Fundamentalism (fwd)
Theodore M. Seeber
founding fathers, since this is a fairly recent movement in the United
States.
THOU ART GOD
t...@seq.oit.osshe.edu
Call Mahatmah Kane Jeeves BBS (503)8822671 10pm-12n PDT (or whenever we get
around to turning it off)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 10:30:15 -0700
From: [coverley] <cove...@NETCOM.COM>
To: Multiple recipients of list DIFTX-L
<DIFTX-L%YALEVM...@uga.cc.uga.edu>
Subject: Re: Fundamentalism
Dear Ken et al:
The Fundamentals were published in the folrm of twelve booklets in a
series between the years 1910-1915 financed by two wealthy Los Angeles
laypersons, Lyman and Milton Stewart. The booklets themselves posited five
"fundamentals" which included:
1. Inerrancy of the Scriptures
2. Deity of Jesus and the virgin birth
3. The substitutionary atonement
4. The physical resurrection
5. The miracles of Jesus
After the series, some conservative Fundamental-ists added five more
tenets which include:
6. Original sin (human natural depravity)
7. Justification by faith
8. The personal, physical second coming of the Christ
9. Literal heaven and hell
I suppose if you split #2 you could get ten in total.
The fundamentalist movement as we know it really only dates to the
turn of the century. It is, in many ways, more of a reactionary movement than
one positing original thought. It's tenets primarily have sprung from
tendencies in modernist thought to apply Enlightenment rationalism and
empiricism to religious thought. Empiricism requires that everything
considered to be "factual" must be empirically demonstrable. Since much of the
Christian (or any other) faith is not constructted on such premises, the
proponents of modernism have tended to dismiss much of the faith as
superstition and adolescent or primitive thought. This tendency is reflected
in the historical critical approach to scriptures and the many forms of form
or redactional criticism of scriptural studies.
Ironically, the tendencies of fundamentalism have been to play into
exactly the same game, using scriptures as its basis for empiricism, seeking
to "prove" its own understanding with scripture. Such an approach falls into
the same trap as modernism by using faith language and symbolic speech as
literal speech, to be proved or disproved or used for proof or falsehood.
The movement rose during the late 1800s and early 1900s when
scriptural criticism first appeared. Its full development as a movement was
apparent by the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee in 1925 where
Darwinian evolution was found to be a violation of that state's law in that it
taught "a theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught
in the Bible..." That was the zenith of the movement, a time when the Moody
Bible Institute in Chicago was teaching its students in tenets of
fundamentalism along with its companion in Los Angeles, Azusa Street, to go
and reclaim a world contaminated by modernist thought for "true
Christianity." But the movement had encountered serious reaction from mainline
churches by the late 20s and began a downward spiral in membership and
influence. By the 1940s, the weakened movement saw a reform movement within
itself in which less dogmatic and more palatable evangelical thought emerged
with leaders such as Billy Graham. Fundamentalism as a concept has had a
recent boomlet in membership and influence during the 1980s in every religion.
Said boomlet has subsided somewhat in the 1990s.
Sources: John Charles Cooper, Prof. of Religion, Susquehana Univ.,
"Fundamentalism," _The Dictionary of Bible and Religion_, ed. by William
Gentz, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986)
Bruce Lawrence, _Defenders of God_, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989)
_Fundamentalisms Observed_ ed by Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby
(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991)
Harry (who obviously has more than a passing interest in the subject)
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Harry Coverston, TSSF Those who say religion has nothing
Church Div. Sch. Pacific to do with politics do not know
Berkeley, California what religion is. - Gandhi
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