{"id":21544,"date":"2016-03-22T10:03:46","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T15:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/?p=21544"},"modified":"2016-03-22T10:03:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T15:03:46","slug":"what-is-fundamentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2016\/03\/what-is-fundamentalism.html","title":{"rendered":"What is Fundamentalism?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Christian_Demonstrator_Preaching_at_Bele_Chere_2007\"You can ask me. I\u2019m a Bob Jones graduate remember?<\/p>\n

When I was at Bob Jones the term \u201cfundamentalist\u201d was only just beginning to get traction as a pejorative term. The Protestant fundamentalists at Bob Jones wore the label with pride. It set them apart from the Evangelicals they considered to be sweet, soft and spineless. Those types were called \u201cneo Evangelicals\u201d and went to Wheaton and thought Billy Graham was okay.<\/p>\n

In fact the term \u201cfundamentalism\u201d belongs originally to the conservative Protestants.<\/p>\n

Fundamentalism as a movement arose in the United States, starting among\u00a0conservative<\/a>Presbyterian<\/a>\u00a0theologians at\u00a0Princeton Theological Seminary<\/a>\u00a0in the late 19th century. It soon spread to conservatives among the\u00a0Baptists<\/a>\u00a0and other denominations around 1910 to 1920. The movement\u2019s purpose was to reaffirm key theological tenets and defend them against the challenges of\u00a0liberal theology<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0higher criticism<\/a>.[11]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The term \u201cfundamentalism\u201d has roots in the\u00a0Niagara Bible Conference<\/a>\u00a0(1878\u20131897), which defined those tenets it considered\u00a0fundamental<\/i>\u00a0to Christian belief. The term was popularized by\u00a0The Fundamentals<\/a><\/i>, a collection of twelve books on five subjects published in 1910 and funded by the brothers Milton and\u00a0Lyman Stewart<\/a>. These essays came to represent a\u00a0Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy<\/a><\/i>\u00a0that appeared late in the 19th century within some Protestant denominations in the United States, and continued in earnest through the 1920s. The first formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs traces to the Niagara Bible Conference and, in 1910, to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which distilled these into what became known as the\u00a0five fundamentals<\/i>:[12]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n