The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Paperback)

Chapter One

The present tendency of conservative Christianity is to make much of the embarrassment of religious modernism.

The modernist embarrassment is serious indeed. The shallow insistence on inevitable world progress and on man's essential goodness has been violently declared false. Not only sound Bible exegesis but the world events of 1914-1946 indict optimistic liberalism.

But contemporary Fundamentalism is not without its own moments of guilt. For the world crisis serves to embarrass Fundamentalism also. The uncomfortableness of evangelicalism cannot be palliated by an emphasis on someone else's uneasy predicament. Even if it could, the device would hardly escape attention from the alert modern mind.

The predicament of contemporary evangelicalism can be set forth from two vantage points, that of the non-evangelicals and that of the evangelicals themselves. From whichever direction the problem is approached, it is serious enough.

Against Protestant Fundamentalism the non-evangelicals level the charge that it has no social program calling for a practical attack on acknowledged world evils. True, other complaints are made against Christian supernaturalism. Representative spokesmen for religious liberalism, for ethical idealism, for religious humanism, and for pessimism, are linked by a common network of assumptions which clearly differentiates their philosophic premises from the orthodox Hebrew-Christian view. Non-Christian groups have no dealings with a super naturalistic metaphysics. But nonetheless-though they regard contemporary orthodoxy as a vestigial remnant of traditional obscurantism -they theoretically recognize the philosophic right of the evangelicals to hold any doctrinal framework they may desire. But what is almost wholly unintelligible to the naturalistic and idealistic groups, burdened as they are for a new world order, is the apparent lack of any social passion in Protestant Fundamentalism. On this evaluation, Fundamentalism is the modern priest and Levite, by-passing suffering humanity.

The picture is clear when one brings into focus such admitted social evils as aggressive warfare, racial hatred and intolerance, the liquor traffic, and exploitation of labor or management, whichever it may be.

The social reform movements dedicated to the elimination of such evils do not have the active, let alone vigorous, cooperation of large segments of evangelical Christianity. In fact, Fundamentalist churches increasingly have repudiated the very movements whose most energetic efforts have gone into an attack on such social ills. The studied Fundamentalist avoidance of, and bitter criticism of, the World Council of Churches and the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America is a pertinent example.

Now, such resistance would be far more intelligible to non-evangelicals were it accompanied by an equally forceful assault on social evils in a distinctly super naturalistic framework. But, by and large, the Fundamentalist opposition to societal ills has been more vocal than actual. Some concerted effort has been attempted through organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals or the American Council of Churches. Southern Baptists have a somewhat better record, coupled with rejection of the Federal Council. But evangelical social action has been spotty and usually of the emergency type.

The situation has even a darker side. The great majority of Fundamentalist clergymen, during the past generation of world disintegration, became increasingly less vocal about social evils. It was unusual to find a conservative preacher occupied at length with world ills.

In a company of more than one hundred representative evangelical pastors, the writer proposed the following question: "How many of you, during the past six months, have preached a sermon devoted in large part to a condemnation of such social evils as aggressive warfare, racial hatred and intolerance, the liquor traffic, exploitation of labor or management, or the like-a sermon containing not merely an incidental or illustrative reference, but directed mainly against such evils and proposing the framework in which you think solution is possible?" Not a single hand was raised in response. Now this situation is not characteristic only of one particular denominational group of Fundamentalists; rather, a predominant trait, in most Fundamentalist preaching, is this reluctance to come to grips with social evils.

There are Fundamentalist groups, admittedly, which have not lost a keen world reference, especially those alert to their Reformational lineage in John Calvin. Their interest in ethics is demanded, rather than precluded, by their doctrinal fervor. Holding fast to an ideology of supernaturalism, these groups have sometimes been tempted to dissociate themselves from the Fundamentalist camp because of the widespread notion that indifference to world evils is essential to Fundamentalism. And, after all, social irresponsibility was not the only trend that was imputed to Fundamentalist circles. Modern prejudice, justly or unjustly, had come to identify Fundamentalism largely in terms of an anti-ecumenical spirit of independent isolationism, an uncritically-held set of theological formulas, an overly-emotional type of revivalism. There is also the tendency to replace great church music by a barn-dance variety of semi-religious choruses; some churches have almost become spiritualized juke boxes. It was the recognition, by the ethically alert Fundamentalist minority, that such tendencies do not express the inherent genius of the great evangelical tradition that prevented their desertion from the Fundamentalist camp. Spokesmen particularly for orthodox Reformed groups saw that the title of "Fundamentalism" was applied initially with doctrinal fidelity, rather than ethical irresponsibility, as the frame of reference. Fundamentalism was a Bible-believing Christianity which regarded the supernatural as a part of the essence of the Biblical view; the miraculous was not to be viewed, as in liberalism, as an incidental and superfluous accretion. It was from its affirmation of the historic evangelical doctrinal fundamentals that modern orthodoxy received its name, and not from its growing silence on pressing global problems. This was clearly seen by spokesmen for contemporary Fundamentalism like the late J. Gresham Machen, who vigorously insisted that Christianity has a message relevant to the world crisis, however staggering the issues.

The average Fundamentalist's indifference to social implications of his religious message has been so marked, however, that the non-evangelicals have sometimes classified him with the pessimist in his attitude toward world conditions.

Of all the seemingly incongruous weddings in philosophy, this is the most striking. That Christian supernaturalism, which as a matter of historical record furnished the background and in some sense the support for the modern humanisms and idealisms, should be accused of having lost its own devotion to human well-being, is indeed a startling accusation.

But, from the standpoint of not a few religious modernists, ethical idealists and humanists, the common strand that runs through Fundamentalism and pessimism is that both are viewpoints from which the humanism, or humanitarianism, has evaporated.

This is not to suggest that Fundamentalism had no militant opposition to sin. Of all modern viewpoints, when measured against the black background of human nature disclosed by the generation of two world wars, Fundamentalism provided the most realistic appraisal of the condition of man. The sinfulness of man, and the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and that God alone can save man from his disaster, are insistences that were heard with commonplace frequency only within the evangelical churches. But the sin against which Fundamentalism has inveighed, almost exclusively, was individual sin rather than social evil.

It is not fair to say that the ethical platform of all conservative churches has clustered about such platitudes as "abstain from intoxicating beverages, movies, dancing, card-playing, and smoking," but there are multitudes of Fundamentalist congregations in which these are the main points of reference for ethical speculation. In one of the large Christian colleges, a chapel speaker recently expressed amazement that the campus newspaper could devote so much space to the all-important problem of whether it is right to play "rook," while the nations of the world are playing with fire.

And yet it ought not to be overlooked that, in its attack on personal sins, there is an indirect coming to grips in Fundamentalist churches with some of the major contemporary problems. The bitter opposition to intoxicating beverages is, in a localized sense, an attack upon the liquor traffic, even though it does nothing to curb the menace itself and concentrates upon schooling the believer to circumvent it. Again, while the Fundamentalist's opposition to the theatre is sometimes so deep rooted that it is forgotten that the camera may also serve to the glory of God, he nevertheless is expressing a vigorous protest against the secular and often pagan standards of value which Hollywood film producers have consistently enthroned and glorified. At this point, in fact, the Fundamentalist has often been more sensitive to the danger of undermining Christian convictions by propaganda means than has the religious modernist with his selection of "best, good, and unrecommended films." And yet, the Fundamentalist appears to pursue a rather foredoomed approach, schooling his constituency against all movies, as if they are inherently evil, so that there is no direct attempt to change the external picture itself.

The problem of personal ethics, moreover, is complicated no little by the shifting standards in various sections of the country, among Fundamentalists themselves. Among evangelicals, for example, smoking is hardly considered the sin in the southern tobacco-growing states that it is in the north. And the northern Baptist pastor who would join his wife for mixed public swimming would be called before his board of deacons in many a southern church.

Now, the purpose of such examples is not to promote a plea for laxity in personal morals. It is simply to emphasize that such personal issues are themselves frequently in a state of environmental flux which, if anything, adds to the predicament of the Fundamentalist pastor on the score of ethical preaching.

Even more serious is the mounting repudiation in evangelical circles of Fundamentalist standards for the practical moral life. This testifies to more than a growing estrangement from traditional ways of living. As seen by those who are not evangelicals, this movement away from the evangelical evaluation of life and duty, in the personal as well as social code of behavior, is an inevitable consequence of an ideology which refuses to relate itself to the cardinal issues of the global dilemma. The non-Christian idealists and naturalists know, of course, that their outlooks demand an evaluation of life which differs from the Fundamental appraisal, but they trace the growing Fundamentalist revolt against stringent personal prohibitions, to the peculiar strategy of evangelical ethics, as much as to the penetrative dissemination of anti-Christian moral theories. It remains a question whether one can be perpetually indifferent to the problems of social justice and international order, and develop a wholesome personal ethics.

In mentioning the typical ethical insistences of Fundamentalist churches, it would be unfair not to allude to the strict attitude taken toward divorce, as contrasted with the increasingly loose secular view of family relations. The insistence that only death or adultery can sever the marriage bond is maintained nowhere today with such a conviction of absoluteness as in Fundamentalist circles, although there are here, as everywhere, exceptions. The contribution of this viewpoint to the integrity of the family, and its significance in precluding juvenile delinquency, is of no small moment in its social consequences. From a certain perspective it can be said that the effort to remedy the disintegration of the American home, pressed by social reformers, does not get at the heart of the problem as directly as the Fundamentalist proclamation of the divine sanction of a monogamous family life.

But here again it must also be conceded that the defection of American culture from a vital Christianity means that the problem of the home and of juvenile delinquency is unconfronted in countless family circles where remedial measures might create a more favorable soil for the preaching of the Gospel. By such argument even those who have disagreed with a supernaturalist ideology have sought to enlist evangelicalism in reform programs.

The failure of the evangelical movement to react favorably on any widespread front to campaigns against social evils has led, finally, to a suspicion on the part of non-evangelicals that there is something in the very nature of Fundamentalism which makes a world ethical view impossible. The conviction is widespread that Fundamentalism takes too pessimistic a view of human nature to make a social program practicable.

This modern mind-set, insisting that evangelical supernaturalism has inherent within it an ideological fault which precludes any vital social thrust, is one of the most disturbing dividing lines in contemporary thought. In the struggle for a world mind which will make global order and brotherhood a possibility, contemporary speculation has no hearing whatever for a viewpoint which it suspects has no world program. It dismisses Fundamentalism with the thought that, in this expression of the Great Tradition, the humanitarianism has evaporated from Christianity.

Chapter Two

No complaint against Fundamentalism is, from the Fundamentalist viewpoint, more untrue than the contention that the Biblical estimate of man involves a social impotence.

An evangelical message vitally related to world conditions is not precluded by New Testament doctrine.

Indeed, conservative Protestantism insists, only this estimate of the sinfulness of man and his need of regeneration is sufficiently realistic to make at all possible any securely grounded optimism in world affairs. Any other framework can offer only a "bubble and froth cure."

And yet, evangelicalism is disturbed. There is a growing awareness in Fundamentalist circles that, despite the orthodox insistence upon revelation and redemption, evangelical Christianity has become increasingly inarticulate about the social reference of the Gospel.

Continues...