Other studies identify still other keys. Flamboyant fundamentalist . Others found evolutionary teaching most reprehensible. Others still were troubled by the increasing cultural disarray in the United States. Still other fundamentalists identified biblical criticism as the chief culprit.
Many people think early fundamentalists withdrew from social and political concerns.
But a closer look reveals that many prominent fundamentalists denounced the social engineering of liberal Protestants while promoting their own solutions for American society. One such minister was John Roach Straton. Born in the Midwest and educated at Southern Baptist institutions, Straton made his greatest mark as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New York City from 1918 until his death in 1929. Straton's interest in social reform was not rhetorical. His most celebrated defense of fundamentalism came in a series of debates he conducted in 1923 and 1924 with Charles Francis Potter, a Unitarian minister in New York.