Voices: ‘Shall the Fundamentalists Win?’ 100 years later

May 21, 1922, the famous American preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick delivered an influential sermon titled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” While Fosdick’s sermon provides valuable historical insight into the state of American Christianity 100 years ago, it also poses important questions for Christians living a century later.

The term “fundamentalist” has taken a significantly different meaning than it held in Fosdick’s day. So, this may lead to confusion for modern readers. Today, “fundamentalist” basically means “someone more theologically conservative than me who I think is overly militant and draws too many lines in the sand.”

While Fosdick undoubtedly felt that way about the fundamentalists of his day, he had very specific doctrinal issues in mind that may surprise some of us today.

The rise of modernism

In the 1920s, the United States was in the throes of what is now called “the fundamentalist-modernist controversy.” American Christians defined “fundamentalism” over and against “modernism.” We may wonder, “What is modernism, exactly?”

Beginning in the mid-18th century, a new approach to biblical studies, theology and church history began to develop in European universities. To put it in simplified terms, this new approach rejected the “supernaturalism” of traditional Christianity and questioned the doctrinal orthodoxies of earlier generations. Moreover, the rise of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in the middle of the 19th century further complicated and challenged traditional Christian beliefs.

By the beginning of the 20th century, it was commonplace for scholars of Christianity to regard the four Gospels and the rest of the Bible as mostly fictitious, many books of the Bible as forgeries, the miracles of the Bible as myths and legends, and historic orthodoxy as later theological ideas falsely imposed upon the biblical texts, among other things.

While this approach—labeled “historical criticism”—originated in European universities, it was spreading to American colleges and seminaries by the late 1800s. Many Christians accepted the results of this new, critical approach to the study of Christianity, but they did not want to reject Christianity altogether. So, they sought to redefine Christianity in such a way that it could not be threatened by the results of the new historical criticism.

These “Modernists,” as they were called, dramatically altered many historic Christian beliefs. For example, miracles like the virgin birth, the feeding of the 5,000, and the bodily resurrection of Christ were reinterpreted as metaphors or symbols that, while historically and scientifically false, communicated spiritual truths.

The Fundamentalists fight back

The Modernists were not the only people who wanted to “save” Christianity from “the acids of modernity,” however. Many Christians wanted to preserve historic teaching. They wanted to uphold historic orthodoxies, embrace the “supernatural” elements of Christian faith, and more. So, they pushed back against modernism.

From 1910 to 1915, a group of Christian pastors and scholars produced a collection of 90 essays entitled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. These essays argued in favor of more traditional and conservative Christian beliefs, defending these beliefs from modernist criticisms.

It is important to note, some of the contributors to The Fundamentals did not completely reject the new historical methods of study, but instead sought to “chasten” these methods. Scholars like James Orr and B.B. Warfield wanted to take what they considered helpful and sound from historical criticism while rejecting what they considered problematic.

Also in 1910, the Northern Presbyterian Church defined five “fundamentals” of the faith, five doctrines they considered non-negotiable for Christianity but which the Modernists rejected. These fundamentals were: the full inspiration, inerrancy and authority of Scripture; Christ’s divine nature and literal virgin birth; Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross for sin; Christ’s literal, bodily resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven; and Christ’s literal, physical second coming in judgment and salvation at the end of history.

These five fundamentals defined by the Presbyterians were quickly and widely adopted by many American Christians as doctrines that desperately needed to be defended against modernism. In 1920, Baptist journalist Curtis Lee Laws coined the term “fundamentalist” and defined it as someone who planned “to do battle royal for the fundamentals.”

Throughout the 1920s, numerous Christian denominations, churches and schools faced severe infighting over these theological issues. This was the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, the situation into which Harry Emerson Fosdick preached May 21, 1922.

Did the Fundamentalists win?

In his famous sermon, which made quite a stir soon after he preached it, Fosdick came down firmly on the side of the Modernists. Fosdick regarded the Fundamentalists as intolerant and anti-intellectual. Fosdick believed modernist Christianity eventually would triumph over fundamentalism. Was he right?

In one sense, Fosdick was correct. By the end of the decade, the Fundamentalists either had left or been forced out of the major American denominations, seminaries, universities and elsewhere. Fundamentalism became isolated from mainstream American culture. It turned inward on itself, becoming more and more insular.

However, in the 1940s, a new form of American Christianity emerged out of fundamentalism. Originally called “neo-evangelicalism,” this movement upheld the central doctrines espoused by the Fundamentalists but sought to be more engaged with American culture, higher education and others. Neo-evangelicalism was theologically conservative but rejected the insularity and isolationism of the Fundamentalists.

Led by figures like Billy Graham, Harold John Ockenga and Carl F.H. Henry, neo-evangelicalism spread quickly, starting or revitalizing many different Christian institutions in the United States, such as Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Wheaton College and Christianity Today.

In the 100 years since Harry Emerson Fosdick preached his famous sermon, did the Fundamentalists win? In one way, the answer is no, at least not in the short term. But when we see how many American Christians today still hold to the “fundamentals” for which the Fundamentalists fought, I think we can say, “Yes.”

Joshua Sharp is the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Orange, and a graduate of Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Mo., and Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary in Waco. The views expressed are those of the author.