Introduction
Fundamentalism originated from the late 19th century; however, it was not entirely accepted in America until the 20th century. In 1919, a community, believing that God picked them to encourage people to go back to the Christian origins, collected for a series of meetings. It was a crucial time for the church and Christianity history after the first World War. Although fundamentalists differed in understanding of the world creation described in Genesis, they were united by the idea that it was God who created the world. The 12-volume set of essays called “The Fundamentals” was written mostly by Protestants, who deliberately considered and addressed previous ideas made in the religious field: Darwinism, Higher Criticism, and the Social Gospel movement. Finally, the establishment of fundamentalists’ ideas led to the increase of their controversy with modernists.
Christian Reaction to Darwinism
Interestingly enough, before the introduction of Darwinism, humans were seen as entirely ensouled creatures. For instance, according to Reichenbach (2021), in Christianity, a person was viewed as a creature intrinsically connected to the transcendent God who gifted them their souls. After the Darwinian evolution took place, people started considering themselves as biological creatures initially created in a natural way, not divinely. However, later in America, there a law was launched prohibiting people from teaching evolution in state-funded schools.
In the 19th century, Christians saw Darwinism as an alternative approach to religion in terms of human nature origins. According to Sutton (2019), Darwinism has become a crucial problem to the evolution of fundamentalists theories. Ruse (2021, 4) provides the citation of the 1890 year (the time when Fundamentalism originated) “out that when Darwinism appeared, and, under the guise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It has conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit by showing us that we must choose between two alternatives. Either God is everywhere present in nature, or He is nowhere.” Thus, believers perceived Darwinism as an opposition to their religion, suggesting they choose between two alternatives. Later, this evolutionary theory will put fundamentals and modernists to the opposite sides in terms of their perception of Darwinian ideas.
The Rise of Higher Criticism of the Bible
The whole branch of Biblical Criticism is devoted to Higher Criticism, which is an opposition to a lower one (study of texts and manuscripts). In turn, Higher Criticism stands for the study of historical origins, dates, and authorship of Biblical books, especially those of the Old Testament (Andrews et al., 2017). This Higher Criticism is based on the grammatical-historical understanding of the Biblical events, not just philosophy or morality behind them (Andrews et al., 2017). Andrews et al. (2017) highlight that the significant group in the Higher Criticism movement were men rejecting any sort of supernatural powers. Thus, the wave of higher biblical critics may be characterized by the people who did not believe in God or in Bible’s importance and sacral meanings.
The Higher Criticism movement originated in the late 19th – early 20th century. According to Andrews et al. (2017), highlight those views accepted by the British-American school of Higher Criticism in 1910 were initially coined by Franco-Dutch scholars in the mid-16th century. There is also a view that these higher critics of the Bible were seen in Spinoza, a Dutch rationalist philosopher’s work of the 1670 year (Andrews et al., 2017). Despite the various origins of the movement, one may claim that by the beginning of the 20th century, the German and British-American schools fully accepted the existing ideas. One of the core arguments of the higher critics is that all the Biblical books were written in different centuries, not in the 15th. Moreover, as it is claimed by Andrews et al. (2017), these books represent various traditions of the life of Hebrews in the view of higher critics.
The Social Gospel
The Social Gospel is a movement of protestants that took place in the USA and Canada at the beginning of the 20th century, after the Industrial Revolutions. The Social Gospel representatives actively applied Christian ethics and moral rules to solve social problems, especially those concerning inequality, such as the division between the poor and rich, racism, low literacy rates, and others. Moreover, this movement necessarily indicated the division of social reforms into Catholic and Protestant sides; it was more than mere introduction of Christianity to solve social problems. According to Lubienecki (2021), the Social Gospel “applied social reform principles to Christianity as salvation was a social affair of God’s kingdom here and now” (p. 85). The aim of the movement was to achieve social readjustment within the divine intervention (Lubienecki, 2021). The Social Gospel’s representatives saw evil characteristics in crimes, political corruption, urbanization, and labor-capital conflict, all of which are tendencies that were beginning to take place at the end of the 19th century.
The Social Gospel was an optimistic movement, as it believed in the possibility of achieving equality in all spheres (especially in an economic one) of life by diminishing mentioned above tendencies within the divine intervention. They focused on the necessity to return to Christian values, which is similar to the main idea of fundamentalists that appeared a little bit later, officially in the 1919 year.
The Fundamentals
In 1919, a specific community of believers collected for a series of meetings to decide how to encourage people to go back to fundamentals and to God. The Victoria Institute is an organization that was established in London in 1865. This institute promoted anti-evolutionary and anti-Darwinian ideas and contributed to the creation of The Fundamentals, a 12-volume set of essays aimed at establishing fundamental tenets of the Christian beliefs. As it was claimed by Mathieson (2021), “The Fundamentals was a conservative response to liberalizing or “modernist” theological trends, and the broad movement that formed in its defense became known, often pejoratively, as fundamentalism” (p. 255). One of the contributors to the set of essays, James Orr mostly attacked the arguments made by higher critics about the historical facts of the Old Testament (Mathieson, 2021). This fact means that fundamentalists, such as James Orr, deliberately considered previous works made in the religious field of study, including higher criticism, the Social Gospel ideas, etc. Overall, The Fundamentals defended the orthodox Protestant faith because many authors of the volumes were representatives of major Protestant Christian denominations.
The Scopes Trials and its Ramifications
Fundamentalists were confident about the idea that Biblical knowledge was superior to all other possible human ones, including evolutionary theories. In 1925, the Scopes “monkey trial” accused a school teacher of providing knowledge about evolution to the students (Mathieson, 2021). At that time, it was unlawful to teach evolutionary theories in any state-funded schools, so the case drew wide attention.
Thus, this trial led to the increase of opposition between fundamentalists and modernists. As The Victoria Institute promoted anti-Darwinian ideas, most of the authors of The Fundamentals were from this organization, continuing the anti-evolutionary ideas (Mathieson, 2021). On the one hand, the first group of believers was sure that God’s words were above human theories (evolutionary, Darwinian, etc). On the other hand, modernists argued that religion and the evolution of Earth and humanity should be two separate branches in order not to allow such cases as the “monkey trial” and consider both views on human life.
Conclusion
Summing all written above, the history of religious studies has a wide range of ideas that appeared in the 19th-20th century. One of the crucial Christian movements in the United States of America became the fundamentalists’ one. Fundamentalists’ ideas found their origins in the late 19th century, when the Darwinian theory was created. The Fundamentals, which is a 12-volume set of essays written mostly by Protestants, made a deliberate work in considering and addressing the previous ideas in religious fields of study. As The Fundamentals promoted the protestants’ ideas, it also attacked arguments made by representatives of the Higher Criticism movement regarding historical facts of the Old Testament as well as evolutionary theories. Fundamentalists encouraged people to go back to the Bible, God, and Christian origins; they also put the Words of God higher than any human knowledge. This position placed fundamentalists on the opposite side to the modernists in the case of the “monkey trial” in 1925 and after it.
Bibliography
Andrews, E. D., Farnell, F. D., Howe, T., Marshall, T., & Nedwman, D. (2017). Biblical Criticism: Beyond the Basics. Christian Publishing House.
Lubienecki, P. (2021). Social Reconstruction: American Catholics Radical Response to the Social Gospel Movement and Progressives. Journal of Catholic Education, 24(1), 83-106.
Mathieson, S. (2021), The Victoria Institute, Biblical Criticism, and The Fundamentals. Zygon, 56, 254-274.
Reichenbach, Bruce R. 2021. Christianity, Science, and Three Phases of Being Human. Zygon 56.1.
Ruse, Michael. 2021. Christianity and Darwinism: The Journey Is More Important Than the Destination. Religions 12.2.
Sutton, Matthew Avery. 2019. The Day Christian Fundamentalism Was Born. The New York Times.