Would the Liberals Be Driven from the Denominations? 1922–1923

Abstract

Abstract In 1922 and 1923, fundamentalists had high hopes that they could impose their standards on some major northern denominations. Fundamentalists were strongest in the Northern Baptist Convention and in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. At the Northern Baptist Convention meeting in 1922, they hoped to have the body adopt a traditional creedal statement. But the move was soundly defeated. In 1922 Harry Emerson Fosdick, a modernist Baptist filling a Presbyterian pulpit, preached, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” That set off a heated controversy in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Conservative William Jennings Bryan narrowly lost election as moderator for the 1923 General Assembly. But the assembly reaffirmed the five-point Presbyterian essential doctrines. Clarence McCartney, a leading conservative preacher, answered Fosdick in a sermon, “Shall Unbelief Win?” J. Gresham Machen issued Christianity and Liberalism in 1923, arguing that traditional Christianity and modernism were really two different religions.