Historic Fundamentalism

Immediately, there is a mental recoil at the mere seeing or hearing of the term. This is because in our culture today, we hear the term as defined by our modern media in political terms or in some other form. However, what James is talking about is how fundamentalism was started in America. He talks about how issues such as higher textual criticism, Darwinian evolution, Freudian psychology, and comparative religion brought about the fundamentalist movement at Princeton University in the 1920's. The fundamentalist movement began as a rejection of liberalism. The rise of liberalism in the 1850's in Germany was imported to America, and its foundations for textual studies are taught in about 95% of all Christian seminaries today. These foundations would include the denial of miracles, the denial of the inerrancy of Scripture, a presupposition of naturalism, and the emphasis on personal experience and morality. The issue of liberalism may have come to the shore of America in the 20th century, but the reasons for battling liberalism are still valid in the 21st. This is a good primer concerning the state of the church and Christian seminaries in America today.