Fundamentalism (redirected from Fundamentallism)

fundamentalism.

1 In Protestantism, religious movement that arose among conservative members of various Protestant denominations early in the 20th cent., with the object of maintaining traditional interpretations of the Bible and of the doctrines of the Christian faith in the face of Darwinian evolution, secularism, and the emergence of liberal theology.

A group protesting "modernist" tendencies in the churches circulated a 12-volume publication called The Fundamentals (1909–12), in which five points of doctrine were set forth as fundamental: the Virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus, the infallibility of the Scriptures, the substitutional atonement, and the physical second coming of Christ. The debate between fundamentalists and modernists was most acute among the Baptists and the Presbyterians but also arose within other denominations. In a highly publicized case, the so-called Monkey Trial (1925), the fundamentalist leader William Jennings Bryan won Tennessee's case against J. T. Scopes, for teaching evolution in the public schools (see Scopes trial). Other attempts, however, by fundamentalists in the 1920s to rid the churches of modernism and the schools of evolution failed.

By the 1930s many fundamentalists began to withdraw into independent churches and splinter denominations, and fundamentalism became identified in the public mind with anti-intellectualism and extremism. Many fundamentalists rejected this image, and a movement was begun in the late 1940s to present their position in both a more scholarly and popular way. This movement, known as neoevangelicalism (or, more simply, evangelicalism), sought a wider following from the major denominations through its various schools, youth programs, publications, and radio broadcasts. The separatists saw these efforts as compromising fundamentalist views and sought to disassociate themselves from these religious institutions and such well-known evangelical fundamentalists as Billy Graham.

Since the late 1970s fundamentalists have embraced electoral and legislative politics and the "electronic church" in their fight against perceived threats to traditional religious values: so-called secular humanism, Communism, feminism, legalized abortion, homosexuality, and the ban on school prayer. They have continued to oppose the teaching of evolution in the schools or have sought to have creationism or intelligent design taught as well. In recent years some fundamentalists have also attacked the teaching of scientific theories on the origins of the universe (see cosmology). Those Americans who describe themselves as fundamentalists (approximately 25% of the U.S. population) have become a political bloc in their own right. During the 1980s they made up a large portion of the new Christian right that helped put Ronald Reagan into the White House, and early in the 21st cent. they aided significantly in the election of George W. Bush to the presidency. The Moral Majority, founded by the fundamentalist Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell in 1979, was the most visible example of this new trend in the 1980s; the most prominent current group is the Christian Coalition, headed by Pat Robertson. Moderate fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals continue to forge new alliances, for example in the Southern Baptist Convention, to wield political and denominational control.

Bibliography

See N. Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy, 1918–1931 (1954, repr. 1963); L. Gasper, The Fundamentalist Movement, 1930–1956 (1963); E. R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (1970); M. Ellingsen, The Evangelical Movement (1988); W. H. Capps, The New Religious Right (1990).

2 In other religions. In Islam, the term "fundamentalism" encompasses various modern Muslim leaders, groups, and movements opposed to secularization in Islam and Islamic countries and seeking to reassert traditional beliefs and practices. After the Shiite revolution (1979) led by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, the term was applied to a number of ultra-conservative or militant Islamic movements there and in other countries, such as the Taliban of Afghanistan. There are both Shiite and Sunni fundamentalist leaders and groups, such as the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Muslim Brotherhood. The term has also been applied to Hindu nationalist groups in India (see Hinduism; Bharatiya Janata party).

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fundamentalism

1. Christianity (esp among certain Protestant sects) the belief that every word of the Bible is divinely inspired and therefore true

2. Islam a movement favouring strict observance of the teachings of the Koran and Islamic law

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Fundamentalism 

an extremely conservative tendency in modern Protestantism, directed against liberal Protestant rationalism, or what the Fundamentalists call modernism. Fundamentalism rejects any criticism of the Bible and preaches the infallibility of Holy Scripture as the “fundament” of Christianity. Fundamentalism demands that all Protestants return to blind faith in the biblical miracles, the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, and Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead and his ascension into heaven.

Fundamentalism flourished chiefly in the southern states of the USA, especially among Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists during the second decade of the 20th century, after the publication and wide distribution between 1910 and 1912 of a series of anonymous pamphlets that stigmatized any sort of criticism or rationalist interpretation of Scripture. In the succeeding decade, Fundamentalism attacked science and opposed its authority over that of the Bible. From 1921 to 1929, Fundamentalists in a number of southern states (Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi) succeeded in having laws adopted that prohibited the teaching of Darwin’s theories on evolution in the public schools. In 1973, Tennessee amended the law to permit the teaching of Darwin’s ideas but only as a hypothesis and along with the biblical version of creation.

In 1948, in order to counterbalance the World Council of Churches, Fundamentalists reorganized the World’s Christian Fundamentalist Association (founded 1919) into the International Council of Christian Churches, comprising 140 Protestant churches from many countries. In the 1970’s, however, the Fundamentalists did not have much influence.

A. N. CHANYSHEV