Fundamentalism and American Culture
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29. Orr was also known to oppose the Princeton emphasis on inerrancy, e.g., Orr, Revelation and Inspiration (New York, 1910), pp. 197–98. In The Fundamentals all he said on the subject was that he would not enter into “questions about inerrancy in detail” that have “divided good men.” “Holy Scriptures and Modern Negations,” IX, p. 46.
30. “The Passing of Evolution,” VII, p. 9, cf. pp. 5–20. Orr, “Science and Christian Faith,” IV, pp. 91–104. The other article on Darwinism, Henry H. Beach, “Decadence of Darwinism,” VII, pp. 36–48, argues against evolutionism more generally as “marvellously unscientific,” p. 47. Both he and Wright emphasize that belief in naturalistic evolution is beginning to die out.
31. William James Morison, “George Frederick Wright: in Defense of Darwinism and Fundamentalism 1838–1921,” Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1971, develops these interesting themes. Wright was also active in the Bible League of North America.
32. In 1922 it passed to M. G. Kyle, a contributor to The Fundamentals, and was published under the auspices of the faculty of Xenia Theological Seminary in Ohio. It moved to the Dallas group in 1934.
XV. Four Views circa 1910
1. See, for instance, the Missionary Review of the World for examples of such cooperation.
2. Virtually all of Haldeman’s signs can be found in Our Hope XVII–XIX (1910–1912), passim. A similar position and list of signs are found in Philip Mauro’s well-informed volume, The Number of Man: The Climax of Civilization (New York, 1909). It is difficult to estimate the popularity of these views. A similar work by Mauro, Man’s Day (London and New York, 190?), ran a second edition in 1910 of 18,000. Mauro, who wrote many books, later published a notable attack on dispensationalism, The Gospel of the Kingdom: with an Examination of Modern Dispensationalism (Boston, 1928).
3. Isaac M. Haldeman, The Signs of the Times, Third Edition (New York, 1912 [1911 (?), preface is dated Nov. 1910]), p. 12.
4. Ibid., pp. 340–63.
5. Ibid., p. 21.
6. Ibid., pp. 199–200.
7. Ibid., pp. 280–81 (he also considered socialism a violation of the law of nature since “human life is individualized by its inequality”); p. 287 (the characterization of Judas is based on his wanting to give money for Jesus’ anointing the poor); and p. 299.
8. Ibid., pp. 12–13.
9. Ibid., pp. 30, 155, and 160.
10. Ibid., pp. 14, 106–7.
11. Ibid., pp. 294–95.
12. Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (Chicago, 1970), p. 244.
13. “The Present-Day Apostasy,” The Coming and Kingdom of Christ: A Stenographic Report of the Prophetic Bible Conference Held at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago Feb. 24–27, 1914 (Chicago, 1914), p. 154.
14. “The Significant Signs of the Times,” ibid., p. 107.
15. Riley, Messages for the Metropolis (Chicago, 1906), p. 48, cf. pp. 9–11, 24–27, 31, 35, 165–77, 190–95, 224–27, and passim. These themes do not show up nearly so much in his later books. The Crisis of the Church (New York, 1914) and The Evolution of the Kingdom, revised ed., (New York 1913 [1907]). Good accounts of Riley’s views are found in C. Allyn Russell, Voices of American Fundamentalism: Seven Biographical Studies (Philadelphia, 1976), and Ferenc Morton Szasz, “Three Fundamentalist Leaders: The Roles of William Bell Riley, John Roach Straton, and William Jennings Bryan in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1969. For Riley’s dramatically different and reactionary social views later in life see below, Chapter XXIII.
16. This conclusion agrees with evidence presented by Timothy P. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925 (New York, 1979), who finds that premillennialists’ behavior was not actually much different from that of other evangelicals, although the reasons they gave were sometimes different. Weber, pp. 82–104, presents a valuable discussion of both moderate and radical premillennialist social views.
17. S. A. Witmer, The Bible College Story: Education with Dimension (Manhasset, N.Y., 1962). Gene Getz, MBI: The Story of Moody Bible Institute (Chicago, 1969), p. 45. Daniel B. Stevick, Beyond Fundamentalism (Richmond, Va., 1964) suggests a “half-serious” definition of fundamentalism as “all those churches and persons in communion with Moody Bible Institute,” p. 45.
18. The Institute Tie VIII (September, 1907–August, 1908).
19. Editorial, Institute Tie VIII (November, 1907), p. 165. Prophetic speculations of this sort are relatively rare in the Institute’s publications in this period. In 1911 James M. Gray did comment that the proposal for direct election of senators “looks like another illustration of the development of the clay part of the image…” editorial, XI (March 1911), p. 585.
20. Getz, MBI, pp. 95–99. The first exception was a course in writing English, introduced in 1913.
21. Editorial, Institute Tie VIII (August, 1908), p. 884.
22. William G. McLoughlin, Jr., Billy Sunday Was His Real Name (Chicago, 1955), pp. 44 and 123.
23. Quoted in William G. McLoughlin, Jr., Modern Revivalism (New York, 1959), p. 419 (original not clear).
24. McLoughlin, Billy Sunday, p. 44.
25. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, p. 408.
26. Letter to Faculty, July 29, 1908, Gray file, Moody Bible Institute archives. Another indication of respect for intellect is that Torrey had a son at Princeton. In a letter in the Gray file from 1912, as I recall, Torrey says he wants his son to spend a year at MBI, since he regards Gray as the greatest Bible teacher in the world.
27. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, p. 415.
28. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, p. 419, quotes the Watchman-Examiner’s approval of Sunday in 1913.
29. By 1915 even the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary invited Sunday to speak there. See Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen; A Biographical Memoir (Grand Rapids, 1954), pp. 225–28.
30. McLoughlin, Billy Sunday, p. 262.
31. See Russell, Voices, for pictures which suggest this. See also the picture of Scofield and Trumbull in a Bible conference setting, Chapter XI. Even in the 1970s fundamentalist Carl Mclntire preached on Sunday mornings in tails, although he was capable of great informality on other public occasions.
32. Gray, Prophecy and the Lord’s Return (New York, 1917), p. 109, quoted in Weber, Living in the Shadow, p. 98.
33. Editorial, The Institute Tie X (July, 1910), p. 856, cited by Weber, Living in the Shadow, p. 167.
34. Quoted from the Institute Tie X (March, 1910), pp. 536–37 and see Our Hope XIX (February, 1913) pp. 461–62, both from Weber, “Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1976, p. 172.
35. Editorial, The Institute Tie VIII (January, 1908), p. 345.
36. Bryan, “The Prince of Peace,” The Prince of Peace (New York, 1909), pp. 5–6. This lecture was first given in 1904.
37. Szasz, “Three Fundamentalist Leaders,” pp. 110–11. Cf. Russell’s account in Voices.
38. Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade, 1915–1925 (New York, 1965), p. 26. These four assumptions (especially the latter three) are strikingly similar to those characteristic of American evangelicalism in the first half of the nineteenth century as suggested in George Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience (New Haven, 1970), pp. 230–44, and as ascribed to American thought of that era generally in Ralph Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought (New York, 1956), pp. 14–39.
39. Winona Echoes: Containing Addresses Delivered at the Seventeenth Annual Bible Conference, Winona Lake, Indiana, August 1911 (Winona Lake, Ind., 1911), p. 4.
40. Peter Ainsley, “Federation and Union,” ibid., p. 280.
41. Ibid., pp. 280, 181, and passim.
42. Willard H. Smith, “William Jennings Bryan and the Social Gospel,” Journal of American History LIII (June, 1966), pp. 41�
�74, shows that Bryan maintained cordial relations with advocates of the Social Gospel.
43. The leadership for this movement—itself only a moderate success—was largely conservative. Gary Smith, “An Attempt to Build a Christian America: The Men and Religion Forward Movement 1911–1912,” unpublished paper, Gordon-Conwell Divinity School, 1977.
44. Bryan, “The Old Time Religion,” Winona Echoes 1911, pp. 50–63.
45. McLoughlin, Billy Sunday, p. 157.
46. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, pp. 432–33.
47. On Sunday’s career see McLoughlin, Billy Sunday, and also his Modern Revivalism, pp. 399–449.
48. Nelson Hodges Hart, “The True and the False: The Worlds of an Emerging Evangelical Protestant Fundamentalism in America 1890–1920,” Ph.D. dissertation, documents the outlook of mainstream conservatives from the conservative Baptist Watchman and from more general periodicals such as The Missionary Review of the World and The Sunday School Times.
49. The Watchman, for instance, was against the theater, saloons, and Sabbath-breaking. It opposed socialism as too materialistic, but was for Christian social reform, remarking for instance, “If socialism meant the absolute and direct application of the teaching of Jesus Christ … we would be willing to be called socialists.” Editorial, XCIII (January 5, 1911), p. 7. The editors (Edmund F. Merriam and Joseph S. Swain) also found some merit in the “New Thought,” such as in the vitality of Walter Rauschenbusch’s social emphasis. This moderation was consistent with the more experience-oriented philosophy common among conservative Baptists, as noted earlier. Yet the editors simultaneously warned about the New Thought that false ideas “may fix the fate of a soul forever.” Editorial XCI (January 7, 1909), p. 7. The editors also found evolution irreconcilable with Christianity. Editorial XCIII (January 26, 1911), p. 7. They considered William Blackstone’s Jesus is Coming unconvincing, although of interest since it “has inspired such marvellous evangelism.” Editorial XCI (May 20, 1909), p. 16. The overall attitudes seem similar to those found in the non-denominational weekly, The Christian Herald, of this era, which is also moderate conservative, although less oriented toward doctrine and more toward social questions than was the Watchman.
50. See George Marsden, “The New School Heritage and Presbyterian Fundamentalism,” Westminster Theological Journal XXXII (May, 1970), pp. 129–47. For an excellent discussion of the New School contribution to theological liberalism, see Lefferts A. Loetscher, The Broadening Church (Philadelphia, 1959).
51. “The Millennium and the Apocalypse” (1904), Biblical Doctrines (New York, 1929), pp. 662–63.
52. Ibid., p. 647. By this conquest the moral evil of the world would be at least subdued, p. 664. Warfield himself early in his career pled strongly for at least one reform effort, “to raise and educate the blacks to take their proper place in our Christian civilization.” “A Calm View of the Freedmen’s Case” (1887), Selected Shorter Writings II (Nutley, N.J., 1973), p. 739. Cf. a similar essay from 1888, ibid., pp. 743–50.
53. “Report of the Permanent Judicial Commission [of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.] May 27, 1910, re complaint against the Synod of New York,” in The Presbyterian LXXX (June 1, 1910), p. 20. The Presbyterian, the leading popular conservative voice, admitted that this declaration was “rather more anxious than is necessary.” Editorial, ibid., p. 4. The Presbyterian at this time showed strong interest in the moral condition of the country as well as in doctrinal purity. It especially favored the temperance crusade and Sabbath-keeping, although it included some qualified endorsements of progressive social causes. The attempt to stay out of “politics” (though prohibition and Sabbath legislation seemed excepted) limited them somewhat, as in the following: “It is the duty of the Church to oppose all sin and oppression, and to cultivate, foster and demand righteousness among men. But the Church cannot decide questions of civil and commercial rights among men. She cannot determine the number of hours in a day’s labor. She cannot say what per cent of margin must be allowed in business transactions.” Editorial LXXXI (November 8, 1911), p. 4. Cf. LXXIX-LXXXI (1909–1911), passim.
54. E.g., Machen, The Origin of Paul’s Religion (New York, 1921), p. 161, “… in Jesus and Paul the Kingdom appears partly as present and partly as future.”
55. On Machen’s career see Stonehouse, Machen, and Russell, Voices.
56. “Christianity and Culture,” Princeton Theological Review XI (January, 1913), pp. 1–15.
57. Quoted from Stonehouse, Machen, p. 232, from a letter.
58. Stonehouse, Machen, pp. 225–28.
59. Machen papers, Westminster Theological Seminary, Gray file. Machen also kept up a correspondence with Billy Sunday.
60. Stonehouse, Machen, pp. 424–29.
XVI. World War I, Premillennialism, and American Fundamentalism: 1917–1918
1. For example, in 1913 the Federal Council of Churches appointed William E. Biederwolf secretary of their new commission on evangelism. George W. Dollar (whose standards for “Fundamentalist” are not loose) calls Biederwolf a “solid influential Fundamentalist.” A History of Fundamentalism in America (Greenville, S. C., 1973), p. 305.
2. Nelson Hodges Hart, “The True and the False: The Worlds of an Emerging Evangelical Protestant Fundamentalism in America, 1890–1920,” Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1976, especially pp. 87–110, documents this ideal from a variety of sources.
3. Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade 1915–1925 (London, 1965), pp. 3–131. Bryan saw the German government as “just the antithesis of ours” and noted that the spirit of the war encouraged charity, prohibition, and women’s rights. “The Book of Books,” Winona Echoes: Notable Addresses Delivered at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Bible Conference (Winona Lake, Ind., 1918), pp. 42–43.
4. William G. McLoughlin, Modernism Revivalism (New York, 1959), p. 426.
5. Quoted in McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, p. 444.
6. Quoted in Ray H. Abrams, Preachers Present Arms (New York, 1933) p. 79.
7. William McLoughlin, Billy Sunday Was His Real Name (Chicago, 1955), p. 260; cf. pp. 255–60 and McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, pp. 426–27, 444–45. John Roach Straton endorsed the war with extravagance similar to Sunday’s. Ferenc M. Szasz, “Three Fundamentalist leaders,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1969, pp. 121–22.
8. Editorial “A United Country,” Watchman-Examiner V (March 15, 1917), p. 327.
9. E.g. an editorial in VI (April 18, 1918), p. 493, warns against “hysteria concerning disloyalty.” Cf. V, VI (1917–1918), passim.
10. Editorial “Pacifism,” LXXXVII (April 12, 1917), p. 12. The Presbyterian, (David James Burrell, editor).
Correspondingly, by the war’s end, as in most of the American Press, the patriotism of The Presbyterian was extravagant. The war was a “Crusade” and it was proper to “Smite until Germany is Consumed,” said the titles of editorials, LXXXVIII (October 31, 1918), p. 7 (David S. Kennedy and Samuel G. Craig, eds.). Cf. John W. Dinsmore, “Is it Right to Hate the Hun,” LXXXIX (January 23, 1919), pp. 9–11, which answers “yes” and suggests that the Kaiser is head of “a huge embodiment of diabolism, … like the legion that went out of the man into the swine.” Though cf. also, editorial LXXXVIII (June 20, 1918), p. 7 which condones fairness toward the German people as distinguished from “the autocratic militarists.”
11. Our Hope XX (August, 1913), p. 103.
12. Our Hope XXIV (July, 1917), p. 111. James M. Gray used this argument in “Why Germany Cannot Rule the World,” Winona Echoes 1918, pp. 216–19, since the former Roman Empire nations now fighting Germany were more likely to be preparing the way for the revival of the Roman Empire.
13. Our Hope XXIII (July, 1916), p. 44. Gray, probably writing in 1916, argued also that Russia would likely have to drop out of the Triple Entente because she was not a Roman Empire nation. He predicted home rule for Ireland on the same grounds. Prophecy and the
Lord’s Return (New York, 1917), p. 27. Gray also viewed Russia as the predicted power of the North. “The Regathering of Israel in Unbelief,” Light on Prophecy: Philadelphia Prophetic Conference, 1918 (New York, 1918), p. 27.
14. S. Ridout, “Should a Christian Go to War?” Our Hope XXIV (September, 1917), pp. 165–69.
15. The King’s Business XII (March, 1921) claimed paid subscriptions of 25,000 and by November 1921 was running an edition of 34,000 (cover). T. C. Horton and Keith L. Brooks were the editors during this era.
16. Editorial King’s Business VII (March, 1917), p. 216.
17. Editorial King’s Business VI (August, 1915), p. 653.
18. June, 1916, pp. 485–86.
19. Ibid., and August, 1916, pp. 693–98.
20. Christian Herald XXXVII (March 4, 1914), p. 218.
21. Editorial Christian Herald XL (January 10, 1917), p. 34.
22. In addition to regular premillennial features, the Christian Herald promoted the important Philadelphia Prophecy Conference of 1918 and published its book of addresses (note 13 above). In 1920 Charles M. Sheldon (famed for In His Steps) became editor, at which time the premillennialist features disappeared. During the fundamentalist-modernist debates Sheldon maintained that Jesus would not have participated in them, e.g. editorial XLVI (June 9, 1923), p. 458. At the height of the fundamentalist furor of 1925 Sheldon’s journal was preoccupied with a “Christian Conscience Crusade,” XLVIII, passim.
23. This created considerable debate within the conservative evangelical camp as well. For example the Winona Bible Conference of 1918 included important conservative representatives of both premillennial and postmillennial positions. Winona Echoes 1918, pp. 199–285.