The Birth of American Fundamentalism: A Good Place to Start

Today, the word ‘fundamentalism’ evokes a particular fear for most Americans, the fear of radical fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. For most of our nation’s history, however, fundamentalism has almost exclusively been understood in a Christian sense. Christian fundamentalism has, historically, played a very large role in our country. George Marsden examines fundamentalism and evangelicalism in the United States in his 1991 volume, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. It is poignant to note that Marsden was writing from a pre-9/11 perspective, and thus does not provide for an audience as affected by the term as the general American public is today.

Marsden discusses the beginnings of Christian fundamentalism in America with the onset of World War I. During the war, Protestants began to associate patriotism with Christian ideals. Billy Sunday even said, “Christianity and Patriotism are synonymous terms (51).” After the war, the church was initially more united than ever, gaining victories such as the passing of Prohibition (53). However, along with the Red Scare, social unrest, and secularization of American culture that came in the 1920s came divisions in the American Protestant church. The church split into two main branches, one expressing social liberalism and wanting to remain a part of the larger American culture, and a more conservative one that resisted the chaos and confusion that came with the changing of the times. The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 became a symbolic battle between these two schools of thought.

John Scopes was a public high school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who agreed to be arrested and prosecuted for breaking Tennessee’s anti-evolution law, which prohibited the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools, in order that he might challenge the constitutionality of the law. The trial was immediately thrust into the national spotlight, a first for the American legal system at that time. John Scopes was no more than a pawn in a trial that turned into a battle between two quintessential American public figures, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. Bryan, whom at this point in his career had run for President (and lost) three times, was a champion of the Democratic Party of the day and a staunch Prohibitionist and socially conservative Presbyterian. Of the Scopes trial, Bryan said that he was “trying to save the Christian Church from those who are trying to destroy our faith.” Darrow, on the other hand, was a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and was widely respected throughout America as an unbeatable lawyer with very liberal views. Darrow called the south “an intellectual desert.” Throughout the trial, Darrow attempted to illustrate that the anti-evolution law was unconstitutional, stating that if that kind of law were upheld then eventually the country would turn into a battle of “man against man… creed against creed… until we are back to the times when bigots burned the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.” Bryan opposed, declaring that evolution was synonymous with atheism. The trial was really won when Darrow called Bryan himself to the stand and gleaned from him that he believed the book of Genesis was subject to interpretation, saying that “the creation could have gone on for millions of years.” The legal outcome of the trial was that the Tennessee Supreme Court eventually upheld the anti-evolution law and determined Scopes guilty of violating it. However, it was also stated by the Supreme Court of Tennessee that no prosecutor could again bring an indictment against a teacher for violating the law. The social outcome of the trial, though, was that the country ridiculed the Southern Christians fighting behind Bryan, and they lost the cultural battle of Bible versus Darwin. In Marsden’s words, the Scopes Monkey Trial “thrust fundamentalism into worldwide attention and brought about its decline as an effective national force (60).”

*Information about Scopes Monkey Trial from PBS Documentary.

The Scopes Monkey Trial was the catalyst that separated Christian fundamentalists from the American Evangelical Protestants. Marsden states, “What chiefly distinguished fundamentalism from earlier evangelicalism was its militancy toward modernist theology and cultural change (66).” The Scopes Monkey Trial made it very clear that American culture was changing and embracing modernist theories of science and religion. Fundamentalists built walls for themselves, both literally and figuratively, so that they could separate themselves from the rest of American culture. Jerry Falwell, a famous American Evangelical Christian Pastor, has defined fundamentalism in a catchy way: “A fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something (Marsden 1991).” The early twentieth century certainly made a large number of Evangelical Protestants angry, and they reacted by becoming fundamentalists, separate from the rest of the church and the rest of the nation.

What Does it Mean to be Southern?

As Peter Applebome begins his book entitled Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture, he describes a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, calling this organization the “most southern of institutions.” Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, are clearly a big deal in this part of America. Applebome states that “the confederation of Southern Baptists always summed up the feverish religiosity, righteous probity, and confining insularity of the South (5, 1996).” It is not so much the Southern Baptists themselves that interest me so much here, but rather the way that their religion seems to define their way of life as well as the way of life of the people who live around or near them. To be southern, it seems, is to be Christian, and furthermore to be Protestant Christian. The probity and insularity of which Applebome speak are surely effects of the inundation of the south with Protestant Christianity. I do not wish to limit any valid definition of southern culture as a whole to an analysis of its religious atmosphere alone, but I believe it to be true that the religious atmosphere in the south has always been a part of what defines the south as different from the rest of the nation. Applebome goes on to illustrate various ways that one might define what it means to be southern, but there is a context of Protestant Christianity in which all of the social and political definitions of ‘southern-ness’ Applebome provides must be viewed. In the first chapter alone, he discusses the political ramifications of the growing religious right, the juxtaposition of past alongside present that is so common in the south, the racial history of the south and its impact on society, and various other truths about why the south is southern. However, in order to understand these truths, the people behind them, and the culture they come from, one must understand the Christian lens through which most southerners view the world.

Why Study Southern Christianity?

Nelson Mandela, a hero of cross-cultural understanding, once said, “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” I cannot be certain what these words meant to Mandela, but they hold truth for me. From February through June 2008, I lived and studied in Melbourne, Victoria, in the beautiful country of Australia. This weekend I will have been back in the United States for three months, and back at Wofford in South Carolina for one month. The reverse culture shock that I experienced upon returning home was in many ways more difficult to deal with and understand than the culture shock I experienced during my life on foreign soil. You can imagine my surprise and disbelief when this reverse culture shock was actually magnified by coming back to school. Students at Wofford and people in South Carolina in general were saying and doing things that baffled me, but why? I have spent three years at Wofford, and truthfully it has felt like just as much of a “home” as my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. There was something about the people here, the culture here, that was drastically different from what I experienced in Melbourne and even what I readjusted to at home during the summer. I feel that being from the American South has shaped much of my study abroad experience, and framed my cultural perceptions. I think that Southern culture, especially in South Carolina, is drastically different from other cultures that I have experienced. The things people believe, what guides their actions, and why they live the way they live in South Carolina are based in entirely different conceptions of the world and one’s role in it than those characteristics of other peoples. I hope to illustrate how Christianity in the South is a large part of what makes southern culture different, what makes southern people and southern life different from the rest of the world.

“So, is everyone in Southern America a Christian?” Giselle, my Australian roommate, asked when I had tried to explain why being “southern” was different than just being “American.” I had told her that southerners were typically more socially and politically conservative than most Americans, that southern people in general hold a special sense of place and value being ‘southern’ as a part of their identity, and that within the United States being ‘southern’ connoted a differentiation from the larger American society. She was curious, I believe, because Australia is a very secular country. It intrigued her that for me, part of being from the south was being Christian. I stumbled over my words in an effort to present to her the truth as it was without being biased or giving her any negative impressions. Her question, however, was a valid one. Most earnest attempts to define what it means to be southern include some exploration of the ways in which Christianity has defined southern life over the years. This conversation with Giselle, as well as many others I had with Australians as well as Americans from other regions have led me to seek a definition of what it means to be southern, what it means to be Christian in the south, and whether or not any line can be drawn between the two.

Over the course of the semester, I will be exploring what it means to be southern and how Christianity has shaped South Carolina's culture and people, especially in the Spartanburg area. I will attempt to discover how Christianity in the south is changing by observing where it has been and currently is, as well as where it is headed. I will be looking for Christianity in southern culture; in politics, education, social life and public morality. I feel that these things are pertinent to the lives of not only those who live in the south, not only Christians, but all Americans and even all people.