Bawer takes great pains to outline the roots of fundamentalism, its beliefs, and its broad affect on Christianity as a whole. He begins with the man who could be called the father of fundmentalism, John Nelson Darby, and traces the effect of his teachings in the 1840's through present day messengers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Darby's view was codified for fundamentalists through C.I. Scofield who put together the Scofield Bible in 1909. It was this move that set fundamentalism in stone as the true way to be Christian. Bawer says it is this rigid set of beliefs that lie at the heart of fundamentalism.
People are scared, threatened, angry and frustrated.
They want certainty, they want faith handed to them at the door, all packaged and tidy. They want it to be black and white, they are disturbed by the greys. They don't want to have to use their minds to look at the world and figure out for themselves exactly how they feel about things. Church of Love doctrine is based on the Social Gospel message preached by Walter Rauschenbusch and Harry Emerson Fosdick. Rauschenbusch traced this emphasis through the entire Bible.