Fundamentalist Protestantism

Fundamentalism is often associated with the South but its key roots lay elsewhere. At Princeton Seminary, conservative Presbyterians resistant to the theory of biological evolution and innovations in biblical interpretation defended the literal truth of the Bible and such doctrines as Jesus’s virgin birth and Resurrection.

Fundamentalism became a distinct movement after World War I when its advocates became increasingly outspoken in their resistance to moderates and liberals in their denominations. They formed the World Christian Fundamentals Association in 1919 and, failing to seize control of the Disciples of Christ and the northern branches of the Presbyterian and Baptist denominations, established the General Association of Regular Baptists (1932), Conservative Baptist Association of America (1947), Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1936), and Bible Presbyterian Church (1937). Fundamentalism found a particularly congenial home in the South, in part because of the prevalence of Baptists and other evangelical denominations in the region; in part because fundamentalist strategies and commitments meshed with Baptist traditions of Congregationalism, antiecclesiasticism, and adult baptism; and in part because many Southern religious conservatives perceived defense of evangelical tradition against evolution and other “Northern” innovations as a badge of regional pride.

Perhaps the most sensational expression of early fundamentalism, the 1925 Scopes trial, in which Fundamentalists successfully but embarrassingly defended a state law outlawing the teaching of evolution in public schools, occurred in Dayton, Tennessee. Still, the movement was national in scope: some fifty fundamentalist Bible institutes dotted the country by 1930, and radio shows broadcast to large regional and national audiences from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Fort Worth.

Fundamentalism faded from public view after the Scopes trial, but experienced institutional consolidation and a proliferation of independent congregations during the 1930s and assumed a new visibility after World War II as a result of Billy Graham’s crusades across the nation. The cultural dislocations and political unrest of the 1960s and 1970s prompted a major fundamentalist resurgence that gave the movement a new national prominence and was especially pronounced in the South and the demographically expansive Sunbelt states. An explosion of television ministries in Virginia, North Carolina, and southern California attracted national audiences, huge independent Baptist “megachurches” became prominent features of the landscape in the South and elsewhere, and the presidencies of “born-again” Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter and California conservative Ronald Reagan signaled fundamentalism’s powerful new political presence.

Fundamentalism’s recent surge is apparent in the growth of the Southern Baptist Convention, which came decisively under fundamentalist control in the 1970s and became increasingly outspoken thereafter. Its growth since 1971 has been impressive not only numerically—though its 15.7 million members in the mid-1990s made it by far the nation’s largest Protestant denomination—but geographically, coming in significant part through the affiliation of congregations outside the South. Its Christian traditionalism is not merely regional but national.