Fundamentalism, episode 1: What is 'Fundamentalism'?

Just as the coming of modernity posed huge problems for the Catholic Church (see our last series), so it did for evangelicalism. Trouble is, evangelicalism is itself a product of modernity. What undermined it, therefore, was the growth of particular aspects of modern life that had not been there before: the rise of secular school systems; of secular (and not always very moral) entertainments; rationalist Bible criticism; religious pluralism; and the teaching of evolution.

Evangelicals evinced two principal kinds of responses to these challenges. The first was 'accommodation'. But the trouble with that is that it tended to disembowel 'the faith once delivered to the saints' — demanding ever increasing doctrinal shifts. And it left the remaining husk of faith unable to convert anyone.

The second alternative was fundamentalism: a rigid defence of positions that were becoming increasingly untenable; legalism; and, above all, reliance on a literalist reading of Scripture passages that, historically, had demanded no such thing.

It's not a pretty story. But, as with the Catholic Church, there would eventually be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel.

00:00 Intro
5:03 Fundamentalism Prehistory
15:20 Why Focus on the US
17:45 Modernist Challenges
25:43 Dispensationalism
39:22 "The Fundamentals"
46:44 Billy Sunday

#religion #history #culture #fundamentalism #evangelical