[U.S.] George Marsden: “Understanding American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism”

[U.S.] George Marsden: *Understanding American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism*
Xing Ding posted on 2007-01-26 00:20:35

[U.S.] George Marsden: *Understanding American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism*, translated by Song Jijie, proofread by Chen Zuoren, Central Compilation & Translation Press, May 2004

Introduction, p. 1 Fundamentalists are evangelical believers who are furious about certain things. That sounds simple, yet it is extremely precise. Jerry Falwell even took it as a vivid definition of fundamentalism.

Introduction, p. 4 The basic beliefs of evangelicalism include (1) the Reformation doctrine of the Bible’s ultimate authority; (2) the Bible’s record of God’s real, historical acts of salvation; (3) the salvation of eternal life on the basis of Christ’s atonement; (4) the importance of evangelicalism and missions; and (5) the importance of a spiritually transformed life.

Introduction, pp. 4–5 In recent decades, public-opinion polls examining evangelical belief have shown that nearly 50 million Americans fit this definition. (1983)

p. 4 American civilization, though never a “Christian nation” in the strict sense, was in large part held together by a set of shared values with a considerable Protestant component.

p. 51 Of course, one of the most striking developments in American religion since 1930 has been the resurgence of evangelicalism as a force in American culture. Perhaps this was the least likely thing to have been predicted in 1930. In the major northern denominations, where it had launched a serious challenge in the 1920s and which in fact were controlled by the modernists, fundamentalism seemed to have been defeated. According to all the popular sociological theories, all that remained to be done was the final sweep. Conservative religion would die away with the advance of modernity. ………… Few thought that the South would rise again to bring a religious-cultural tone to most of the country. And few imagined that fifty years later the modernist denominations would be in steady decline, while evangelical and conservative groups would be flourishing.

p. 71 Many observers seem to have thought that fundamentalists and evangelicals were departing from the American way when they entered politics. But in fact, for better or worse, the mixing of religion and politics has always been part of the American political tradition. Thus, the more recent political ventures of fundamentalists and evangelicals can best be understood as a revival of one of this country’s major political traditions.

p. 77 Secularization in America has proceeded not by creating hostility between religion and the mainstream culture, but by fusing their aims together. Thus Republican-Protestant hegemony was no longer necessarily obviously Protestant. It simply represented a certain conception of civilization. …………

p. 102 The fundamentalist rhetoric of the Bible’s “inerrancy” in scientific and historical details is bound up with this modern style of thought. Although the view that Scripture is inerrant is not new, fundamentalists stress it in part because they actually often treat the Bible as though it were a scientific paper. For example, Southern Baptist fundamentalist Paige Patterson pointed out: “For lunar launchings, a one-factor error in mathematical calculations could result in total failure to hit the moon. A slight change in the doctrine of salvation could also cost one a place in heaven.” For fundamentalists, the Bible is essentially a collection of true and accurate propositions.

pp. 102–103 Fundamentalist thought actually fits very well with one orientation in contemporary culture: a technological orientation. In theoretical science or the social sciences, all sorts of supernatural questions raise fundamental issues about the presuppositions of the scientific enterprise; by contrast, technological thinking does not get entangled in such theoretical principles. Truth concerns a collection of true and accurate propositions that will work if properly classified and organized. Fundamentalism fits this spirit because it is a form of Christianity with no vague goals, ambiguities, or historical development. Everything fits neatly into a system. For example, it is clear that many leaders of the creationism movement are situated in various applied sciences or engineering technologies.

pp. 103–104 Fundamentalist preaching is also particularly well suited to the mass society of the technological age. Fundamentalists are especially adept at manipulating the mass media. If the media have such a rule, namely that the larger the audience, the simpler the preaching must be, then fundamentalists and similar evangelicals were ready for this technological age. When television preachers offer answers in simple, tendentious fashion, their popularity soars. By contrast, it is hard to imagine a widely popular neo-orthodox television preacher: subtlety and ambiguity would immediately get him shut out. This age’s preference for this kind of preaching is not limited to television. Evangelicalism has also dominated the actual bestseller statistics of recent decades, though this is not often admitted by the managers of public opinion. The key to this success remains simple preaching. Such simplicity itself has a paradoxical relation to contemporary life. On the one hand, it is a reaction against the tensions, uncertainties, and ambiguities that surround modern life and stress the human condition. At the same time, ancient simplicity has been given a contemporary form by certain forces that are no different from the forces behind the efficient production and marketing of things like McDonald’s hamburgers. If Chartres Cathedral is a symbol of the Middle Ages, then perhaps McDonald’s golden arches are the symbol of our age. In any case, fundamentalism is a form of Christianity suited to its time.

p. 106 Cooper said that Christian and non-Christian scientific thinkers are not working in different parts of the same building, but in different buildings. Each “boasts the grand name of science and will not allow others to have it.”

p. 107 Paton, like Warfield, believed that Calvinism and science would triumph together. Paton once declared: “Believing in Calvinism, we believe that if there is to be one unified faith in the Christian world, it will be the Calvinist faith.” Yet Paton was one of a dying breed, one of the last few pastor-presidents of America’s major universities.

p. 111 … in the initial heyday of American evangelicalism, objective scientific thought had not yet been stained with the sinful color of support for secularism. On the contrary, people boldly praised it as the best friend of Christian faith and, in general, of Christian culture.

p. 113 By the end of the eighteenth century, almost all American Protestants had accepted this dual-worldview: based on an empiricist epistemology, the natural laws below supported the supernatural faith above. In this way they strove to complete a modern version of the Thomistic synthesis of reason and faith. Perhaps, in Richard Niebuhr’s terms, they achieved an intellectual framework of “Christ above culture,” within which scientific realism and faith could not conflict.

p. 115 In general, American evangelical scientists assumed that their research was objective in the broad sense, but they also linked it to their Christianity by pointing out the harmony between scientific truth and the truths of the higher religious and moral realms. Perhaps the most common way of connecting Christianity with science is the “doxological” one. One ought to emerge from one’s scientific inquiry into nature and praise the marvels of God’s creation.

p. 117 In fact, because evangelicalism and scientific culture were so deeply intertwined throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the response to Darwinism was far more complex. One proof of this is that public opinion about Darwinism did not immediately split strictly along conservative and liberal lines.

p. 118 (Initially) although there were persistent dissenters, the mainstream view among American conservative evangelical leaders was that Genesis could be reinterpreted in certain ways in light of modern scientific discoveries. By the time *On the Origin of Species* appeared, the usual view among biblicists was that the six “days” of creation in Genesis 1 represented immensely long ages. Moreover, the order of the creation of species in Genesis roughly corresponded to Darwin’s order. As for whether God might have used evolutionary means to create, there was as yet no new question. If God could guide the natural evolution of mountains, then he could also create other things in this way.

p. 119 The fourth objection is more philosophical. Its best expositor was Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary. Hodge summed up this objection in the conclusion of his 1874 book *What Is Darwinism?* “What is Darwinism?” Hodge asked. “It is atheism.” Hodge’s summary fit so neatly with the war model of the relationship between respectable conservative religion and Darwinist science that it became a favored quotation, thought to encapsulate the conservative side of the whole affair. But in fact, Hodge made some careful distinctions. He noted that the idea of evolution was neither unique to Darwin nor the crucial issue. The concept of natural selection was not either. What Hodge regarded as central and crucial was “Darwin’s rejection of all teleology or doctrine of final causes.” For Hodge, Darwin’s refusal to compromise on this point amounted to outright atheism, because it left us with a random universe.

pp. 125–126 The strategy of American evangelicalism was built on the premise that there was only one set of scientific truths for all humanity, and that the best views should drive out the inferior ones; this strategy prepared American evangelicalism for its spectacular intellectual failures.

p. 158 Moreover, as Livingston has pointed out, there seems reason to think that evolution has become a metaphor capable of explaining everything in modern culture. Livingston says it has become a “cosmic myth, a world-view intended to provide a norm for ethics and coherent realism.” All aspects of existence and experience are interpreted according to evolutionary, developmental, or historicist patterns. Usually, all this is put forward either as a complete explanation of the phenomenon in question or as the only meaningful explanation humans can achieve. Evolutionism is certainly a model with important explanatory power; but as Livingston says, it is still necessary to ask whether we have sufficient grounds for making this metaphor the basis of an all-encompassing worldview. In any case, creationist scientists saw with precision that in modern culture “evolutionism” usually involved far more than biology. The ideological structure of this civilization, including its entire moral framework, was at issue. Evolutionism, to be sure, sometimes functions as a mythic system, and sometimes as a key element in a worldview, functioning as a kind of effective religion. If, through such a real link with a philosophy opposed to traditional Christianity, many people are made less able to see that biological theory does not necessarily belong to such a worldview, then the stubborn supporters of evolutionism’s anti-supernatural myth deserve the same objections.

January 26, 2007 0:20

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.