution in schools in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925, Fundamentalism was publically humiliated and the movement retreated into defensive posture. For the next decades, fundamentalism languished in the thros of internal conflict” (p.199) 
After the Scopes Monkey trial, Fundamentalist Christianity retreated into more standard affair. They concentrated on not only revivals but Global missions. It wasn’t until the 1970’s and the election of Jimmy Carter that Christianity saw that given the right candidate they could unite under the banner of one candidate. This candidate who united the Religious Right was Ronald Reagan.   According to Lambert,
“The political influence of the Religious Right is surprising in light of the history of fundamentalists since the Scopes trial, when conservative evangelicals in general and fundamentalists in particular disengaged from politics. In part, they stayed on the sidelines because they believed that they should concentrate on other endeavors, such as evangelistic enterprises, including revivals and missions. They believed that it was more important to concern themselves with eternal salvation than with mundane politics. Yet at the same time it bothered them to watch American culture become captive to "secular humanism" in the period between 1925 and the mid-1970s. Public education at every level taught the nation's young people that science, not faith in God, held the key to human progress. Moreover, in the view of religious conservatives, the U.S. government seemed to be antagonistic to the Christian faith” (p. 188)
 This new Christian Right was gathered at a grassroots level in response to certain facets of secular culture and the world. These grassroots campaign was in reaction to an increase in divorces, the LGBT, and feminist movements. All of these movements galvanized the Religious Right, and greatly their responses to the issues have greatly come to affect the post-modern world.  According to Lambert,
“In the mid-1970’s, the wife of fundamentalist minister denounced most of the books adopted for English classes by the Kanawha County School board in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia. She claimed the books were “disrespectful of the authority and religion, destructive of social and cultural values, obscene, pornographic, and unpatriotic or in violation of individual and familial rights of privacy” (p. 194)
Open Hearts Gathering, a more progressive church in a very conservative area, we believe that we can learn a lot by looking at the rise of the Fundamentalist movement. Firstly, we must learn not to concede our voice to the extreme Fundamentalist conservative party. Since the 1980’s there voice has been at the forefront of Christian thought of theology, power and agenda. Secondly, it is important that we not run away from the answers of science. We, as Christians, do not need to divide our heart thinking from our intellect. Both of these streams of consciousness can work together and inform each other. They accentuate each other and are not at war with one another and one does not need to cut off their intelligence to understand faith. They should and do magnify each other. The sciences answer question that faith and the people at the time of scripture could never have thought to imagine. Faith and Spirituality answer questions that science begins to answer, but there is a huge amount of grey area where both answers can inform human understanding of our world.
 In terms of LGBT issues for example, Progressives and moderate churches have to be more vocal. Not only in terms of being more vocal on spiritual issues but also political issues, standing up for what the Gospel truly says, not just the literal gospel but the spirit of the gospel that has been informed and not only filtered through our heart, but also our mind. When the spiritual but not religious crowd (the largest chunk being the twenty to thirty year olds, they see the church as not being in line with their beliefs on issues. They believe the church is not concentrating on what the Gospel really says. This has caused a large group of them to leave the church in general. The progressive church must have ethics that are engaging of the world in a new way compared to our fundamentalist predecessors. Our ethics must be those which concentrate on matters that are not considered “in people’s bedrooms”. Open Hearts Gathering has been very vocal in these issues. When North Carolina was debating the passage of Amendment One, Open Hearts Gathering was one of the only faith communities in Gastonia to speak out against it. Our minister at the time was the only to actually speak out on news station, which I applaud. This is just one example in the past where Open Hearts Gathering has been a very vocal voice to help say that Conservative Fundamentalist is not the only voice in the church.
We as progressive and moderate Christians do not only need to have a voice in every debate, but we need to speak as loudly and as often as needed. It is by the conceding of the Christian voice for the eighty years that has caused the Christian church to become dominated by the extremely Fundamentalist thought. It is also the yielding of the voice of progressives and moderates that has allowed for a whole generation of people to become disenfranchised from the Christian community as a whole. We also need to strengthen our voice by banding together with similar people of faith across denominational and other religions on these issues. This is where the true ecumenical work begins. It is through this ecumenical work that we can fully embrace the message of Christ and a view of Christ that we may share with even those in other Christian communities. Whether that is LGBT people, or the Spiritual but Not Religious people, especially in the twenty-thirty year old age range.
One issue that we could see this overlap in terms of us having a voice and embracing an opinion that embraces not only science but faith is the issue of ex-gay/reparative therapy. Being that conservatives have been at the forefront of policy and theological discussion for years and so many people have been hurt in terms of reparative therapy. Reparative therapy is something neither supported by science or rational theology, and it does not help the individual. Yet for Fundamentalist theology, being that LGBT is broken and in need of being fixed, whether it is by whatever methods, this therapy is deplorable. It is through avocation for dismissal of this practice that we can practice both these principles more fully. We are not only using a voice to advocate for the individual but also for the moderate and more progressive voice in general.
 The rise of the fundamentalist conservative church in the 20th century was has a reactionary result to higher criticism and an increase in intellectual knowledge among clergy but also children going away to school in general. They reacted to this “modernism” by an increased reverence for inerrancy of scripture. The two points of view came to a boiling point during the Scopes Monkey Trial, where a teacher was tried for the teaching of evolution in public school. Although the man was found guilty, the case was thrown out on appeal, and fundamentalism was publically humiliated and ran into the sidelines, until the 1980’s where it once again crystallized in reaction to more secular pressures on not only scripture but family values. It was also through this rise that the Conservative voice became the assumed main component of the Christian faith, which then caused a major rise in “Spiritual but Not religious” in the 21st century. Therefore, it is important that the progressive and moderate voice of the church continue to speak out on matters of importance. Not to concede our voice to the Fundamentalist/Religious Right.

Bibliography
Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity: The Reformation To The Present Day. New York; HarperOne Press, 2010
Lambert, Frank. Religion in American Politics: A Short History . Princeton, New Jersey; Princeton University Press, 2008.
Linder, Doug. Putting Evolution on the Defensive: William B. Riley and the Rise of Fundamentalism in America. Last modified 2005. Accessed on July 17, 2014, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/Fundamentalism.html
Menzies, William W. 2011. “Nonwesleyan Pentecostalism: A Tradition of Influence in Fundamentalism.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 14 issue 2: 199-211.
Moran, Jeffrey P. 2004.  The Scopes Trial and Southern Fundamentalism in Black and White: Race, Region, and Religion.Journal of Southern History 70 issue 1: 95-120





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