Fundamentalism and American Culture

by Marsden, George M. ;

  13. Charles Harvey Arnold, Near the Edge of Battle: A Short History of the Divinity School and the “Chicago School of Theology” 1866–1966 (Chicago, 1966), pp. 28–53.

  14. Eri B. Hulbert, “The Baptist Outlook,” The English Reformation and Puritanism: With Other Lectures and Addresses (Chicago, 1899), p. 441, quoted in Maring, “Baptists” (October, 1958), p. 38.

  15. H. C. Vedder, A Short History of the Baptists (Philadelphia, 1907), p. 420, quoted in Maring, “Baptists” (October, 1958), p. 53.

  16. Religion in Our Times (New York, 1932), p. 156.

  17. James Edwin Orr, The Flaming Tongue; The Impact of Twentieth Century Revivals (Chicago, 1973).

  18. Religion in Our Times, pp. 118–19.

  19. Albert H. Newman, “Recent Changes in Theology of Baptists,” American Journal of Theology X (October, 1906), pp. 600–609.

  20. Cf. Maring, op. cit.

  21. Augustus H. Strong, “Recent Tendencies in Theological Thought,” American Journal of Theology I (January, 1897), pp. 133–35. See also the valuable analysis in Grant Albert Wacker, Jr., “Augustus H. Strong: A Conservative Confrontation with History,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard, 1978.

  22. This change occurred in steps between the first edition in 1886 and the eighth in 1907; Maring, “Baptists” (October, 1958), p. 39.

  23. Robert Stuart MacArthur, The Old Book and the Old Faith (New York, 1900), p. 87, quoted in Maring, “Baptists” (October, 1958), p. 48.

  24. Editorial, Watchman-Examiner V (February 1, 1917), p. 134.

  25. “Recent Tendencies,” pp. 120–21.

  26. Systematic Theology, 8th ed. (Philadelphia, 1907), ix, quoted in Bruce L. Shelley, A History of Conservative Baptists (Wheaton, 111., 1971), pp. 7–8.

  27. Donald George Tinder, “Fundamentalist Baptists in the Northern and Western United States, 1920–1950,” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale Universtiy, 1969, pp. 364, 405.

  28. Maring, “Baptists” (October, 1958), p. 54.

  XIII. Presbyterians and the Truth

  1. Answer no. 20, The Westminister Shorter Catechism (1647).

  2. Ethelbert D. Warfield, “Biographical Sketch,” introducing Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, Revelation and Inspiration (New York, 1927), p. vi.

  3. Cf. Theodore Dwight Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science (Chapel Hill, 1977). I am especially indebted to John W. Stewart for allowing me to see his uncompleted Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, “The Princeton Theologians: The Tethered Theology.” Stewart suggests some of the documentation for the points that follow and also throws considerable light on the points themselves.

  4. Quoted in Stewart, “Princeton,” VI, p. 10. I am directly indebted to Stewart for this important point.

  5. Charles Hodge, “The Inspiration of Holy Scripture,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review XXIX (October, 1857), p. 664, quoted in Stewart, “Princeton,” VI, p. 10.

  6. Archibald Alexander, “The Nature and Evidence of Truth,” MSS, Speer Library, Princeton Theological Seminary, Alumni Alcove, quoted in Stewart, “Princeton,” VI, pp. 17–18n.

  7. Stewart, “Princeton,” VI, p. 17, says at least fourteen articles between 1830 and 1860 interpret and endorse works of major Common Sense philosophers.

  8. Samuel Tyler, “Sir William Hamilton and his Philosophy,” Princeton Review XXVII (October, 1855), 553–57 and 564. Despite this high praise here and elsewhere, Princeton theologians were critical of the attempt of Hamilton to fuse principles of Common Sense philosophy with those of Kant. See esp. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, I (New York, 1874), pp. 335–65. Cf. John C. Vander Stelt, Philosophy and Scripture: A Study in Old Princeton and Westminster Theology (Marlton, N.J., 1978), pp. 30–31, 138. Vander Stelt presents a critique of Common Sense influences throughout the history of the Princeton tradition. A similar examination of the Princeton tradition placed in a larger context is Jack Rogers and Donald McKim, The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (New York, 1979).

  9. See Bozeman, Protestants.

  10. George H. Daniels, American Science in the Age of Jackson (New York, 1968). Herbert Hovenkamp, Science and Religion in America 1800–1860 (Philadelphia, 1978).

  11. Quotations are from Stewart, “Princeton,” IV, p. 5. Cf. Bozeman for many other quotations on this theme.

  12. Systematic Theology, I, p. 18. The taxonomical emphasis had some affinities to the Ramist method, so important to early American Puritans.

  13. “Inspiration,” Princeton Review XXIX (October, 1857), p. 692, quoted Stewart, “Princeton,” V, p. 8.

  14. Andrew Hoffecker, “Beauty and the Princeton Piety,” Soli Deo Gloria: Essays in Reformed Theology, R. C. Sproul, ed. (Nutley, N. J., 1976), points out the essential importance that Hodge attached to religious feeling. Most interpreters have been so struck by the Princeton emphasis on intellect as to overlook these crucial elements in the movement.

  15. “Professor Park’s Sermon,” Princeton Review XXII (October, 1850), pp. 643, 645, 656. Hodge held, however, as was usual in Common Sense philosophy, that reason rested on intuitive truths and convictions. But these were a matter of apprehending good evidence, not of subjective feeling.

  16. “Inspiration,” Princeton Review XXIX (October, 1857), pp. 675–77. I am indebted to Stewart for pointing out this passage.

  17. Dennis Okholm, “Biblical Inspiration and Infallibility in the Writing of Archibald Alexander,” Trinity Journal V (Spring, 1976), pp. 79–89.

  18. “Inspiration,” The Presbyterian Review II (April, 1881), pp. 237, 234, 243. Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (Chicago, 1970), pp. 103–31, discusses the Princeton view of Scripture at length.

  19. Systematic Theology, I, p. 10.

  20. Stewart, “Princeton,” VI, pp. 34–35, shows this to be the position of Thomas Reid. He also cites S. A. Grave, The Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Oxford, 1960), pp. 34ff.

  Princeton and fundamentalist defenses of Scripture almost always argued that the testimony of honest people must be accepted and hence the Scripture writers’ own claims as to the inspired nature of Scripture should be believed.

  21. Often today the more relativistic perspective can tolerate almost any divergent point of view except that which denies its premise and insists on an objectively knowable and universally normative fixed body of truth. Such claims, at least when given religious backing, are anathema to most modern liberal thought.

  22. Introduction to Francis R. Beattie’s Apologetics: or the Rational Vindication of Christianity (Richmond, Va., 1903), Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. II, John E. Meeter, ed. (Nutley, N.J., 1973), pp. 98, 99–100.

  23. Beattie’s Apologetics, pp. 100, 101. Cf. “A Review of De Zekerheid des Geloofs, by H. Bavinck (Kampen 1901)” (1903), Selected Writings, II, pp. 106–23. I am indebted to John Wiers, “Scottish Common Sense Realism in the Theology of B. B. Warfield,” unpublished paper, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1977, for a very helpful discussion of these and other passages cited.

  24. “A bad man,” said Archibald Alexander, “stands scarcely any chance of reaching the full truth.” Alexander and Abraham Grosman, “Newman’s Hebrew Commonwealth,” Princeton Review XXII (April, 1850), p. 250, quoted in Stewart, “Princeton,” V, p. 4.

  25. “Darwin’s Arguments Against Christianity and Against Religion” (1889), Selected Writings, II, pp. 137, 141. Cf. “Charles Darwin’s Religious Life: A Sketch in Spiritual Autobiography” (1888), Studies in Theology (New York, 1932), pp. 541–582.

  26. “The Question of Miracles” (1903), Selected Writings. II, pp. 176, 181. In 1911 Warfield published a much more subtle analysis of this whole subject, in a less polemical setting. In it he described the Augustinian position (closely following William Hamilton’s explanation) that reason itself ultimately rests on “beliefs or trusts.” Trust, however, still rested on good evidence, so that “reason as truly underlies faith as faith reason.” Faith, Warfield always maintained, was not si
mply assent to compelling evidence, although he emphasized that aspect. “In every movement of faith … from the lowest to the highest, there is an intellectual, and emotional, and a voluntary element, though naturally these elements vary in their relative prominence in the several movements of faith.” “On Faith in its Psychological Aspects” (1911), Studies in Theology, pp. 325–29, 341.

  27. Cf. editorial, “Opinion and Fact,” The Presbyterian 81 (May 31, 1911), p. 3. “To jumble opinion, hypothesis and fact together in thinking is pernicious to intelligence and morals.” This is what Darwinism, higher criticism, and the liberal theologians do, said the editorial. On the other hand, “with true science, there is no admittance for anything but facts.” Likewise the fundamental doctrines of Christianity “are not opinions, nor theories, though men may hold theories about them.” All these “are self-evident or completely sustained by testimony.… If men knew more perfectly what the Scriptures taught, its truths would bear witness of themselves.”

  28. In 1903 a less substantial revision was accomplished.

  29. See Lefferts A. Loetscher, The Broadening Church: A Study of Theological Issues in the Presbyterian Church since 1869 (Philadelphia, 1957), pp. 18–82, for the best account of these controversies. On the important Briggs cases see also, Carl E. Hatch, The Charles A. Briggs Heresy Trial: Prologue to Twentieth-century Liberal Protestantism (New York, 1969), and Channing Renwick Jeschke, “The Briggs Case: The Focus of a Study in Nineteenth Century Presbyterian History,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1966.

  30. The usual form made “the deity of Christ” point no. 2 and combined the resurrection with the second coming as point no. 5. Ernest Sandeen, Roots, pp. xiv-xv, exposes the error of the first historian of fundamentalism, Stewart G. Cole, The History of Fundamentalism (New York, 1931), p. 34, who attributed this form to the Niagara Bible Conference of 1895. During the 1920s “the five points of fundamentalism” sometimes referred to the Presbyterian points and sometimes to the Presbyterian points with the premillennial return of Christ substituted for the miracles as point no. 5. E.g. editorials, Christian Century XXXIX (April 20, 1922), p. 486, and LX (August 16, 1923), p. 1040. Also a sermon by Walter Benwell Hinson (1860–1926) opposes Shailer Mathews’s attack on each of these five points. John W. Foster, Four Northwest Fundamentalists (Portland, Ore., 1975), p. 63. On the original adoption of the Presbyterian five points see Loetscher, Broadening Church, pp. 97–99.

  31. Sandeen, Roots, pp. 162–207, emphasizes the development of this alliance and shows some evidence for it at least by the 1890s. For reasons that seem to me obscure, he sees this alliance as declining, rather than growing, during the first decades of the century so that The Fundamentals is “the last flowering of a millenarian-conservative alliance.” The alliance, however, was certainly still intact in the 1920s and was still a factor among conservative Presbyterians in the mid-1930s. Likely it grew up and was held together because of common anti-modernist interests as well as some common intellectual traits.

  32. Sandeen, Roots, pp. 201–3, provides a good summary of these activities, carefully noting the role of the dispensationalists.

  33. Editorial, “The Bible League of North America,” The Bible Champion XVI (August, 1913), pp. 35–36. Board members are listed on the inside covers. In 1913 seven were Methodist, five Presbyterian, four Baptist, three Lutheran, three Congregationalist, and one Reformed Church in America. Of these, five were prominent premillennial leaders. (The denomination is not indicated for some board members, all from New York City.)

  XIV. The Fundamentals

  1. Lyman Stewart to Milton Stewart, October 26, 1909, Stewart papers, quoted in Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (Chicago, 1970), p. 195. I am indebted to Sandeen for his fine account of the Stewarts’ role as well as for his other observations on The Fundamentals.

  2. Lyman Stewart to A. C. Dixon, July 29, 1915, quoted in Sandeen, Roots, p. 188.

  3. One fourth of the authors were British, indicating the continuing trans-Atlantic character of evangelicalism.

  Of the 37 most prominent authors (that is those whose names appear in library catalogs) still living in 1910 (who contributed over two thirds of the essays) the average birth date was 1850. By 1913, the mid-year of publication, 16 of these authors were in their seventies (this would include two recently deceased), 4 in their sixties, 12 in their fifties, and 4 in their forties. Only 9 of the 37 were still living in 1925 and of these 3 were not sympathetic to the more militant fundamentalism. Ernest Sandeen, Roots, pp. 208–32, notes a similar pattern of older leadership among millenarians at this time. Fourteen of the millenarian leaders he lists (p. 209) appear among the 37 authors here considered.

  4. The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (Chicago, 1910–1915), XII, p. 4. Other references to The Fundamentals in this chapter will be by volume and page only.

  5. A mailing list of about 100,000 was built up of those who had requested the volumes, XII, p. 4. In 1917 the publishers thought the demand sufficient for a new four-volume edition. The King’s Business, a magazine published at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, which was to continue the work of The Fundamentals, p. 213.

  6. Cf. William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), p. 198.

  7. Only two articles dealt primarily with premillennialism and these were by Charles R. Erdman and John McNicol, both moderates; Sandeen, Roots, pp. 205–6. Erdman says that despite differences with postmillennialism “the points of agreement are far more important.” XI, p. 98. In the same volume Arno C. Gaebelein, pp. 55–86, and C. I. Scofield, pp. 43–54, present dispensationalist views, although in restrained ways. The editors appear to be trying gently to introduce this teaching in this late volume. Scofield’s essay also presents Keswick teaching rather explicitly.

  8. Sandeen, Roots, pp. 190–91.

  9. Sandeen, Roots, p. 197, citing Stewart correspondence, shows that these later concerns were the promoter’s intention. Sandeen, pp. 203–6, provides a perceptive brief classification of the topics covered.

  10. Charles Erdman, “The Church and Socialism,” XII, pp. 108–19. The several essays by Philip Mauro, suggest some alarm regarding communism and anarchy, e.g. II, p. 92. The Sabbath is dealt with by Daniel Hoffman Martin, “Why Save the Lord’s Day?” X, pp. 15–17. This volume, pp. 39–47, contains the only other essay on an ethical issue, a rather conventional piece by the late Arthur T. Pierson, “Our Lord’s Teachings About Money.”

  11. On Trumbull’s views, XII, pp. 45–63, see Chapter XI above, note 21. Speer, “Foreign Missions or World-Wide Evangelism,” XII, p. 73. Cf. above Chapter X, note 19, on Speer’s views.

  12. “My Experience with the Higher Criticism,” III, pp. 102–3. Reeve was from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth.

  13. “Old Testament Criticism and New Testament Christianity,” VIII, p. 6.

  14. Sir Robert Anderson, “Christ and Criticism,” II, p. 70.

  15. “The History of Higher Criticism,” I, p. 90. Cf. A. W. Pitzer, “The Wisdom of the World,” IX, p. 24, who cites Bacon and Newton among the “immortal names” of leaders in “human progress.”

  16. “The Certainty and Importance of the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead,” V, pp. 104, 83, 105.

  17. All the essays cited in the five preceding notes make this point, often with reference to David Hume.

  18. Ten essays deal with the Wellhausen thesis concerning the multiple authorship (“J”, “E,” “D,” “P”) of the Pentateuch.

  19. E.g. Pitzer, IX, pp. 22–30. Cf. Thomas Whitelaw (of Scotland), “Is there a God?” VI, pp. 22–36, and Prof. F. Bettex (of Germany), “The Bible and Modern Criticism,” IV, pp. 72–90, James Orr (of Scotland), “Science and Christian Faith,” IV, pp. 91–104, and J. J. Reeve (note 12 above) regarding Christianity itself as based on presuppositions.

  20. “Modern Philosophy,” II, p. 87.

  21. “The Deity of Christ,” I
, pp. 22–23, 27, 28.

  22. “God in Christ the Only Revelation of the Fatherhood of God,” III, pp. 61–75. Cf. James Orr, “The Virgin Birth of Christ,” I, pp. 7–20, and John Stock, “The God-Man,” VI, pp. 64–84, which confine themselves to the Scriptural evidence. Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, p. 199, suggests that Speer quoted the liberal William Newton Clarke in his essay, XII, pp. 64–84 but the editors probably removed the citation.

  23. “The Testimony of Christian Experience,” III, p. 84. On the differences between this approach and that of the more militant Reformed, see Chapter XXIV below on J. Gresham Machen’s criticisms of Mullins.

  24. The essays in the volumes by James Orr, Robert Speer, and Charles Erdman in various ways fit this category. Cf. the essays on evolution discussed below.

  25. C. Norman Kraus observes that “the mediating position of Mullins was blown aside” by the emerging forces of fundamentalism. “Authority, Reason, and Experience: The Shape of the Liberal-Orthodox Debate in Twentieth Century America 1900–1936,” unpublished manuscript (1971). Kraus’s work is a detailed and valuable exposition of the theologies of leading conservative and liberal voices.

  26. “The Inspiration of the Bible,” III, pp. 14–15. Cf. p. 33, “… we are dealing not so much with different human authors with one Divine Author.”

  27. “The Testimony of the Scriptures to Themselves,” VII, pp. 42–43. Cf. L. W. Munhull, “Inspiration,” VII, p. 22, “The original writings, ipsissima verba, came through the penmen direct from God….”

  28. He nonetheless saw no conflict between true science and Christianity, VIII, pp. 27–35. One essay, by the late Howard Crosby (d. 1891), “‘Preach the Word,’” VIII, p. 108, argues that science is largely a waste of time that “has nothing to do with the soul’s salvation.” Much more typical of the general attitude is A. W. Pitzer, “The Wisdom of this World,” IX, p. 23, who says the Christian “hails with joy each new discovery as affording additional evidence of the wisdom, power, and goodness of God.” H. M. Sydenstricker of Mississippi, the only author residing in the deep South, applied natural science to conversion in terms reminiscent of Charles Finney, observing that it is not “supposable that God is less scientific in this the very greatest of all his works than He is in the lesser things of His government.” “The Science of Conversion,” VII, p. 67.