Christian Fundamentalism - Militancy and Evangelicals

Militancy and Evangelicals

Fundamentalism is defined by historian George M. Marsden in his seminal work Fundamentalism and American Culture as "militant anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism." Marsden explains that Christian fundamentalists were American evangelical Christians who in the 20th century opposed "both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorsed. Militant opposition to modernism was what most clearly set off fundamentalism." Other historians agree that militancy is a core characteristic of the movement.

The Fundamentalists from the 1920s insisted on "militant" action to counteract modernism and historians emphasize that theme too. "Militant does not mean "violent", it means "aggressively active in a cause." Recent scholars differentiate "fundamentalists" from "evangelicals" by arguing the former were more militant and less willing to collaborate with groups considered "modernist" in theology. McKim and Wright (1992) argue,"in the 1920s, militant conservatives (fundamentalists) united to mount a conservative counter-offensive. Fundamentalists sought to rescue their denominations from the growth of modernism at home." In the 1940s the more moderate faction of fundamentalists (or "postfundamentalists") maintained the same theology but began calling themselves "evangelicals" to stress their less militant position. Olson (2007) points out, "Most postfundamentalist evangelicals do not wish to be called fundamentalists, even though their basic theological orientation is not very different." A key event, Olson says, was the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942. As Hankins (2008) notes, "Beginning in the 1940s....militant and separatist evangelicals came to be called fundamentalists, while culturally engaged and non-militant evangelicals were supposed to be called evangelicals."

For example, American evangelist Billy Graham came from a fundamentalist background, but parted company with that movement because of his choice, early in his ministry (1950s), to cooperate with other Christians. Graham represents a movement that arose within fundamentalism, but has increasingly become distinct from it, known as neo-evangelicalism or New Evangelicalism (a term coined by Harold J. Ockenga, the "Father of New Evangelicalism").

The original Fundamentalist Movement divided along clearly defined lines within conservative Evangelical Protestantism as issues progressed. Many groupings, large and small, were produced by this schism. Neo-evangelicalism, Reformed and Lutheran Confessionalism, the Heritage movement, and Paleo-Orthodoxy have all developed distinct identities, but none of them acknowledge any more than an historical overlap with the Fundamentalist Movement, and the term is seldom used of them.