The ascension of fundamentalism in the U.S.

The ascension of fundamentalism in the U.S.

(MG) Mike Huston is a professional bridge player and a labor arbitrator. He formerly taught English literature at a small liberal arts college in Michigan. His teaching gig ended a few years after the college applied for some federal grant money to start a nursing program. Eventually, the nursing program consumed the liberal arts program and the staff of its English literature department was reduced from seven to two.

(MG) Mike is as avid a reader as I know, and acrobatically digests about five books at a time. My greatest pleasure from tournament bridge is to share a meal with Mike to get his book / author recommendations. At the 2006 Chicago Summer National Bridge Tournament, Mike recommended the author Karen Armstrong to me, saying, "You can trust her."

(MG) Every Armstrong book I read put me several steps closer to my eventual conversion to Islam. I'm presently reading her 2002 book, The Battle for God, an eye-opening treatise on the history of fundamentalism. It's introduction begins thus:

One of the most startling developments of the late twentieth century has been the emergence within every major religious tradition of a militant piety popularly known as "fundamentalism." Its manifestations are sometimes shocking. Fundamentalists have gunned down worshippers in a mosque, have killed doctors and nurses who work in abortion clinics, have shot their presidents, and have even toppled a powerful government. It is only a small minority of fundamentalists who commit such acts of terror, but even the most peaceful and law-abiding are perplexing, because they seem so adamantly opposed to many of the most positive values of modern society. Fundamentalists have no time for democracy, pluralism, religious toleration, peacekeeping, free speech, or the separation of church and state. Christian fundamentalists reject the discoveries of biology and physics about the origins of life and insist that the Book of Genesis is scientifically sound in every detail. At a time when many are throwing off the shackles of the past, Jewish fundamentalists observe their revealed Law more stringently than ever before, and Muslim women, repudiating the freedoms of Western women, shroud themselves in veils and chadors. Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists both interpret the Arab-Israeli conflict, which began as defiantly secularist, in an exclusively religious way. Fundamentalism, moreover, is not confined to the great monotheisms. There are Buddhist, Hindu, and even Confucian fundamentalisms, which also cast aside many of the painfully acquired insights of liberal culture, which fight and kill in the name of religion and strive to bring the sacred into the realm of politics and national struggle.

(MG) The following passages which begin on page 171 caught my eye, and helped explain how "we" got where "we" are in this political age in which the Rove machine has so effectively roused up ire, wrath, and rage to mobilize the Christian fundamentalists to get out and vote. The seeds of this particular political trend have been planted and sown for some time, in America, we can trace the roots back to World War I.

... [D]uring the Great War, an element of terror entered conservative Protestantism and it became fundamentalist. Americans had always had a tendency to see a conflict as apocalyptic, and the Great War confirmed many of them in their premillennial convictions. The horrific slaughter, they decided, was on such a scale that it could only be the beginning of the End. These must be the battles foretold in the Book of Revelation. Three big Prophecy Conferences were held between 1914 and 1918, when participants combed through the Scofield Reference Bible to find some more "signs of the times." Everything indicated that these predictions were indeed coming to pass. The Hebrew prophets had foretold that the Jews would return to their own land before the End, so when the British government issued the Balfour Declaration (1917), pledging its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the premillennialists were struck with awe and exultation. Scofield had suggested the Russia was "the power from the North" that would attack Israel shortly before Armageddon; the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), which made atheistic communism the state ideology, seemed to confirm this. The creation of the League of Nations obviously fulfilled the prophecy of Revelation 16:14: it was the revived Roman empire that would shortly be led by Antichrist. As they watched world events, the premillennial Protestants were becoming more politically conscious. What had been in the late nineteenth century a purely doctrinal dispute with the liberals in their denominations, was becoming a struggle for the future of civilization. They saw themselves on the front line against satanic forces that would shortly destroy the world. The wild tales of German atrocities circulating during and immediately after the war seemed to prove to the conservatives how right they had been to reject the nation that had given birth to the Higher Criticism.

Yet this vision was inspired by deep dread. It was xenophobic, fearful of foreign influence seeping into the nation through Catholics, communists, and Higher Critics. This fundamentalist faith shows a profound recoil from the modern world. Conservative Protestants had become extremely ambivalent about democracy: it would lead to "mob rule," to a "red republic," to the "most devilish rule this world has ever seen." Peace-keeping institutions, such as the League of Nations, would henceforth always be imbued with absolute evil in the eyes of fundamentalists. The League was clearly the abode of Antichrist, who, St. Paul had said, would be a plausible liar whose deceit would take everybody in. The Bible said that there would be war in the End-times, not peace, so the League was dangerously on the wrong track. Indeed, Antichrist himself was likely to be a peacemaker. The fundamentalists' revulsion from the League and other international bodies also revealed a visceral fear of the centralization of modernity and a terror of anything resembling world government. Faced with the universalism of modern society, some people instinctively retreated into tribalism.

This type of conspiracy fear, which makes people feel that they are fighting for their lives, can easily become aggressive. Jesus was no longer the loving savior preached by Dwight Moody. As the leading premillennialist, Isaac M. Haldeman, explained, the Christ of the Book of Revelation "comes forth as one who no longer seeks either friendship or love. ... His garments are dipped in the blood of men." The conservatives were ready for a fight, and, at this crucial moment, the liberal Protestants went on the offensive.

The liberals had their own difficulties with the war, which challenged their vision of a world progressing inexorably toward the Kingdom of God. The only way they could cope was to see this as the war to end all wars, which would make the world safe for democracy. They were horrified by the violence of premillennialism, and its devastating critique of democracy and the League of Nations. These doctrines seemed not only un-American but a denial of Christianity itself. They decided to attack, and, despite their Gospel of love and compassion, their campaign was vicious and unbalanced. In 1917, theologians at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, the leading scholastic institution of liberal Christianity in the United States, began to attack the Moody Bible Institute on the other side of town. Professor Shirley Jackson Chase accused the premillennialists of being traitors to their county and of taking money from the Germans. Alva S. Taylor compared them to the Bolsheviks, who also wanted to see the world remade in a day. Alfred Dieffenbach, the editor of the Christian Register, called premillennialism "the most astounding mental aberration in the field of religious thinking."

By linking the devout teachers of the Moody Bible Institute with foes who were not only their political enemies but whom they regarded as satanic, the liberals had hit below the belt. The conservatives struck back, hard. The editor of the Moody Bible Institue Monthly and president of the Institue, James M. Gray, retorted that it was the pacifism of the liberals which has caused the United States to fall behind Germany in the arms race, so it was they who had jeopardized the war effort. In The King's Business, a premillenial magazine, Thomas C. Horton argued that it was the liberals who were in league with the Germans, since the Higher Criticism which they taught in their Divinity School had caused the war and was responsible for the collapse of decent values in Germany. Other conservative articles blamed rationalism and evolutionary theory for the alleged German atrocities. Howard W. Kellogg of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles insisted that the philosophy of evolution was responsible for "a monster plotting world domination, the wreck of civilization, and the destruction of Christianity itself." This acrimonious and, on both sides, unchristian dispute had clearly touched a raw nerve, and evoked a deep fear of annihilation. There was no longer any possibility of reconciliation on the subject of the Higher Criticism, which, for the conservatives, now had an aura of absolute evil. The literal truth of scripture was a matter of the life and death of Christianity itself. The critics' attacks on the Bible would result in anarchy and the total collapse of civilization, the Baptist minister John Straton declared in a famous sermon entitled "Will New York City Be Destroyed If It Does Not Repent?" The conflict had got out of hand and it would become almost impossible to heal the rift.

Posted by Mark Ganzer at 5:00 PM