The Fundamentalist Menace

Abstract

Abstract Nothing did more to consolidate dominant academic opinion behind the cause of academic freedom than the fundamentalist attacks of the 1920s. While there might still be some religious traditionalists at major universities, almost no one, either administrator or faculty, would countenance the extreme demands of fundamentalists, which would have turned back the clock forty years. Traditional teachings still prevailed in the vast majority of Protestant pulpits and traditional belief was even stronger in the pews. This meant that as immense cultural changes proceeded on other fronts, the potential for an explosive showdown steadily increased. Within each of the major denominations there had already been scrimmages and minor wars over this or that change, often centered, as we have seen, on educational institutions. Not until after World War I, however, were the conservative forces effectively organized into a national campaign. The war itself was the immediate precipitant of the sense of a national religious crisis among Protestant conservatives. Promoted as a moral crusade, it heightened consciousness of the issue of national righteousness and made it everybody’s business. Preserving doctrinal purity was therefore not just a church concern, but a national issue as well. Under Wilson’s guidance the Puritan ideal of a national covenant had reemerged as a popular ideal. It was a mixed blessing. One unexpected consequence was that the heightened national moral consciousness immediately raised the question for Protestant conservatives of why the liberals were setting the terms. Moreover, the example of the perceived moral monstrosity in Germany suggested to conservatives what happened to civilizations that forsook their Christian foundations. It was an easy step from that observation to another that pointed out the formidable German influences on America’s educational elite and especially how