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What does a term mean . Second how did fundamentalists relay to mainstream culture . And third, why has fundamentalism been so much more influential in the united states, then in any other society in the western world . Im curious, is fundamentalism, fundamentalists, are these storms that you hear today, do you know people who call themselves a fundamentalist, or use this label . I see some nodding. And examples . Yes . So i have a question islam who are trying to describe alternate groups. So its a term that you hear more often in the context of islam. What about here, among american increased groups . Do you hear the label . Im from up north, and many people are called fundamentally fundamentalists christians, i dont think its often, in my experience, not often used by the fundamentalist themselves. So youve heard it more as a pejorative term . Thats interesting. That lines up with my own experience. I think, today, there are exceptions, i certainly met some proud independent baptized who claim being fundamentalist. But generally, there seems to be used as an insult, its not a label that most christians would want applied to themselves. And i think that, the history of that connotation, that kind of negative sense, in which we hear the word today, really became crystallized in one particular historical episode. And that is the infamous, or famous, depending on your view, scope trial, there we go, of 1925. The monkey trial. That dominated newspaper headlines, in the summer of 1925. Now, the scope trial, has a certain status and popular culture. Youre probably vaguely aware of what it involved. But let me tell you the basic facts of this trial. The state of tennessee passed a law forbidding the teaching of the theory of evolution in tennessee public high school. Now, aclu the, the American Civil Liberties union, wanted to challenge the constitutionality of this law. So they put together and financed, a case, stay recruited a Tennessee High School teacher. Substitute science teacher, young guy, named john scopes, who agreed to purposefully incriminate himself by making a point of teaching the chapter from their textbook on the theory of evolution. And then urging his own students to testify against him, to wrap him, out to get him in trouble. So that he would be charged with this crime, and it would go to trial. So thats exactly what happened. And this turned out to be just an amazing publicity opportunity for the little town of dayton, tennessee. 200 reporters descended on the town, in july of 1925. A few thousand spectators, from various parts of the south, and further. If you had walked on the street updated in july you wouldve seen train chimpanzees playing on the courthouse lawn, billboards featuring a picture of a champ drinking out of a local variety soda pops. Local merchants were really trying to capitalize on this moment. And the trial itself, was pretty sensational. Because, both sides, the defense and the prosecution, managed to recruit a star for their side. So, on the prosecutions team, was William Jennings brian, the great common are, the populist democrat, who had run for president three times, he had been wilsons secretary of state, he was known as this great defender of traditional protestant as them. And, a great lawyer joined the defense team, as well, probably the most famous leftwing lawyer of the time. And famously, agnostic, on a matter of religion, matt darryll. Who was very known for his bold politics, here he is, in his characteristically flourish, making his opening arguments, here is, darrow and brian, on the upper right here. And heres a sample of the street scene, to. This is a table setup with anti evolution traps and books, both sides of this debate really seeing this as an opportunity. Now, the aclu wanted to challenge the law on the grounds of academic freedom. That is a tactic they wanted to take. But darrow veered in a different direction. He decided to really put traditional religion on trial. And he summoned to the stand, for crossexamination, bryant himself, this was very unorthodox for one of the attorneys of the prosecution to be someone from for examination. And darrow managed to make a fool of this great statement. He wanted to show the conflict between science and religion. And so, he asked bryan questions like well how could joshua possibly have compelled to say on to stand still . Or can you tell us the exact date of the flood . And bryan did his best to remain firm, and defending his dock trying to views. Although in many cases, he didnt really have a clear and sharp answer to rebut darrow. I will say, that bryan refused to defend young creationism. He would not defend the view that each day of creation described in janice is literally means 24 hours. He said it could mean a longer period of time. But in general, he defended the conservative traditional reading of scripture. And he didnt, he kind of came off as an old man who was a bit out of his depth. The judge ended up throwing out this testimony, and in fact, most of the testimony for the defense as a relevant to the question of whether or not this High School Teacher had broken the law. It was pretty clear that he had. And so, in the end, the jury found scopes guilty, and he was ordered to pay a fine. Although the conviction was later later thrown out on a technicality. Now, inside the courthouse, the crowd was definitely on bryan side. On the side of the prosecution. Hearing for brian. But darrow and the defendants of evolution, really seemed to win over the Mainstream Press in the big cities. A journalist for the baltimore sun, a guy named rankin, was dispatched to cover this trial. And he wrote so incredibly searing mocking reports, of the people he met there. And i just want to read a next served of one of his reports. When an effect of clarence darrels great speech, meaning his closing arguments, yesterday seems to be precious lead the same as if he had called it up a rain spot in the interior afghanistan. The morons in the audience, when it was over, simply hissed it. Bryant had these hillbillies locked up in his pen and he knows it. Since his earliest days, indeed, his chief strength has been among folk of remote hills and the forlorn and lonely farms. His nonsense is their ideal of sense when he deludes them with his theological bilge, they rejoice like pilgrims disparateing in the river jordan. I mean, holy cow. Like no matter what you might think of mannequins ideology, he had a certain genius for comic condescension. Reports like this had powerful effects. This trial became to be widely seen as a cultural defeat for fundamentalism. As the moment that made famous the caricature of the fundamentalists as the uneducated redneck. The scopes trial has become this icon of the clash between fundamentalism and modernism. I think it is so telling that 1925 was also the year of the creation, in canada, of the United Church of canada. Remember i told you about that great moment of protestant unity in canada when the baptists, the congregation lists sorry, not the baptists, the presbyterians, the congregation lists in the methodist join together to make one big denomination. It was just this lovely historical coincidence that that happened at the very same time that American Protestant thisism was so clearly polarizing and breaking apart. Its handy because its one that you have to memorize for the final. It shows us this divergent set paths, the canadian and American Protestantism were headed down. So we have to ask them what are the historical reasons for this very different character of American Protestant conflict. And who are these fundamentalists . Who are really talking about when we use this label . So first weve got to be clear about what fundamentalism means. This word is used pretty carelessly i think in todays culture and media. In this class, we will use it in a very historically precise way. Fundamentalists, im giving you a definition now. Fundamentalists are conservative protestants who militantly opposed, militantly opposed, the militant is important, new ideas about the bible, science and society. And often, although not always, broke away to found their own churches, schools and religious organizations. So these are militant protestants who really oppose in an aggressive way these new changes, and in many cases, they broke a way to found their own groups. Now we can talk about in organized fundamentalist movement. From roughly 1902 say 1930, when these conservatives were fighting brutally to retain control of those Old Established northern denominations that we call the main line. Now this week are reading a famous german by liberal baptist preacher. I think that really gives you some sense of the conflict. Here is Harry Emerson fascinate. He apply on the cover of time magazine. I think it gives you some sense of the cultural status of liberal princes of the pop it back then. Manhattan is where he originally gave his sermon. When you read it, i think you will see that his sermon was not a fight over doctrine, at least not explicitly well. You know you might need to talk with your classmates over whether this is actually what is going on beneath. I think that at least on the surface, his approach was very different from clients darrows. Essentially, he says that if a person is a true liberal, then they should have no problem with other christians believing say that god created the universe in six days. Even if they themselves dont happen to believe that. Fosdick says the problem with these fundamentalists is not their theology. They can believe what they like. The problem is their beliefs about church. The fact that they think that the rules like fosdick dont belong in any truly christian church. This sermon was a sensation. His brother, fosdicks brother, randi Rockefeller Foundation for 30 years. The foundation funded the nation wide distribution of this sermon as a pamphlet. So it had much wider reach by direct mail in just the people who happen to hear it preached. What ive been reading fosdicks autobiography and its really interesting. He refers to the sermon and he calls it a failure, even though it was really widely read. To him it failed in what his main hope was, which was to stop the fighting and restore harmony. Maybe thats a bit naive, really thinking about it. But it is true that after about 1930, the fundamentalist movement as an organized movement disintegrates. The conservatives basically lost their bid to control those mainline churches, which is why we so often say the liberal mainline. That is how people typically refer to those nominations. Fundamentalism did not go away though. So at this point we can describe fundamentalism as maybe not an organized movement, but as a set of networks. A subculture. Fundamentalists built their own world of bible colleges, nominations, prophesy conferences, anti communist crusades, radio ministries. A really powerful network of religious and political groups that, for quite a long time, maybe up until the sixties and seventies, was not really on the mainstream medias radar. It kind of seemed like after the scopes trial, fundamentalists had crawled into holes somewhere and never appeared from the perspective of the average reporter at the New York Times or Something Like that. In fact, fundamentalism was going into this powerful subculture. Now one more point about terms. In these years, so the first half of the 20th century, the terms fundamentalist and evangelical were more or less interchangeable. People would use them both to talk about the same individuals, to talk about themselves. But in the 19 forties, that starts to change. The term evangelical comes instead to mean a conservative protestant who is still doctrine only awfully fundamentalist, but is not so militant about it. So im talking about people like billy graham, an evangelical was someone who wanted to engage mainstream culture, maybe collaborate a little more with other christians, rather than separating from the world in an extreme way or picking lots of fights over doctor. That is what evangelical comes to me and it is still how it is used to today i believe. This then is the big arc of the fundamentalist movement in our story. I want to turn now briefly to the matter of theology. Say a little bit more about what fundamentalists believed and believe today. We now, fundamentalism looked slightly different in Different Church traditions. So a baptist fundamentalist would believe slightly Different Things and worship differently than a mennonite fundamentalist. But they are called fundamentalists because they did tend to share a set of fundamentals. We can make some broad comments about that. They tended to have a piloted stick concern for personal holiness. For good behavior. Many of them came in some way out of the puritan tradition. And retained that pertain combination of interest in rigorous doctrine, systematic theology, with him pietism. That personal feeling of the spirit. Lots and lots of fundamentalists, although by no means all of them, were also prima lenny a list in their view of the and times. You remember from last week that means they thought jesus was going to return, probably pretty soon, in the flesh to inaugurate the prophesys predicted in the book of revelations and eventually after the battle of armageddon and all that jazz, the kingdom of the saints. We can move down to, i think, and even more basic level of fundamentals though. Because you wouldve had some disagreement among fundamentalists on things like the end times. I struggled for a long time to come up with a good acronym to help students remember the fundamentals until just a couple of years ago, when i put this out as a challenge to some of your predecessors in this class. One lovely student, a woman named miranda roster who graduated last spring, came up with marvin. It is so handy. I was using i van which is, how do you remember i van . Its not even a word. The fundamentals. This comes up from a list drawn up by some conservative presbyterians in 1910 wanted to figure out what are the most important things that we cannot ever compromise on. And for miracles. Belief that the miracles report in the bible actually did happen. A for atonement. That is a belief in the traditional doctrine of christ s substitution area tournament on the cross. Substitution erie. He was not just a nice guy, he was not just a moral example for us, he really did take our place on the cross and die for hours since. R for resurrection. He was actually bodily resurrected v, christ was born of a virgin. In four in air and sea. The doctrine of biblical in air and sea, meaning the bible is totally without error, no matter what scientists and historians may say. Now i want to push back a bit against the scopes trial caricature a fundamentalists as country bump cans by talking about, i guess you could call them the thinking mens fundamentalists. Those at princeton theological seminary. Princeton in the late 19th century was one of the intellectual powerhouses behind the conservative response to modernist theology. I want to focus on benjamin war field. He was a scholar at princeton. Youre reading in excerpt from one of his sermons this week. He was born in 1851. He was the son of a wealth to do Cattle Breeder in kentucky. He came from pretty aristocratic stop. His great grandfather was a u. S. Senator. One of his uncles was a confederate general in the civil war. His family was presbyterian and warfield really threw himself into serving his family faith. He went to princeton as a student and he returned to the seminary about a decade later in 1887 to teach their and to spend his life fighting against modernism. By defending this doctrine known as biblical inerrancy. We have to spend a little bit of time with the idea of inerrancy. This idea that everything in the bible is true no matter what scholars might say, the scripture has no error in it. The basic idea is very old. Christians have always been concerned to defend the bible as a perfect source of truth

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