Religion: Jerry Falwell's Crusade

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The opinions of the religious right are shared by large numbers of people who do not belong to Fundamentalist churches. "A majority of Protestants are simply dissatisfied with what they regard as a moral breakdown in American society," asserts Sociologist Phillip Hammond of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Conservative Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Mormons, Orthodox Jews and many secularists are understandably concerned about such developments as the more than 16 million abortions performed since 1973, the fourfold increase since 1970 in children raised by unwed mothers, the rise in drug use, the emergence of gay liberation and the glamorization of ! promiscuity.

The new prominence of Fundamentalism has only added to the confusion about just how the movement should be defined. The term is often used to designate fervent belief of any kind, or confused with a more moderate version of biblical conservatism known as Evangelicalism. Indeed, the two movements are intertwined, but also constitute distinct elements in American conservative Protestantism. Essentially, Fundamentalism is the right wing of the broader and larger Evangelical movement, which has grown by millions of adherents in the past two decades.

The similarities and differences of the two movements are rooted in U.S. history. During the early years of the 20th century, the conservative forebears of both movements were largely in control of American Protestantism. But liberal ideas on Scripture and doctrine had begun to infiltrate seminaries, and steadily gained strength in succeeding decades. Eventually an antiliberal movement arose from a loose alliance of orthodox theologians in the mainstream denominations, revivalist preachers, and emerging millenarians, those who saw signs of the imminent Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Between 1910 and 1915 such groups distributed huge numbers of thoughtful pamphlets titled The Fundamentals that defended the conservative reading of the Bible on subjects ranging from the Creation to the Resurrection of Christ. The series was mailed to every Protestant church worker in the country.

As recounted by Historian George Marsden in his definitive 1980 study, Fundamentalism and American Culture, many of the conservatives turned into angry militants during the cultural upheavals following World War I. The term Fundamentalist was coined in this period to identify a battler for orthodoxy. Presbyterian Evangelist Billy Sunday typified the new ornery style of combat. The liberal, Sunday fulminated, was a "hog-jowled, weasel-eyed, sponge- columned, jelly-spined, pussyfooting, four-flushing, charlotte-russed Christian." At the 1925 Scopes trial, in which a Tennessee schoolteacher was convicted of expounding evolutionary theory, Fundamentalists were ridiculed by the press and perceived by the public as antediluvian cranks. By the 1940s, conservatives who were embarrassed by the Fundamentalists' image revived the label of Evangelical for their more moderate brand of orthodoxy.