The Broad Way and the Strait Gate: The Democratic Politics of American Fundamentalism, 1896-1925

The Fundamentalist-Modernist debate, while primarily concerned about theological questions concerning Scripture and science, profoundly affected the political culture of the United States during the early twentieth century. The anxieties of the Fundamentalists in particular constituted a “crisis of modernity” exacerbated by the catastrophic events of World War I. The Fundamentalists considered modernity as the creation of a selfish elite class pursuing their ungodly desires and rejecting virtue and charity. Despite this increase of perceived wickedness, figures such as William Jennings Bryan and J. Gresham Machen held a trust in the moral instincts of the American people and their simple, literal interpretations of the Bible. Only through dedication to Christ’s principles of virtue found in the dogmas of the classical Protestant churches could America, and by extension the rest of western civilization, be saved from their self-destructive urges. This association between virtue, Protestantism, and democracy by the Fundamentalists caused them to consider any attack on classical Protestantism (as defined by them) as an attack on the political rights and liberties which Americans enjoyed. This paper covers Fundamentalism’s origins in the social gospel milieu of the 1890s and concludes with the Scopes Trial of 1925.