J. Heinrichs, in an article called “Fundamentalism and Why We Have It,” explained some of the rationale behind the adoption of the term ‘fundamentalism,’ revisiting and quoting from the famous article by Curtis Lee Laws. Heinrichs’ explanation offers an interesting parallel with the attempts of definition that would arise later. 
     
    Should the growing coalition of fundamentalists call themselves the ‘conservatives’? They found this word connoted too much reaction for them. Heinrichs quoted Curtis Lee Laws who made it sound as if there were too many varieties of conservatives with reputations he did not wish to share. ‘Conservatives’ must not have been a term sufficiently allied to a theological position: the next name is taken from theology.

    Heinrichs and Laws did not want to call themselves the Premillennialists either. This is significant in that it shows how varied the theological position of the fundamentalists could be. It was not varied in the sense of including heterodoxy, but it could not be reduced to a single characteristic doctrine. Even if fundamentalists were premillennialists in the main, they recognized this single doctrine was not what held them together.

    “Landmarkers” was the last term discarded. Laws found it restricted to a group too radical to characterize the fundamentalists, and Heinrichs does not even discuss it. Excluding this last term, however, one can see in these two paragraphs from 1927 the main outlines of the literature written in search for an understanding of fundamentalism since then. Cole and Furniss would look for an explanation that understood fundamentalists as conservatives, making them a reaction to modern ways of life; Sandeen would focus on the premillennial doctrine, bringing doctrine back into consideration as a serious element, but constricting the definition more than should be allowed; and last would come Marsden, giving a definition similar to Heinrichs who said, “Fundamentalism then is an organized endeavor to counteract the alarming spread of modernism in our churches, schools and colleges.”

    My thesis is not a revision of the understanding of fundamentalism; It is an attempt to explore something that has been present all along but not sufficiently developed in the literature. Fundamentalism consists of an allegiance to protestant theological orthodoxy, but it is an allegiance that sought a rallying place against the hostilities of theological modernism in popular culture. Popular culture provided a shelter from the encroachment of modernism coming by way of the high culture. Even though they might not have put it in those terms, fundamentalists sensed that the threat of modernism was emanating and being spread by the high culture. Men like Machen wanted to resist it at that level; Men like Bryan and Sunday wanted to resist it from a position more antithetical, pitting orthodoxy against heresy by pitting popular culture against high culture.    

    Fundamentalists have viewed the notion of a confrontation of cultures with suspicion, partly because the argument was put to them not in terms of theology, but in terms of culture.  Modernists like Cole wanted to make the issue an issue of learning and cultivation, an issue of progress, an issue of the advance of civilization. This was a maneuver calculated to privilege the Modernist argument. Fundamentalists believed they stood for orthodox theology and that Modernists, who had a sub-orthodox theology, wanted to obscure or avoid the real issue by arguing about culture and progress.

Both Sides Were Partly Wrong

    The Modernists believed the dispositive power of modern culture greater than the determinative power of ancient theology; they went to culture to get their theology; they believed in the rightness of the assumptions of the spirit of the age. They had learned the learning of their times and they believed it to be right, so they wanted to reinterpret Christianity in light of secular culture. They also believed they could see the end of a long and arduous process which with a little effort could be culminated. If only the petty and antiquated concern for mere doctrinal precision could be overcome, the task of filling the world with the Christian spirit of universal brotherhood and global peace would come at last.
 
    Fundamentalists believed the determinative power of theology to be greater than the dispositive power of culture. Theology, for them, was primary and all other concerns secondary. Because of this, theological orthodoxy was the great rudder-setter. Right belief led to right practice so that secondary considerations (questions of practice, questions of culture) could remain mostly unattended. It was enough to look at the deleterious effects a preoccupation with modern culture had on historic Christianity to know that theology was more important than culture.
    
Both Sides Were Partly Right

    The Modernist knew the power of culture to shape hearts and minds. Theology, for them, could not avoid being shaped by culture, it had to be part of the deliberate cultivation that sought to integrate every branch of learning. Culture gave a disposition toward the world, an attitude from which all other considerations were ordered. Orthodoxy alone could not move the Modernists; theology needed the resonance of meaning that culture provides. The crucial refinements of learning could not be neglected without paying a price; and the vitality of culture depended on its attachment to the modern way of life.

    The fundamentalist saw a departure from orthodoxy as a betrayal of Christianity. They accused the Modernists of a sort of mysticism, an undisciplined following of mere feeling at the expense of thorough thinking. They knew that right religion must have a shaping and molding influence on culture, instead of being shaped and molded to modern culture. They resisted the impulse to shape religion in the mold of the spirit of the age, to change the charge of the great commission for the goals of alien, secular ideas.
                    
Neither Side Was Right Enough

    Because the Modernist urged exclusive attention to the climate of culture, the fundamentalist urged exclusive attention to right theology; both made a mistake with regard to culture. By seizing on modern high culture, the Modernists departed from orthodox religion. In a way, they neglected religion and ended up with a sub-orthodox one. By neglecting matters of culture, the fundamentalists indiscriminately seized a modern, popular culture. To neglect culture means only to have something inferior, to live by indiscriminate choices. Both cultures were dispositive, both proved hostile to orthodoxy, and both resulted in a casual attitude toward doctrine. The Modernists boldly advanced heresy from the centers of culture. The fundamentalists sought shelter for a diminished orthodoxy in the popular culture.

Summary

    I have shown how William Jennings Bryan betrayed the fundamentalist cause by taking it to the Scopes trial. He cast about fundamentalism the mantle of popularity and battled for theological orthodoxy in a populist way. He could do this because he had the sympathy of the populace and because he commanded the attention of the press. The Scopes trial offered him a venue for a great showdown, which is what Bryan got. His impatience with legal procedure and his desire to triumph with a flourish, as it were, proved the undoing of his cause. His methods were the methods of popular culture.

    I have shown how Billy Sunday packed the old-time religion in the packaging of popular culture, bringing revivalism into the twentieth century. He embodied the ideal of the popular imagination, he was on the cutting edge for mass evangelism, and he left a mark that outlived him. If anybody represents orthodoxy clad in the vestment of popular culture, Billy Sunday does. His fundamentalist credentials were unimpeachable–even though his theology may have not have been. Sunday, in fact, preached conversion as a way of improving society, a subtle and not entirely unintentional form of the social gospel.

    I have shown J. Gresham Machen’s distaste for the popular culture of fundamentalism. Machen was not unwilling to align himself with theological orthodoxy, but he knew fundamentalism to be more than merely theological orthodoxy; he only counted himself on the side of fundamentalism with reservations. What sets Machen apart, really, is that his thinking with regard to culture is more careful than that the main stream of fundamentalism. He did not want to be casual in matters of culture; he thought Christians should embrace the arts and sciences or risk losing the work of centuries.
                
Conclusion: Fundamentalism is Hosed

    Fundamentalists wanted to defend orthodoxy against modernism. Because they were not careful in thinking how they went about this, because they were reacting to the high culture perceived to be part of the implications of Modernism, the fundamentalists sought to shelter theological orthodoxy in popular culture. Popular culture was like a vestment, like the packaging for their message; it was the means fundamentalists inadvertently seized on to deliver their message, like a soldier sheltering behind any cover at hand to fire in the heat of the battle. Bryan identified with fundamentalism because he was against modernism; Sunday identified with fundamentalism because he was against modernism; and in contrast to these was Machen, who sought for a third way against Modernism.

The sense that secular culture threatened Christianity was real. The reason Machen did not want to join himself to the fundamentalists was clear to him already in 1912. He thought it important to engage the debate, to understand the ideas that were changing culture, and to grapple with these ideas rather than ignore them. He loved and cherished Christian doctrine and realized that its defense required careful and long thinking, deep study, broad reading even in the writing of the enemy, and a culture that fostered the sort of investment this kind of learning required. For Machen culture, the labor of culture, was crucial.

This is why Machen wanted seminaries, not Bible schools. His career was a long battle, to keep, to establish, to foster and further the invaluable learning acquired in a seminary. The sort of minimal training and loose denominational association generally part of the Bible school was not sufficient for him. The Bible school was the catalyst for joining the fundamentalist coalition to face the Modernists, which is significant. What the Bible school represented was the sort of thing Machen denounced in his speech in 1912; the Bible school represented an abdication of the greater task of influencing the prevailing climate of opinion at the level of ideas; the Bible school represented the minimum preparation necessary for the most basic level of Christian ministry. The Bible school was deemed sufficient to produce the preachers for fundamentalism. Machen declared that the church was waiting for men of another sort.

If one looks at general tendencies, it is hard to miss the contrast that existed between fundamentalism, as a whole, and what Machen advocated and that for which he worked. . . . ["what Machen advocated and worked for" would be more trenchant, but minds are small] . . . Machen found the name and the movement generally distasteful. His continual objection to the term ‘fundamentalist’ suggests he disliked more than the term. Machen left the distinct impression that he objected to fundamentalism itself in the mind of someone so close to him as Stonehouse. If he was willing to align himself doctrinally with the fundamentalist cause, why did he usually make a point to distinguish himself from it? It was because the point of distinction was more than a nicety in his mind; it was because Machen did not believe Christianity should leave the arts and sciences to the Modernists. He knew the wages of abdicating on the labor of culture would be fatal; he thought fundamentalists were making a serious mistake.

Machen knew that fundamentalism would pay for its inattention to culture. As a result of this inattention, this carelessness where Machen advocated care, fundamentalism ended up borrowing from popular culture, fleeing from the high culture of secularism, seeking shelter for their orthodoxy. Machen wanted none of that shelter, none of that safety, none of the ignoring of the question of the enemy or of the arts and sciences which the enemy had claimed. He wanted to fight, to show that Christianity was equal to the challenge, to consecrate a Christian culture.

Machen believed this withdrawing was based on a belief that all human activity is somehow tainted. Fundamentalists had despaired, as it were, in the face of the advancing secularism and had retreated away from it to the only thing they could trust, religion. The only result of this retreat, however, was that they had ceased to think carefully about these crucial human activities; they had stressed the one activity, saving men out of the world, but not saving the world from men also.

For Machen the task was wider: the intellectual atmosphere into which men are born also made a difference and could not be ignored. Both the case for Christianity and the Christian case against secular culture had to be made in order to create a better reception for the gospel. Only darkness could come of a secular culture to dominate the arts and sciences–a darkness that was hostile to Christianity and advantageous for Modernism. “The Christian religion flourishes not in the darkness but in the light. Intellectual slothfulness is but a quack remedy for unbelief; the true remedy is consecration of intellectual powers to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Here is the antithesis: on the one hand was the retreating from the careful labor of the mind, on the other was Machen’s call for the church to “battle for her life” in a realm that had been left in neglect far too long already in 1912. He wanted his address to rally the troops, to inspire them to enter the conflict through the rigors of study and arduous thinking. He advocated careful thinking, not hesitation but enthusiasm toward the arts and learning. He advocated answers found in timeless principles, hard won though cultivation and painstaking labor in thought, not easy and profane tricks used to inveigle people into the church.

For Machen the relation between Christianity and culture is bound up with the relationship between piety and knowledge. This shows his understanding of the relationship between cultivation and a capacity to learn. Machen believed that the arts and sciences should be engaged in with relish, that culture should be encouraged “with the enthusiasm of the veriest humanist” and consecrated to the service of God. Because Christians want to see every human activity consecrated they must not be content to leave any of it untouched by Christianity; they want to see every legitimate human activity made a Christian activity; but more, they realize that these things are essential to human life. Machen understood that men do not exist without a culture, and culture neglected by Christianity can only result in culture being an enemy of the gospel.

Machen believed that the erosion the church was suffering was due directly to modern culture. Secular culture taught men that the intellectual credentials of Christianity were insubstantial: men did not consider Christianity because its dismissal was a foregone conclusion. Although Machen believed that regeneration was a supernatural work, he wanted to stress was that God uses means and places responsibility on believers individually and on the church as a whole. He believed the situation was desperate because of neglected responsibilities. He believed that the Church must labor in more than just evangelism. If the church ignored the intellectual labor, the labor of culture, “the great current of modern culture will sooner or later engulf her puny eddy. God will save her somehow—out of the depths. But the labor of centuries will have been swept away.”

Some withdrew and dedicated themselves to a smaller and more practical task; this was not the way that Machen chose. The academic battles, the years of careful training, the understanding of philosophy and history that Machen championed are what he has in mind when he says, “So as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity. . . . The church has no right to be so absorbed in helping the individual that she forgets the world.”