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JOHN BELLINGHAM JOHN BELLINGHAM is a Pastor at Rosedale Baptist Church in Welland, and an ordained minister in the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches. Before coming to Rosedale he was a missionary in Montreal with Campus Crusade for Christ. John was born and raised in the Niagara Region along with his wife Leslie. John and Leslie have three children: Daniel, Christina, and Carey. John graduated from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago (MDiv), and in 2014 he completed an MA in Historical Theology from McGill University.
book review:
FUNDAMENTALISM & A M E R I C A N C U LT U R E George Marsden in his classic book Fundamentalism and American Culture has provided a fascinating account of the historical, theological and social factors that contributed to the American religious movement known as “fundamentalism.” Marsden is not primarily concerned with contemporary self-professing fundamentalists, but rather with those of an earlier era who did much to shape American evangelicalism as we know it today. Although ‘fundamentalism’ stood in the legacy of earlier American evangelicals, Marsden insists that it must be viewed as a “distinct version” of evangelicalism that was characterized by close ties to the revivalist tradition of the Second Great Awakening and a distinctive militancy against the liberal theology known as “modernism” which emerged during the late nineteenth century.
ity had been significantly affected by revivalism and widespread spiritual awakening. American religion was characterized by a strong commitment to Christian education and an optimistic postmillennial eschatology which was practically manifested in widespread social activity. Marsden places great importance on the pervasive influence of “Scottish Common Sense Realism” on evangelicalism, especially through the influence of the Princeton theologians. This philosophy held that the human mind was capable of knowing the real world directly and thus was capable of discerning truth. When used in conjunction with the inductive scientific method of Francis Bacon, scientific discoveries were widely held by American evangelicals to confirm the truths of Scripture when evaluated according to common sense and reason.
Throughout the book, Marsden resists the temptation to oversimplify or over-generalize and thus significantly modifies the previously formulated ‘social’ and ‘theological’ interpretations. His main thesis is that fundamentalism is not merely a passing “social aberration,” but rather is a movement deeply rooted in the earlier American evangelical tradition with its own distinct set of beliefs. Marsden focuses on three major motifs: firstly, the connection of fundamentalism with its evangelical heritage, secondly, the tendency of fundamentalists to waver between seeking reform within the denominations and separation from them and thirdly, the ambivalence of fundamentalists toward culture and intellect. The book is arranged chronologically, and Marsden carefully connects key figures, and social and theological factors to the development of the fundamentalist movement.
The introduction of Darwinian Evolution in the 1870s therefore presented a novel challenge as many academics began to view scientific discovery as a refutation of biblical revelation. Some theologians such as Charles Hodge held strongly to their philosophical moorings and dismissed Darwinism as incompatible with biblical truth. Increasingly, others such as Henry Ward Beecher sought to reconcile science and Christianity with a new philosophy of “Idealism” which posited that science was concerned with objective facts whereas religion was concerned with subjective experience. This new philosophy in combination with a corresponding “New Theology” or “modernism” that originated from biblical scholars and critics in Germany began to find a place first in American pulpits and later in American seminaries. Theology was increasingly viewed as a malleable entity rather than a fixed set of “eternally valid truths” (p.25). Marsden demonstrates that the philosophical shifts of the late nineteenth century began to cause a rift in American evan-
Marsden’s analysis begins at the close of the Civil War, maintaining that American ChristianSPRING 2020
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
