George M. Marsden – Fundamentalism and American Culture

George M. Marsden – Fundamentalism and American Culture

Many Americans 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.

Contents:
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface (1980)
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Before Fundamentalism
1 Evangelical America at the Brink of Crisis
2 The Paths Diverge
3 D. L. Moody and a New American Evangelism
Part Two: The Shaping of a Coalition
This Age and the Millennium
4 The Paradox of Revivalist Fundamentalism
5 Two Revisions of Millenialism
6 Despensationalism and the Baconian Ideal
7 History, Society, and the Church
Holiness
8 The Victorious Life
9 The Social Dimensions of Holiness
10 “The Great Reversal”
11 Holiness and Fundamentalism
The Defense of the Faith
12 Tremors of Controversy
13 Presbyterians and the Truth
14 The Fundamentals
Christianity and Culture
15 Four Views Circa 1910
Part Three: The Crucial Years: 1917-1925
16 World War I, Premillennialism, and American Fundamentalism: 1917-1918
17 Fundamentalism and the Cultural Crisis: 1919-1920
18 The Fundamentalist Offensive on Two Fronts: 1920-1921
19 Would the Liberals Be Driven from the Denominations? 1922-1923
20 The Offensive Stalled and Breaking Apart: 1924-1925
21 Epilogue: Dislocation, Relocation, and Resurgence: 1925-1940
Part Four: Interpretations
22 Fundamentalism as a Social Phenomenon
23 Fundamentalism as a Political Phenomenon
24 Fundamentalism as an Intellectual Phenomenon
25 Fundamentalism as an American Phenomenon
Part Five: Fundamentalism Yesterday and Today (2005)
Afterword: History and Fundamentalism
Notes
Biographical Indexes
Index

Format: PDF
Length: 351 pages
Published: 2006 by Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195300475