Product Description

Many American's today are taking note of the surprisingly strong political force that is the religious right. Controversial decisions by the government are met with hundreds of lobbyists, millions of dollars of advertising spending, and a powerful grassroots response. How has the fundamentalist movement managed to resist the pressures of the scientific community and the draw of modern popular culture to hold on to their ultra-conservative Christian views? Understanding the movement's history is key to answering this question. Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.
For Marsden, fundamentalists are not just religious conservatives; they are conservatives who are willing to take a stand and to fight. In Marsden's words (borrowed by Jerry Falwell), "a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something." In the late nineteenth century American Protestantism was gradually dividing between liberals who were accepting new scientific and higher critical views that contradicted the Bible and defenders of the more traditional evangelicalism. By the 1920s a full-fledged "fundamentalist" movement had developed in protest against theological changes in the churches and changing mores in the culture. Building on networks of evangelists, Bible conferences, Bible institutes, and missions agencies, fundamentalists coalesced into a major protest movement that proved to have remarkable staying power.
For this new edition, a major new chapter compares fundamentalism since the 1970s to the fundamentalism of the 1920s, looking particularly at the extraordinary growth in political emphasis and power of the more recent movement. Never has it been more important to understand the history of fundamentalism in our rapidly polarizing nation. Marsen's carefully researched and engrossing work remains the best way to do just that.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24355 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 468 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780195300475
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review

"Marsden reveals a great deal of history, showing the origins, development and growth of evangelicalism and fundamentalism. His is a focused yet broad scholarly work that has stood the test of time, a worthwhile history resource on fundamentalism in America."--Congregational Libraries Today

About the Author

George M. Marsden is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life.

Customer Reviews

Best history of fundamentalism
Prior to more recent historiography, most mainstream commentators and historians portrayed fundamentalists as rural, uneducated people, who lived in the West and the South, and who would not display such resistance to modernity if they lived in urban areas and were well-educated.

In the last thirty years, however, this consensus was challenged by a number of historians. The two most influential monographs were written by Ernest Sandeen and George Marsden. In his "Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Milleniarianism 1800-1930", Sandeen rejects the primacy of sociological interpretations, emphasizing the importance of theology. He views Fundamentalism primarily as a combination of premillenialism (particularly dispensational premillenialism) and the theology of Biblical inerrancy defended by Princeton Theological Seminary, with leadership of the movement located primarily in Northeastern urban areas.

Marsden agrees to some extent with this perspective, but he believes that Sandeen's interpretation ignores other important contributions to the Fundamentalist movement. Marsden argues that a proper methodology will begin by examining Fundamentalism in 1925 and then will trace Fundamentalism back to its sources, instead of beginning with British and American millenarianism in 1800 and charting how the Fundamentalist movement grew out of them. Marsden asserts that Fundamentalism should be defined as "militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism."

Marsden believes that Sandeen's analysis is important, and that is a helpful corrective for an excessive focus on the sociological roots of Fundamentalism. Certainly, premil-lenialism and biblical inerrancy are two very important "roots" of Fundamentalism. The problem with Sandeen's analysis, Marsden argues, is that "he mistook the roots he uncovered for the source of the entire movement." Marsden asserts that "what was called 'fundamentalism' in the 20s sprang from equally complex and tangled roots in nineteenth-century tra-ditions of revivalism, evangelicalism, pietism, Americanism, and varied orthodoxies."

Marsden overemphasizes the extent to which Common Sense Realism buttressed the Princeton Theology. His analysis tends to make the Princeton Theologians appear more rationalistic than they really were. Also, it seems likely that someone like Warfield would be much more heavily influenced by his immersion in the Reformed tradition and his intense study of Augustine and Calvin than by Common Sense Realism. Finally, while Marsden does not go as far as does Sandeen in describing "inerrancy" as a nineteenth century innovation, his analysis tends to focus too much on Common Sense Realism as the source of inerrancy. There have been many inerrantists throughout the history of the church who have held to different epistemologies.

These, however, are a few minor complaints about an obviously superior piece of historiography. Although Sandeen's "The Roots of Fundamentalism" helped correct an excessively sociological emphasis in the study of Fundamentalism, it, along with every other account of Fundamentalism, has been surpassed by Marsden's "Fundamentalism and American Culture." It is es-sential reading for anyone interested in the past and the fu-ture of American evangelicalism.

Objective, Fair, and fearless
The thesis of this book parallels that of George Marsden's similar book on American culture, Religion and American Culture, that Fundamentalism shaped and was shaped by the surrounding culture. Marsden builds upon the work of earlier historians of Fundamentalism, namely that of Ernest Sandeen's book The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism. Sandeen's thesis is that Fundamentalism is the outgrowth of the "millenarian" movement that developed in late nineteenth-century American, especially through Bible institutes and conferences concerning the interpretation of biblical prophecies. Sandeen's thesis, according to Marsden, has much to commend it in connecting millenarianism and Princeton theology to the movement; however, it does not deal adequately with the militant anti-modernistic slant of the movement. Fundamentalism can briefly be defined as militant anti-modernist Protestantism that took on its own identity as a patchwork coalition of representatives of other movements.
Overview of the Book
Marsden divides his book into three sections (these sections are different in intent than the above themes. Marsden uses these sections to expand on his themes), Evangelicalism before Fundamentalism, the Shaping of Fundamentalism as a Movement, and the Crucial Years in which it gained popularity and its subsequent exodus of public life. In understanding the rise of Fundamentalism at the end of the nineteenth-century one must understand the backdrop from which it arose-nineteenth-century evangelicalism.
Conclusion
Marsden concludes the book by re-emphasizing his definition of Fundamentalism as a militant anti-modernist conservative force. For Marsden this should be the starting point for defining the movement. Militant anti-modernism applies to all types of Fundamentalism and any definition that goes beyond this must have qualifiers so that false stereotypes are not applied to the wrong group. As an Evangelical I enjoyed this book as I saw where the mind-set of conservatives and liberals developed. I also learned to what extent my own beliefs were influenced by this movement. I suggest that this book be read alongside another book on the shaping of American Christianity for a full understanding. I would also like to see an analysis of Fundamentalism from a more mainline perspective, although I believe Marsden is objective in this work. My main qualm with this book is in Part Three. In discussing the peak and soon-to-come fall of Fundamentalism, Marsden tried to put too many ideas into too few words. To keep up with him I had to re-analyze several chapters. However, due to the length of the book already, I can understand his attempt to save space. I would recommend this book to people of all political and religious persuasions so that they may have a fair understanding of this branch of early twentieth-century American religion.

Engrossing, Engaging and Well Researched
George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards was so well written that I decided to read more of his stuff. This book on fundamentalism is a classic. Many scholars of Christian fundamentalism paint with too broad a brush, often lumping evangelicals into the fundy camp. Marsden avoids this mistake. He also acknowledges what many do not, that the fundamentalism of the post WWI era took on a much harsher and more separatistic tone.

Marsden does a nice of discussing some of the towering figures of the movement: D.L Moody, R.A Torrey, Arno Gaebelein, J, Gresham Machen, Jonathan Blanchard and Charles Blanchard (the President of Wheaton College). He shows how early fundamentalists like R.A Torrey and W.H Griffith Thomas thought that evangelical zeal should be coupled with social concern. Marsden also highlights the fundamentalist disdain over the more liberal Social Gospel, which jettisoned evangelism completely.

We also get to see the fundamentalists like Billy Sunday and William Jennings Bryan, who were concerned about people coming to know Christ, but not quite as concerned about people coming to know more about the doctrinal content of Christianity. This was a major concern of the evangelical Princeton theologians (BB Warfield, Charles Hodge, and J. Gresham Machen).

There is also a newer chapter in this edition that traces the development of fundamentalism from 1980 to the present day. In this chaoter, Marsden also takes himself to task for not discussing how the relaxed mores of the "Roaring Twenties" alarmed the fundamentalist community, nor did her mention the role of women in the fundamentalist movement of 1871-1925.

But these criticisms duly noted, I still like the book very much and commend it to those interested in religious movements.

Rev. Marc Axelrod