page_title: Christian fundamentalism
section_title: Changing interpretations
hierarchical_section_title: Christian fundamentalism / Changing interpretations
caption_attribution_description: English: In the thick of the Bele Chere street festival, some demonstrators used the occasion to get their message out. It reads: "Turn to Jesus, read the bible"Deutsch: Christlicher Demonstrant. Er hält ein Schild mit der Aufschrift: "Kehrt um zu Jesus, ließ die Bibel."
context_page_description: Christian fundamentalism began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and American Protestants as a reaction to theological liberalism and cultural modernism. Fundamentalists argued that 19th-century modernist theologians had misinterpreted or rejected certain doctrines, especially biblical inerrancy, which they considered the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Fundamentalists are almost always described as having a literal interpretation of the Bible. A few scholars label Catholics who reject modern theology in favor of more traditional doctrines fundamentalists. Scholars debate how much the terms "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" are synonymous. In keeping with traditional Christian doctrines concerning biblical interpretation, the role of Jesus in the Bible, and the role of the church in society, fundamentalists usually believe in a core of Christian beliefs which include the historical accuracy of the Bible and all of the events which are recorded in it as well as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
  Interpretations of Christian fundamentalism have changed over time.
context_section_description: The interpretations given the fundamentalist movement have changed over time, with most older interpretations being based on the concepts of social displacement or cultural lag. Some in the 1930s, including H. Richard Niebuhr, understood the conflict between fundamentalism and modernism to be part of a broader social conflict between the cities and the country. In this view the fundamentalists were country and small-town dwellers who were reacting against the progressivism of city dwellers. Fundamentalism was seen as a form of anti-intellectualism during the 1950s; in the early 1960s American intellectual and historian Richard Hofstadter interpreted it in terms of status anxiety.
  Beginning in the late 1960s, the movement began to be seen as "a bona fide religious, theological and even intellectual movement in its own right." Instead of interpreting fundamentalism as a simple anti-intellectualism, Paul Carter argued that "fundamentalists were simply intellectual in a way different than their opponents." Moving into the 1970s, Earnest R. Sandeen saw fundamentalism as arising from the confluence of Princeton Theology and millennialism.
  George Marsden defined fundamentalism as "militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism" in his 1980 work Fundamentalism and American Culture. "Militant" in this sense does not mean "violent", it means "aggressively active in a cause". Marsden saw fundamentalism arising from a number of preexisting evangelical movements that responded to various perceived threats by joining forces. He argued that Christian fundamentalists were American evangelical Christians who in the 20th century opposed "both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorsed. Militant opposition to modernism was what most clearly set off fundamentalism." Others viewing militancy as a core characteristic of the fundamentalist movement include Philip Melling, Ung Kyu Pak and Ronald Witherup. Donald McKim and David Wright (1992) argue that "in the 1920s, militant conservatives (fundamentalists) united to mount a conservative counter-offensive. Fundamentalists sought to rescue their denominations from the growth of modernism at home."
  According to Marsden, recent scholars differentiate "fundamentalists" from "evangelicals" by arguing the former were more militant and less willing to collaborate with groups considered "modernist" in theology. In the 1940s the more moderate faction of fundamentalists maintained the same theology but began calling themselves "evangelicals" to stress their less militant position. Roger Olson (2007) identifies a more moderate faction of fundamentalists, which he calls "postfundamentalist", and says "most postfundamentalist evangelicals do not wish to be called fundamentalists, even though their basic theological orientation is not very different." According to Olson, a key event was the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942. Barry Hankins (2008) has a similar view, saying "beginning in the 1940s....militant and separatist evangelicals came to be called fundamentalists, while culturally engaged and non-militant evangelicals were supposed to be called evangelicals."
  Timothy Weber views fundamentalism as "a rather distinctive modern reaction to religious, social and intellectual changes of the late 1800s and early 1900s, a reaction that eventually took on a life of its own and changed significantly over time."
caption: A Christian demonstrator preaching at Bele Chere
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