Fundamentalism and American Culture (New Edition)

353 Pages·2006·21.41 MB·English

by  George M. Marsden

Fundamentalism
and American Culture
Second Edition
GEORGE M. MARSDEN
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2006
OXFORD
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marsden, George M., 1939-
Fundamentalism and American culture / George M. Marsden.—2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and indexes.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-530051-2; ISBN-10: 0-19-530051-3 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-530047-5; ISBN-10: 0-19-530047-5 (paper)
1. Fundamentalism—United States. 2. Christianity and culture—United States. I. Title.
BT82.2.M37 2006
277.3'082—dc22
2005053920
98765432 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my students with thanks for all they have taught me
Preface to the Second Edition
Several days after the reelection of George W. Bush in November 2004, my edi-
tor, Cynthia Read, contacted me about updating Fundamentalism and American
Culture in the light of recent events. I am delighted to do so. It is especially pleas-
ing that this volume has remained in use for a quarter century and that its useful-
ness might be enhanced in this way.
Since the original seems to have stood well on its own as a point of departure
for understanding the emergence of American fundamentalism, I have left that
text intact as it was published in 1980. Subsequent scholarship has shown that
there are many additional things I might have said and has pointed to limits in my
angle of vision; nonetheless, this version of the story has apparently proven illu-
minating both to scholars and to general readers. I have been particularly grati-
fied by the scores of people who over the years have told me that this book
helped them immensely in understanding the religious community in which they
grew up. So rather than tinkering with something that has served well, I have up-
dated this edition by adding a substantial supplemental section. In it I have
reflected on the fascinating question of what the differences and similarities are
between the fundamentalism in America since the mid-1970s and the fundamen-
talism of the 1920s.
In some ways it may have been an advantage that I was able to draft most of
the first edition of this book before fundamentalism had reemerged as a con-
spicuous part of American politics at the end of the 1970s. What I wrote was not
driven by the sorts of political and cultural concerns that have dominated our
views since then. In other respects writing in advance of these past several de-
cades of fundamentalism in American life was a disadvantage; the recent events
might have alerted me to dimensions of the movement that I did not see or think
were especially important. In any case, I now have the opportunity to reflect on
the comparison of the fundamentalisms of the two eras and have found that a
most fruitful exercise.
Part Five, the result of that reflection, has been a communal exercise. First, I
have learned a great deal from the many fine works on early fundamentalism that
have appeared in the past twenty-five years. Second, I have depended on the
large secondary literature interpreting recent American fundamentalism and
evangelicalism. Finally, as I have worked through several drafts of this update
I have been tremendously helped by the comments of many readers. Most of
these have been my graduate students or former students who are better informed
than I on many details of recent developments. I am also grateful to the history
vii
Vlll PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
department of the University of Illinois for an opportunity to discuss a draft of
this paper with them. Many thanks also for all the comments from the discus-
sions in my graduate class on evangelicalism and fundamentalism, at the Collo-
quium on Religion and History at Notre Dame, and at the conference on this
topic held at Michilinda Lodge in June 2005.
Those whom I wish to thank for written comments, or for particularly memo-
rable verbal ones, include Thomas Bergler, James Bratt, Joel Carpenter, Cliff
Christians, Jonathan DenHartog, Darren Dochuk, Raully Donahue, Danielle
DuBois, Kristin Kobes DuMez, Timothy Gloege, Michael Hamilton, Thomas
Kidd, Michael J. Lee, Kathryn Long, Patrick Q. Mason, Sarah Miglio, Richard J.
Mouw, Kurt Peterson, Glen Ryland, Brett H. Smith, William Svelmoe, David
Swartz, John G. Turner, Grant Wacker, and John Wigger. I am also grateful for
many other comments from those whom I have neglected to mention here.
I wish once again to express my gratitude to the Peter B. and Adeline W. Ruffin
foundation and to the McAnaney family for their generous support of the Francis
A. McAnaney Chair in History at the University of Notre Dame. I am also grate-
ful to my colleagues and to the staff of the Notre Dame history department, espe-
cially to John McGreevy, the current chair, for their ongoing support.
I also wish once again to thank the staff of Oxford University Press—Ruth
Mannes, Director of Editorial, Design, and Production—especially Cynthia Read,
who has worked with this book since its publishing beginnings and has contrib-
uted much to it.
As always my great personal debt is to Lucie, whose continuing loving friend-
ship and support is invaluable. Everything I said about her in the Preface to the
original addition remains true.
Preface (1980)
The scholar and the fool, as a colleague pointed out to a college "honors"
convocation, are in Renaissance Christian imagery often equated. Anyone
who has spent many days secluded on a project like the present volume can
sympathize with such an identification. Though Christian scholars often find
it difficult to be fools for Christ, we have at least as much aptitude as other
scholars for simply being fools. We must be reminded, then, that there are
many virtues greater than that of forsaking the world in order to write
about it.
Yet this book, for all the isolation it has involved, is not solely academic or
detached in its purpose. It is addressed not only to the scholarly community,
but also to an audience of thoughtful Christians and other observers who are
interested in a dispassionate analysis of the development of a significant
Christian tradition in an American cultural setting. While I have attempted
to assume a stance of detachment and to avoid using history as a tool for
partisan debate, this study represents a definite point of view and set of
interests. Since these give it direction, they are best revealed at the outset.
This is an essay in distinctly Christian scholarship, an attempt to present a
careful, honest, and critical evaluation of a tradition not far from my own.
My sympathies may be described most succinctly by saying that I greatly
admire two American scholar-theologians, Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold
Niebuhr. In the theology of Edwards—especially his sense of the overwhelm-
ing love and beauty of God revealed in Christ, in Scripture, and constantly
communicated through all creation—I see a starting point for the attempt to
comprehend reality and to see our place in it. In the ethics of Niebuhr I find a
way of understanding the pretensions, limits, and folly of even the most
admirable human behavior. Particularly, his analysis reveals the inevitable
ambiguities in Christians' relationships to their culture.
These perspectives, especially those associated with Niebuhr, can be found
implicitly throughout this study. "Culture" and the relationship of Christians
to it are prominent concerns. By "culture" I usually have in mind the
collection of beliefs, values, assumptions, commitments, and ideals expres-
sed in a society through popular literary and artistic forms and embodied in
its political, educational, and other institutions. In most cultures the prevail-
ing formal religion has been an integral part of and support for the dominant
beliefs, values, and institutions. Although this has been largely true in
Western civilization during the long era of "Christendom," the relationship
ix
X PREFACE
of Christianity to Western culture has always been complex. Some Christian
groups have equated culture with the "world" which must be shunned; others
have virtually identified Christianity with the values and progress of culture.
As H. Richard Niebuhr has pointed out in Christ and Culture (1951), there is
a spectrum of middle positions which can claim ancient lineage. This peren-
nial tension has been accentuated by the dramatic secularization of Western
culture in recent centuries.
My interest in these issues led to the questions and themes that shape this
study. The central question involves the degree to which the fundamentalist
versions of evangelical Protestantism (as defined in the Introduction) were
shaped by the American cultural experience. The question of fundamentalists'
own attitudes toward American culture is closely related. My conclusion,
which finds expression in a variety of specific ways, is that fundamentalists
experienced profound ambivalence toward the surrounding culture. Perhaps
the same might be said about almost any group. Yet the fundamentalist experi-
ence strikes me as unusual in at least one respect. These American Chris-
tians underwent a remarkable transformation in their relationship to the
culture. Respectable "evangelicals" in the 1870s, by the 1920s they had
become a laughingstock, ideological strangers in their own land. Their
traditions, the ways they maintained them, and the ways they modified them
are all understood better in the context of this collective uprooting.
This narrative is designed to serve as a general history of the rise of
fundamentalism, but it has been shaped more by interest in analyzing the
issues just mentioned than by desire to cover everything that happened in
textbook fashion. Throughout I have attempted to choose a strikingly
representative person, group, or event to illustrate a general phenomenon.
This method is, I think, not widely advocated in academic disciplines other
than history and the arts. In recent years two perceptive colleagues, one in
philosophy and one in the social sciences, have spoken to me of their dismay
concerning the historian's procedure. They have argued that one cannot
prove anything about general phenomena by picking out a few examples.
They are right, of course. No matter how long or impressive or varied the
footnotes, to a degree it must require an act of faith on the part of the reader
to believe that the instances selected capture the true spirit of the endless
information which bears on any subject and which the historian has pre-
sumably surveyed. Like many fascinating things, however, most of history
is too complex to be susceptible either to genuinely comprehensive treatment
or to definitive scientific analysis. In the final analysis it can be understood
and illuminated only by sympathetic insight.
Christian scholarship is essentially a communal enterprise. I have written
this book with a strong sense that it grows out of the brotherhood and
sisterhood that make up the body of Christ. I am especially grateful to other
PREFACE XI
scholars in that body at Calvin College. They have set high standards,
shaped much of the tone, and suggested a good deal of whatever insight is
found herein. My friends in the history department have been especially
helpful in listening to and criticizing parts of the manuscript. This support-
ing community has extended to my neighborhood, which fortunately is not
made up entirely of scholars and which includes academics who are not
unrelievedly scholarly. Here I would thank Sandy and Dale Van Kley,
Phyllis and Richard Mouw, and Karen and Peter De Vos (who also lent me
study space in their home for several years).
Thanks are due also to my friends and colleagues at Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School and to its administration for their cooperation during the
year of my stay there. They helped the progress of this work in many ways.
The administration and board of trustees of Calvin College have been
generous in supporting this project, providing a sabbatical leave as well as
time released from teaching. The librarians at Calvin, especially Conrad
Bult, Peter De Klerk, Jo Duyst, and Stephen Lambers, have always been
extremely helpful.
No formal acknowledgment can adequately convey my personal gratitude
to another group of scholars who deserve considerable credit for this book.
Joel Carpenter, Mark Noll, Harry Stout, and Grant Wacker all took a great
deal of time from their own pressing schedules to read versions of the
manuscript and to comment in detail. Donald Dayton and Richard Mouw
each gave advice during the course of the enterprise, read the manuscript,
and furnished important insights. Martin Marty also helped at crucial
points. Cy Hulse and Barbara Thompson, each my research assistant for a
year, provided sophisticated aid and insight. I am indebted also to C. Allyn
Russell, whose fine work on this subject has preceded mine, and whose
friendship, advice, and encouragement I have valued. He is the tennis cham-
pion among historians of fundamentalism.
I also wish to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for
generous support during 1971-1972 when I began this project. I am indebted
to the librarians of a number of institutions for their cooperation. I thank Jill
Los and Nelle Tjapkes for typing the manuscript and Paul Stoub for helping
with the illustrations.
I am grateful to many students of American culture and Christianity
whose work and insights I have borrowed. My acknowledgments and com-
ments appear in the notes, which are indexed to serve as a critical bibliog-
raphy.
Most important is the support I have received from my family, Lucie,
Gregory, and Brynn, three witty and enjoyable people who hardly ever com-
plained about the time invested in this enterprise. Of Lucie it might be said, as
Meredith wrote in Diana of the Crossways, "A witty woman is a treasure; a
witty beauty is a power." She has provided me with love, understanding,
xii PREFACE
advice, and humor. I wish to thank her especially for her effort in beginning to
read my earlier book, which was dedicated to her. This has inspired me to
attempt a work in English prose interesting enough even for philosophers. But
now I am back to foolish pretensions.
G. M.
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, Michigan
March 21, 1980