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Transcript - CH505 Survey of Church History© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON CH505

Fundamentalism and Modernism in Transition & Fundamentalist/Modernist Controversies

Survey of Church History

Greetings once again in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me invite you to join me in prayer as we begin. Let us pray. Good and gracious God, we ask that You would be with us to guide us in our thoughts as we gather together once again today. May all that we say and all that we think be honoring to Your great name, for it is in that name we pray. Amen.

Over the last two lectures, we’ve been exploring the development of Fundamentalism and Modernism as they emerge in the 19th century and eventually in the early part of the 20th century [and] come into conflict with one another. That conflict, of course, took place on many different levels and eventually so polarized both movements that they collapsed for very different reasons, and we’ll have a chance to look at that a bit. But both of them collapsed, and America in the 1930s entered a period of religious depression that paralleled the economic depression which was part of that era. It is out of that period that emerges two new Reformation Movements. We’ll talk about those subsequently. I want to continue, however, our discussion of some of the levels on which the battle took place in the 1920s.

We’ve been talking a bit about some of the struggles that took place in the schools for the mind. And increasingly, Fundamentalists found themselves at odds with the educational system in America. And, as a matter of fact, many of them withdrew themselves from universities. And it became quite common for parents to tell children who were considering going on to a university that they shouldn’t go to the secular university because there they would lose their faith. The reason that prompted that kind of response is the struggle that went on, typified in part by the great Scopes Trial, which stands as a symbol of that watershed dividing Fundamentalists and Modernists in the educational system.

In effect, the Fundamentalists weren’t anti-intellectual. They simply didn’t trust the educational structures that were in place. And, in many cases, they developed their own alternate

Garth M. Rosell, Ph.D. Professor of Church History and Director

Emeritus of the Ockenga Institute at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

in South Hamilton, Massachusetts

Transcript - CH505 Survey of Church History © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.


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structures. I think it is less accurate to see Fundamentalists as basically anti-intellectual. What they wanted to establish were simply educational institutions that provided good education, education that wouldn’t ruin the faith of their children and of those that were sent there.

We’ll come back to that story in a bit. But in addition to that struggle, that battle, for the mind, the intellectual communities, the battle was waged on the level of the churches and denominations as well. A number of the major denominations had drifted either one way or the other into the Liberal camp on the one side or the Fundamentalist camp on the other. The Southern Baptists, for example, had identified pretty largely with the Fundamentalist wing. Methodists, Congregationalists, and others had identified pretty largely with the Modernist or Liberal wing. Those denominations caught right smack in the middle were the Baptists, particularly the Northern Baptist Convention, and the Presbyterians. More than any other denominational group, these two felt the battle waged right around them and, in fact, many of their local congregations were split; many of the families represented in those denominations divided. Let me tell a little about that story.

Among the Presbyterians, during the war in 1916, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church had required ministerial candidates to subscribe to its “Five Point Fundamentals list,” which had been adopted in 1910. Remember that list of: (1) Inerrancy of Scripture, (2) virgin birth, (3) substitutionary atonement, (4) physical resurrection, and (5) the miracle working power of Christ. This indicates that at that time, within the church, the Fundamentalists were slightly in the ascendancy. The chief provocation to all of this came through Harry Emerson Fosdick who was a Baptist, but who had come to Union Seminary in New York as a student and then after 1908 as a professor. He also became the permanent guest preacher at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City. In that capacity, he began to speak out against the ultra-conservatives, writing his famous article in the Christian Century in 1922. The article’s title was “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” and the answer was, “There’s no way we can allow the Fundamentalists to win.” That article, more than anything else, placed him at the head of the National Voice for the Whole of the Liberal Forces. And, of course, Harry Emerson Fosdick is still remembered as being largely the voice of that movement. He was kicked out of his Presbyterian church. Whereupon, John D. Rockefeller provided the money to build the great Riverside



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Church in which he preached for many years, the church located on Morningside Heights. It is a magnificent structure and some of you have seen it there.

During the next 15 years, Fosdick was America’s most influential preacher. The Christian Century, as a matter of fact, had emerged as the voice of the Liberal camp. Its name is quite fascinating. There was such optimism in the Liberal ranks of continued progress and growth and development in the country and in spirituality that they felt this century was going to be “The Christian Century.” And so they named their primary organ after that movement. Later on in the century, we’ll see that Christianity Today comes to be the substantial voice of the evangelical wing of the church. We’ll come to that story a bit later.

In 1924, over 1,200 Presbyterians signed what was called the “Auburn Affirmation.” It condemned the denomination’s: official biblical literalism, [and] its stress upon this “Five Point Fundamentals List.” Inevitably, Princeton Seminary, the lead seminary for the church, moved into the very center of that theological conflict. Some of its professors, including the great J. Gresham Machen, a brilliant professor of New Testament, moved out of Princeton and formed a separate seminary called Westminster Theological Seminary. That took place in 1929 as a direct result of the Fundamentalist’s struggles. A whole independent foreign missions board was established, and a new denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, was set up.

What we see here is an example of what was happening in many quarters in Presbyterian and Baptist denominational circles, that in their schools, as well as their churches, there was a sharp division between those who lined up in the Fundamentalist camp and those who saw themselves as Modernists. The same thing, of course, took place in the Baptist ranks. The Baptists had a number of leading Liberal voices by this time: Rauschenbusch, Clark, Fosdick, Matthews, McIntosh, and the like. Furthermore, many of the seminaries that served the Baptist denomination became centers for Liberal thought: Newton, Colgate, Rochester, Crosier, Chicago Divinity School, and others.

For their part, the Fundamentalists not only withdrew their students from those schools, but they set out new schools to counteract those old, now Liberal, institutions. A. J. Gordon in 1889 founded The Missionary Training School in Boston that served across the next years to counter in part the Liberal Newton Institute in Boston. In Chicago, Northern Baptist Seminary was



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founded in 1913 to counter the influence of the University Divinity School which had become a major national center for Liberal thought. In Philadelphia, Eastern Seminary was established in 1925 to counter the now liberal Crosier Seminary. And the story goes on and on.

Furthermore, we have many students who are withdrawing not only from the university scene but from all of the schools that are considered to be liberal and now moving into the new burgeoning “Christian College Empire” and to the new rapidly burgeoning “Bible Institute Orbit.” Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, The Bible Institute of Los Angeles, schools in all parts of the country and overseas tended to draw increasing numbers of the Fundamentalists children studying there as alternate educational systems to the schools that are now considered suspect. Bible institutes grew from 49 in 1930 to 144 by 1950. Whole new denominations emerged as a result of the debates. The General Association of Regular Baptists formed in 1932 as a split-off from the North Baptist Convention because they felt it had gone too far in the Liberal direction. In 1947, for the very same reasons, the Conservative Baptist Association is established as a result of the very dynamics that we have been discussing. In short, you see through those illustrations, and you could mention many others, the kind of dividing line that is taking place within denominations, within local churches, and even families.

The battle is being waged on many other levels as well. Let me talk a little bit about some of the battle for behavioral standards and within society in general. Let me use here the example of temperance, the use of alcohol. And what we are going to begin to see is that lifestyle issues divide Liberals and Fundamentalists just as much as ecclesiastical affiliations, institutional loyalties, and the like. And we see that in the example of the use of alcohol. In America’s Colonial Period, there was very little scruple against the use of alcohol by anyone. Obviously, there was concern about abuse or overuse, but even that was not a major kind of concern in the colonial period of American life. As one little ditty put it, “If be barley be wanting to make into malt, we must be content and think it no fault, for we can make liquor to sweeten our lips of pumpkins or parsnips or walnut tree chips.”

In the 18th century, the Puritans began to distill West Indian molasses, producing the rum that became very popular. Along with rum were found flip and mead and cherry bounces and slings and mums and parries and toddies and all sorts of things. Horace Greeley commented:



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In my childhood in rural Vermont, there was no merrymaking, there was no entertainment of relatives or friends, there was scarcely a casual gathering of two or three neighbors for an evening social chat without strong drink. Cider always while it remained drinkable without severe contortion of visage. Rum at seasons and on all occasions was required and provided. No house or barn was raised without a bountiful supply of the latter and generally both. A wedding without toddy, flip, sling, or punch with rum undisguised in abundance would have been deemed a poor, mean affair, even among the penniless. While the more thrifty, of course, dispensed wine, brandy, and gin in profusion.

This is only one indication of the frequency with which alcohol was incorporated into life in colonial America. A barrel of cider per family per week was the average allotment in upstate Vermont. In fact, on the frontier it is even true that church tithes and subscriptions were paid in whiskey. We have examples of that in Lexington, Kentucky. We even have indication that special brews are set up for ordination services. One particular popular brew was known as, “ordination brew.” And in 1729 according to the church records, the Reverend Edwin Jackson was ordained in Pennsylvania at the expense to the parish of 23 pound sterling for six barrels and a half of cider, 28 gallons of wine, two gallons of brandy and four of rum, loaf sugar, lime juice, and pipes. It must have been quite an affair.

Gradually, however, as America moves west, on the hard-hitting and rigorous frontier, there is increased abuse of alcohol. And, in fact, there are new discoveries, many studies, which have been made which indicate it was tearing families apart. It was ruining business. It was doing great damage socially. The Methodists were probably the first to take up the torch vigorously for temperance. In these early years, there was not a call for abstinence. The call was for moderation and particularly concern about the hard liquors, not wines and ciders and the like. Reverend Ebenezer Sparhawk, a Methodist clergyman, put it this way:

Rum puts the blood and juices into a most terrible ferment

and disturbs the whole animal economy. It vitiates the

humor, relaxes the solid, spoils the constitution, fills the body

with diseases, brings on meager looks, a ghastly



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countenance, and very bad tremblings. Yea, when the abuse

of it is persisted in, it quite ruins the health, destroys the

strength, introduces decay of nature, and hastens death

faster than anything else.

Others began to speak out against alcohol and its abuse. The early temperance crusade began to emerge in the early 19th century. It comes as some surprise when people read about that early crusade, for example, in Massachusetts’ Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, founded in 1813, to discover that at the meetings they served wine. The reason was that they were calling for not abstinence, but they were calling for moderation in the use of alcohol so it wouldn’t destroy people and damage folk. Gradually, however, the movement took an ultraist or absolutist turn. And, in fact, in the 1830s, there was a sharp division in the American Temperance Society and in other groups, between the absolutists who wanted to get rid of all alcohol and those who still called for temperance. And, in fact, the division was so sharp that it damaged the movement. And it went, in effect, underground for a number of years, only to reappear in the late 19th century. Still, people were boycotting grocery stores selling liquor. Distilleries began to fail. The licensing of grog shops became increasingly difficult. Temperance hotels were established and the like. All of these things [are] as a kind of a slow, gradual commitment to temperance.

The revival of the movement came in the 1870s, largely under the impetus of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Eventually, as a result of their efforts and the preaching of people like D. L. Moody, who was outspokenly against the use of alcohol, and Billy Sunday, whose most famous sermon was his sermon against booze. And it was one of his most powerful sermons. Sometime you all ought to dig that out and read it.

Some years ago I was privileged to be given a copy of Billy Sunday’s full set of sermons which he preached in Omaha in 1915. I have that in hand. I won’t read the entire sermon on booze because it is too long and there are too many parts of it to make sense out of. But I will read a short section that parallels that on his attitude towards cigarettes, because he found those very much the same in terms of idealogy and purpose as he did alcohol. Let me read a little section that is in this material that was put out by the Omaha Press:



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If you want to smoke, fill up an old cob pipe, but cut out the nasty, filthy cigarettes. A man can smoke and be a Christian. But he’ll be a lot better Christian if he doesn’t smoke. Cigarettes and booze keep more young men and boys from getting jobs than anything else. Many big concerns now ask a young man three questions when he asks for a job—Do you smoke cigarettes? Do you drink? And do you gamble? If he does any one of the three, he’s turned down. Cut out the cigarettes, you little fool, or you’ll wake up some morning and find your brains have run out on the pillow [This is typical Sunday language. Remember, Sunday was a former baseball player who had a very active form of preaching. He used to do cartwheels and he’d slide into the base and he’d jump up on top of the pulpit and so on as he preached. He would have been great fun to watch]. Ever see a silly little anemic yellow-fingered cigarette smoker going down the street? His fingers are stained. His eyes are yellow. He is a poor little specimen of manhood. There is nothing manly about smoking cigarettes, for God’s sake, if you must smoke, get a pipe.

That’s an interesting reflection of Sunday’s own attitude toward social practices. The reason I mention this is the fact that increasingly, Fundamentalist groups under the leadership of Sunday, Moody and WCTU and others, are lining up with certain social practices. Fundamentalists, by and large, are abstainers from drink or from smoking. Later on, from movies, from dancing, from mixed bathing, from card playing, and you could name all of the long list of prohibitions. The Modernists or Liberals, on the other hand, tend to adopt those practices or certainly don’t see any great problem in them. And, in fact, if you go to a youth group in the Liberal church in town, you would do all of those things. If you went to a youth group in the Fundamentalist church in town, you would do none of those things. So that social practices began to divide American Christians from one another, just as theological ideology and other issues did.

Ultimately, this group wins an enormous successful battle against alcohol. You remember that as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution in 1919. So overwhelming was the popular consensus for prohibition that Woodrow Wilson’s veto was crushed by a vote of 176-55 in the House and 65-20 in the Senate. What is more astounding is that it was ratified by 46 of the 48 states. The total



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vote of the state’s Senates was 1310-237 and of the state Houses, 3782-1035. That’s an incredible kind of vote. The general public wanted done with the liquor problem by a kind of astounding agreement. This noble experiment, of course, ultimately failed and was overturned. And, in fact, many have pointed again and again to the fact that “you can’t legislate morality.” That is the way it is normally stated. And they point to this Amendment as exhibit A in how you can’t do it.

I hope that you don’t subscribe to that view, because Christians need not only to be involved actively in political life, but they need also to recognize that laws do make a difference in terms of behavior within the society. And that, in effect, it is possible to influence behavior within cultures by legal means. Don’t give up on that route even though it is very popular to point back to this particular event and say, “Look at how it didn’t work there.”

I grew up with a grandmother who was part of the WCTU. She used to teach me all of the temperance songs, sitting on her knee. [She was a] wonderful little German lady, [who] now has gone to be with God. She didn’t teach me this song, but one of my students passed this one along to me. And it is too good to pass up in quoting here. It is called, “The Rum Song.” It is a kind of parody, a tongue-in-cheek, but it gives a little of the flavor of the era. It’s the song of the Temperance Union:

We’re coming. We’re coming, our brave little band, on the right side of justice we do take our stand. We don’t chew tobacco cause we do think, that the people who chew it are liable to drink. Away, away, with the rum, by gum! We never eat fruitcake cause fruitcake has rum, and the least bit of rum turns a man to a bum. Oh, can you imagine a sorrier sight, than a man eating fruitcake until he gets tight. We never eat peaches cause peaches ferment, and peaches ferment at the least little dent. Oh, can you imagine a sorrier sight, than a man drunk on peaches he thought were alright. We never eat cookies cause cookies have yeast, and the least bit of yeast turns a man to a beast. Oh, can you imagine a worser disgrace, than a man in the gutter with crumbs on his face.

Well perhaps that is going a little far. But at least it can give you some of the flavor of this enormous struggle, even on the social level. And, by and large, Fundamentalists came to adopt an abstinence position on alcohol during the 1920s and have continued to maintain that in many quarters down to very recent



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times.

This struggle with the society in its behavioral life touches all kinds of other areas as well. Some time ago I came upon a list of rules for women students at Mt. Holyoke College. This is a prestigious school here on the East Coast. These come from the mid-19th century, and I think they help to reflect some of the vast changes that have taken place socially, the kinds of things I’ve been trying to describe in other ways. Here are some of the rules:

1. No young lady shall become a member of this school who can’t kindle a fire, wash potatoes, or repeat the multiplication table.

2. No cosmetics, perfumeries, or fancy soap will be allowed (getting tougher).

3. No students shall tarry before the mirror more than three consecutive minutes.

4. Every member of this school shall walk at least a mile a day, unless an earthquake or other ca-lamity prevents it.

5. (My favorite) No student may have any male acquaintances visit their rooms, unless they are retired missionaries.

Well it is clear that the rules at Mt. Holyoke are quite different now from what I just read. And that indicates, in part, the kind of shifts in style, in behavior, in emphasis that have come about over the years. The struggle took place among women in our society as well, and you have in the 1920s the era of what was called “The Flapper.” I think most of you have probably heard references at one time or other to the flappers. These were the new women of the 20th century who smoked, drank, dressed differently, [and] were preoccupied with freedom. Increasing numbers of women were entering the workforce at the turn of the century. Whereas women were depicted in magazines and elsewhere in 1900 as gentle, motherly folk with soft billowy hair, delicate hands, usually immobile, and sitting inside the house. By 1920 and 1930, women are pictured in magazines as outside the home, active and doing all kinds of things. And, in fact, the ads are beginning to focus on that. The Ladies’ Home Journal in 1917 shows a woman entertaining stylish women friends, driving a car, economizing on every area of housework she can. The theme for the ad for Williams Talc Powder puts it this way: “After the game,



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the ride, the swim, the brisk walk, or a day at the seashore, turn for comfort to Williams Talc Powder.” Van Camp’s Pork and Beans promises the women of the day a saving of 100 hours yearly, if “They’ll be willing to use those products faithfully.” Campbell’s Soups encourage women “To get some fun out of life.”

Indeed, Dorothy Dicks describes the woman who men go for in the 19-teens as: “One who is husky, who can play golf all day and dance all night and drive a motor car and give first aid to the injured if anybody gets hurt and who’s in no more danger of swooning than he is.”

The Ladies’ Home Journal scandalized the nation in 1915 when it featured women on the front cover with short hair in what was called “bobbed hair,” showing part of their neck. Much of the change was attributed to the new automobile craze. It was called by some, “the devil’s wagon.” Owen Johnson describes the new women, now free, able to get around, “She is sure of one life only,” he said, “and that is one she passionately desires. She wants to live that life to its fullest. She wants adventure. She wants excitement and mystery. She wants to see, to know, and to experience.”

The old moral codes were giving way to new practices. This could be reflected in the dress of the day. The New York Times reported in August 1920 that “The American woman has lifted her skirts far beyond any modest limitation.” The flappers were known to wear dresses with short sleeves, occasionally even sleeveless. They were using rouge on their faces. Dancing was not to the “romantic” violin, but now the “barbaric” saxophone. The Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati reported:

The music is sensuous, the embracing of partners, the female only half-dressed is absolutely indecent and the motions—they are such as may not be described with any respect for propriety in a family newspaper. Suffice it to say, there are certain houses appropriate for such dances, but those have been closed by law.

There was drinking and smoking, petting, all the kinds of things described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in all of his writings of the 20s. This Side of Paradise, Plastic Age, Flaming Youth, Dancers in the Dark, all of those books which, by the way, have been revived now in recent years in our university settings.

The forces of morality, of course, rallied in counter-attack. Dr. Francis Clark, founder and president of the Christian Endeavor Society, declared that modern dances were an offense against



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“womanly purity.” They were impure, polluting, corrupting, debasing, destroying of spirituality, increasing of carnality, and the like. President Murphy of the University of Florida wrote: “The low-cut gowns, the rolled hose and short skirts are born of the devil and his angels and are carrying the present and future generations to chaos and destruction.”

In fact, a “Dress Reform Committee” was established in Philadelphia, which sent out a questionnaire to 1,000 clergy asking them for their idea of a proper dress. Out of that, they designed a “Universal Moral Gown,” as it was called. Endorsed by ministers in 15 denominations, its hem was seven and a half inches (no less) above the floor. In Utah, a bill was passed providing a fine and imprisonment for those who wore skirts higher than three inches above the ankle. And in Virginia, a law stipulated that no gown was allowable which displayed more than three inches of a woman’s throat.

Why do I comment on all of this? Simply to indicate that there were struggles on many levels, including behavioral kinds of levels. And increasingly, the Fundamentalists lined up with the Old Victorian standards and styles. Whereas the Modernists, wanting to be up to date, the Liberals, open to these changes of ideas, tended to establish new precedents to go with the new moral codes.

What we see happening here is a division then, at many levels, between the two major camps who have come at loggerheads with one another and in the heat of the battle are taking positions which are very polarized and, in some cases, extreme. The Liberals adopt the new moral standards, the new dances, the shorter dresses, drinking, smoking, movies, and the like. The Fundamentalists continue to line up with the Old Victorian ideals.

The Liberals have now adopted what came to be called “The Social Gospel,” with its commitment to social action. The Fundamentalists gave up that long-standing commitment in history and turned inward to personal piety, to spiritual growth, to inward faith.

The Liberals tended to be open to the new insights from science, evolution, biblical criticism, comparative religions, and the like. The Fundamentalists were opposed, or at least skittish about these, because they seemed to undermine the basic doctrinal statements that were core to the faith.



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The Liberals stressed the kingdom coming to earth. The Fundamentalists, even though the old evangelical tradition had been ardently post-millennialist, tended to give that up. They became almost universally premillennialist. They gave up on the world which they felt was going to the dogs, and they waited for the Second Coming. And you have enormous resurgence of preaching on the Second Coming, this Advent of Christ in which the rapture would take the church out of this evil and perverse world.

You can see how that would affect the kinds of involvements politically, socially, economically as well, as Fundamentalists began to withdraw from what they felt were the perverse structures and organizations and institutions of society.

The Liberals had a deep respect for learning. The Fundamentalists were not really anti-intellectual. They were more opposed to Liberal schools and established whole new systems of education as counter-balances to the other.

The Liberals were liberal in politics. The Fundamentalists became conservative in politics or even anti-political.

I can remember when I was a student in the early 1960s at Wheaton College, we had a straw ballot that was given for the presidential election. Ninety-eight percent of us voted Republican, less than one percent Democratic and the rest were undecided or independent. Now that’s a pretty interesting figure. And, of course, that’s changed radically now at many of our Christian liberal arts colleges. But even back in the early 1960s that was true.

The Liberals tended to be community oriented. The Fundamentalists tended to return to a kind of rugged individualism.

The pattern was this: That in the heat of the battle, the polarization had caused Fundamentalists to withdraw. To withdraw from social engagement, to withdraw from intellectual intercourse, from university life, to withdraw from mainline churches, to withdraw, in fact, from ecumenical enterprises such as had emerged out of Edinburgh in 1910 and what came to be called “The Ecumenical Movement” in the [United States].

Meanwhile, the Liberals weren’t having a much better time of it, because they were equally divided and polarized. They had abandoned many of the elements of biblical faith and personal piety, an emphasis which they needed in order to maintain any kind of credible Christian witness. Also there was an enormous



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disillusionment that began to pervade the whole of the movement, including many of those very optimistic liberals who had now given up even on their own vision. Frederick Louis Allen wrote: “The new moral code had been born in disillusionment, and beneath all the bravado of its exponents and the talk about entering a new era, the disillusionment persisted.”

If the decade was ill-mannered, it was also unhappy. With the old order of things had gone a set of values which had given richness and meaning to life, and substitute values were not easily found. If morality was dethroned, what was to take its place? Honor, said some of the prophets of the new day. It doesn’t matter much what you do, so long as you’re honest about it. A brave ideal, yet it did not wholly satisfy. It was too vague, too austere, too difficult to apply. If romantic love was dethroned, what was to take its place? Pure sex? But as Joseph Wood Krutch explained, “If love has come to be less often a sin, it is also come to be less often a supreme privilege.” As Walter Lipmann added, “If you start with the belief that love is the pleasure of a moment, is it really surprising that it yields only a momentary pleasure?”

The result of all this is that many, even of the intellectuals of the day, disillusioned as they were, began to give up on American Society. And, in fact, many of them left America and went to set up shop, to live for a time in Paris or in some other area of Europe.

Listen to them as they write. People like James Joyce, Bertram Russell, Eugene O’Neil, Sinclair Lewis, George Babbitt, who is the arch enemy of the enlightened, [and] becomes the kind of major figure emerging out of Sinclair Lewis’ writings. It shows some of the disillusionment and disenchantment with American business. Read H. L. Menken, as he writes in The American Mercury, the little green glossy which intellectuals tended to carry around under their arms. Menken was against virtually everything. He said of William Jennings Bryan, “He was born with a roaring voice and had the trick of inflaming half-wits.” He called the farmers of Tennessee, “gaping primates and anthropoid rabble.” He had a rather vigorous way of expressing himself, but essentially he was against things, and there was a kind of disillusionment which ran under all of it. Perhaps the strongest statement of this disillusionment came from Walter Lippmann when he wrote:

What most distinguishes the generation who have approached maturity since the debacle of idealism at the end of the war [remember World War I was the war to end all wars and we came to the end of the war realizing that



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it had not ended all wars, in fact, was not likely to do so] is not their rebellion against the religion and moral code of their parents, but their disillusionment with their own rebellion. It is common for young men and women to rebel, but that they should rebel sadly and without faith even in their own rebellion, that they should distrust the new freedom no less than the old certainties.

What we find emerging, then, is a set of disillusioned people growing even out of the Liberal wing. They’ve won their battles on the moral front, on many of the intellectual fronts, but the victory seems to be a hollow one. And America enters, for very different reasons for the Liberals and the Fundamentalists, into a time of deep depression during the 1930s. Economically, we all know that depression. In fact, I was reminded of that recently when I reread a letter which had been sent from my own grandfather to my grandmother in this period of history. He has left Minnesota to go to look for work in Detroit, let me read a few paragraphs. It reflects some of the economic difficulties and struggle of this very time:

You asked me how I am getting by without working in your last letter. Well to tell you the truth, I have to work for what I get. Sometimes I carry out ashes from the basement of homes for something to eat. Sometimes I scrape pans in a bakeshop. Then again, I get a little work in some butcher shop for something to eat. So I get plenty to eat, but the worst part is to get any money to get a bed with. But sometimes I get an extra 25 cents and then I sleep in a bed. I can’t complain for I’ve gotten along, and the Lord has been good to me in lots of ways. I will sure sleep in a bed tonight, thanks to you and the dollar that you sent. I’ve not had my clothes off now for five nights. I’m going out now to get some soap to wash my socks, underwear, and shirts as there are washtubs, hot and cold water at the Salvation Army Hotel and you can use them when you pay 25 cents for a bed. I’ve been out looking for work every day. I’ve been to Ford, to Studebaker, Chrysler, Hudson, Fisher-Body Plant, Briggs Body Plant, and many others, but it’s pretty hard to get on, as they want experienced men who understand the kind of work. I just came from Hudson, there was a line of men there about 600 long all night. We just had a blizzard here yesterday. I’m going to try Ford again this afternoon

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Fundamentalism and Modernism in Transition & Fundamentalist/Modernist ControversiesLesson 21b of 24

and try to get on the night shift.

Now there from my own grandfather is an indication of some of the enormous economic pressure of this time. [There was] the struggle even to find enough money so that you can get a small room and a bed and a clean bath. But the greater depression is the depression of spirituality, as we see the emerging polarizations which have come out of these heated and bitter and angry battles, leaving deep scars, leaving ongoing bitternesses within both Liberal and Fundamentalist ranks.

The Liberals fell apart because they simply could not sustain their optimistic view of the world in the reality of World War I, the Economic Crash of 1929 and the ongoing Depression of the 1930s. Goodness, progress, and optimism were hard sells as a result.

Fundamentalists, on the other hand, fell apart in part because of their lack of charity and love. I suggested early on that what we need in our world today are not more crusty, angry, bitter people representing the faith and preaching the gospel. What we need are a band of joyful, wholesome, healthy men and women who can share the good news of the gospel because, in fact, it is good news.

Fortunately, by the power of God, once again that force is going to be raised up, even in the ashes of the depression of the 1930s, and coming on the heels of a great revival which begins to touch America and, in fact, becomes eventually the fourth great awakening. We have emerging new movements of hope and renewal, and it’s to that story that I want to turn in our next lecture.

survey of church history lesson€¦ · fundamentalism and modernism in transition &...

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