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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

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cooperated on a day-to-day basis, both sides usually supported Prohibition and other purity crusades, and neither was immune to nativism. Indeed, Congregationalist social gospeler Josiah Strong wrote
Our Country,
the best-selling nativist tract at the turn of the century.
More than any other single event, World War I turned the Protestant intramural split into a chasm. Wartime fears nurtured by the Wilson administration made tolerance a rarity. With notable exceptionsQuakers, Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses, and radical social gospelersProtestants, Catholics, and Jews participated in the wartime Hun Scare. For theologically conservative Protestants, the war had special significance. Most obviously, it made a mockery of facile liberal optimism. For premillennial dispensationalists, moreover, the British capture of Jerusalem in 1917 and subsequent promise of a Jewish homeland seemed to fulfill the biblical prophecy that Jews would return to Palestine shortly before Jesus' return. Dispensationalists sponsored a series of conferences to consider such remarkable events and at one such conclave in 1919 founded the World Christian Fundamentals Association (
WCFA
) under the leadership of William Bell Riley. In 1920 these clergy and laymen, widely recognized as a growing militant movement, were labeled fundamental
ists
by the sympathetic Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws.
The fundamentalist movement of the 1920s was neither monolithic nor congruent with all Protestant theological conservatives. As with any mass movement, there were internal disputes and shifting alliances. The
WCFA
still looked askance at Pentecostals and recruited few activists from the fiercely independent Southern Baptist Convention. Dispensational premillennialism was not yet
de rigeuer
. Contrary to cosmopolitan stereotypes, leading theological conservatives were not necessarily flamboyant. Sometimes they were prim and even erudite. None was smarter than J. Gresham Machen of Princeton Seminary. In
Christianity and Liberalism
(1923), he politely charged liberal Protestants with false advertising. By repudiating biblical miracles and the divinity of Christ, Machen wrote, liberals had moved so far from their historic faith that they could not honestly call themselves Christians.
To be sure, there were flamboyant theological conservatives. Perhaps the greatest misfortune to befall fundamentalism was to at-
 
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tract national attention during the 1920s, the first great decade of American ballyhoo. News media sought the sensational while those fundamentalists with a flair for publicity played to their strength. Billy Sunday, a former baseball player, agreed with Machen that liberalism differed qualitatively from Christianity, but put the case more bluntly: ''Going to church doesn't make a man a Christian any more than going to a garage makes him an automobile." Almost in the same league was New York City's foremost fundamentalist, John Roach Straton of the Calvary Baptist Church. He succinctly stated the social case against Darwinism: "Monkey men means monkey morals." Discussing his home town in the apocalyptic atmosphere of 1918, Straton wondered, ''Will New York be destroyed if it does not repent?" We need not belabor this sermon's answer.
The fundamentalist controversy of the 1920s occurred on two levels. On one level, the struggle escalated among Protestants to define orthodoxy and control denominational policy. The bitterness of the fight, which especially racked the Presbyterian church, can be seen in the controversial career of a prominent Baptist New Yorker, Harry Emerson Fosdick. In 1918 Fosdick, perhaps the most esteemed American preacher, became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue. A liberal who defined God as the "creative reality," Fosdick tried to rally his fellows against fundamentalism. They in turn questioned his orthodoxy, and in 1923 the Presbyterian General Assembly launched an investigation. Although the New York Presbytery defended Fosdick, he moved to a Baptist pulpit and then in 1931 became founding minister of the nondenominational Riverside Church. During this tumult, Straton compared Fosdick to Jesse James. No rhetorical slouch himself, Fosdick called Jasper Massee, his fellow Baptist and Boston's premier fundamentalist, an "egregious ass."
Despite many such bitter remarks, the fundamentalist controversy of the 1920s would be little remembered if it had not spread beyond devout and divided Protestants to the wider culture. Although fundamentalists also battled strong drink, sexy movies, and birth control, it was the trial of John Thomas Scopes for teaching evolution that servedand continues to serveas the preeminent symbol of their impact on American life. They had never liked Dar-
 
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win's theory, but the danger seemed especially great in the 1920s. With growing high school enrollments, many more students learned about evolution, and the much-publicized "revolution in morals" convinced fundamentalists that talk of "monkey men" had indeed produced ''monkey morals." Moreover, wartime bans on the German language had suggested a strategy; the possibility of barring evolution from public schools. The World Christian Fundamentals Association adopted this issue as a central concern and President William Bell Riley convinced William Jennings Bryan to lead the attack. In February 1922, the
New York Times
outlined Bryan's standard fundamentalist case against evolution. According to Bryan, evolutionary theory was not science but "Darwin's guess." It threatened religious faith by destroying belief in Jesus' virgin birth and other miracles. Finally, Bryan circumspectly suggested that Darwinism undermined proper personal morality.
Fundamentalists campaigned to bar the teaching of evolution from the public schools in at least twenty states. Straton led the unsuccessful effort in New York. But three states did ban the subject and others yielded to pressure by modifying their textbook selections. During 1925 the legislation enacted in Tennessee was challenged by John Scopes and his theologically liberal and civil libertarian allies. The defense led by Clarence Darrow wanted eminent scientists and leading liberal theologians to testify that evolution was both scientifically sound and compatible with sensible religion. When the trial judge refused to allow this testimony, Darrow called William Jennings Bryan, one of the prosecutors, to testify as an expert on the Bible. During perhaps the most famous cross-examination in American legal history, Darrow forced Bryan to admit that Scripture was often problematical and subject to divergent interpretations. A broken Bryan died within the week.
Although the Scopes trial occurred in Dayton, Tennessee, diverse New Yorkers tried to play, and some did play, major roles. The owner of a Coney Island zoo offered his prize monkey as an associate counsel for the prosecution. The offer was not accepted, but two New Yorkers, Arthur Garfield Hays of the American Civil Liberties Union and Dudley Field Malone, an iconoclastic cultural Catholic, joined Clarence Darrow in defending Scopes. Henry Fairfield Osborn of the
 
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Museum of Natural History was recruited by the defense to certify Darwinism's scientific validity.
The Scopes trial is a flawed symbol of fundamentalism's impact partly because the issues involved are so often parodied. For example, the most accessible version of the trial, the slightly fictionalized account in
Inherit the Wind,
presents a simple conflict between science and bigotry. Yet much of the science. Scopes taught was not only dubious but dangerous. The textbook he used affirmed that some products of evolution, notably Anglo-Saxons, were superior to others, notably blacks and Asians. The prospective defense witness Henry Fairfield Osborn agreed, having written the foreword to Madison Grant's pernicious nativist tract,
The Passing of the Great Race
. Moreover, Bryan pressed two points usually lost in recollections of the trial. If Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas had moved young men to murder, as Darrow had argued in his defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, how could he then deny that Darwin's ideas could corrupt adolescents? And did not the citizens of Tennessee have the right to decide what their children learned in public schools?
There are convincing liberal and constitutional answers to these questions. Separation of church and state is a worthy though elusive goal and children should have the right to learn things their parents dislike. Yet few cosmopolitan intellectuals have appreciated, let alone addressed, the complex ethical issues latent in the first fundamentalist controversy. One who did, at least occasionally, was a native New Yorker, Walter Lippmann. In
New York World
editorials, Lippmann compared Scopes to the persecuted Galileo. Nor did he sympathize with "these millions of semi-literate, priest-ridden and parson-ridden" voters. Even so, reflecting broadly on the fundamentalist controversy, he found the Protestant modernism exemplified by Fosdick less forthright and intellectually rigorous than the conservative case made by Machen.
Ridicule, a more frequent cosmopolitan reaction to fundamentalism, was used effectively by Sinclair Lewis. After touring the hinterland in search of clerical hypocrites, Lewis settled into a New York hotel to finish writing
Elmer Gantry
. Gantry was partly modeled on John Roach. Reviewing the novel for the
New York Post
in 1927, Straton condemned Lewis's "disordered" mind and denied that there
 
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"was such a man as Elmer Gantry." Straton's side lost the cultural battle. Except among theological conservatives themselves, the picture of fundamentalism drawn by Lewis, H. L. Mencken, and fellow debunkers became standard fare.
Contrary to convention, the fundamentalist movement of the 1920s did not die with Bryan. In 1928 theological conservatives formed part of the broad band of Protestants opposing the election of Alfred E. Smith because he was a Catholic. To Southern Methodist Bishop James Cannon, a mild theological conservative but avid prohibitionist, the Democratic presidential nominee represented the "kind of dirty people that you find today on the sidewalks of New York"; New York City itself was "literally Satan's seat." Protestant defections cost Smith several traditionally Democratic southern and border states. Yet many fundamentalists did vote for Smith, considering his New York accent, hostility to Prohibition, and Catholic faith less significant than his farm program or his party's commitment to racial segregation.
The Great Depression, which began a year after Smith's defeat, was more than an economic crisis. Instead of evaporating, those cultural issues that had disrupted American life during the 1920s persisted in a less prosperous context. Some were soon resolved; for example, Democratic victories in 1932 doomed Prohibition. Others were evaded by shrewd politicians; building his remarkable coalition, Franklin D. Roosevelt won votes from most "priest-ridden" Roman Catholics and "parson-ridden" theological conservatives. Still other issues retained emotional power; many fundamentalist clergy, viewing the Depression as God's punishment for the decadent twenties, prayed for a revival rather than an economic recovery.
The Depression and New Deal moved some fundamentalists to become activists on the political far right. During the 1920s, Rev. Gerald B. Winrod had been a second-rank leader in the World Christian Fundamentals Association. Initially suspicious of Roosevelt for pushing repeal of Prohibition, Winrod by 1933 had convinced himself that the New Deal represented an agency of a vast international Jewish conspiracy against Christian civilization. He took seriously the anti-Semitic forgery,
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,
which he regarded as a sort of supplement to biblical prophecy.
 
Page 34
Indeed, he remained a devout fundamentalist even as he became an avid anti-Semite. According to Winrod, the resemblance between the multiarmed Beast of Revelation and the multifeathered blue eagle of the National Recovery Administration illustrated the New Deal's satanic affinities.
Like social gospelers on the opposite side of the theological and political spectrums, fundamentalist far-right agitators remained a minority. Most theologically conservative clergy spent the Depression tending to their congregations. Not only did they preach and pray for revivals, but they expanded the fundamentalist infrastructure, founding magazines, Bible colleges, and summer camps. Some joined Rev. Charles Fuller of "The Old Time Revival Hour" in making effective use of radio. Cosmopolitan intellectuals, many of whom had moved to the left, paid scant attention to such prosaic activities. Rather, they focused on Winrod and his fellow far-right activists whom they usually regarded as native fascists. Nowhere was the exaggerated fear of a domestic fascist triumph greater than among New York's liberals and radicals. In the context of this Brown Scare, fundamentalists looked like a serious national threat instead of a perplexing local annoyance.
Cosmopolitan clichés about fundamentalistsoriginally disseminated by debunkers during the 1920s and by the political left during the 1930s and 1940swere incorporated into social science during the 1950s. We return, then, to city college's noted alumni, Professors Bell, Lipset, and Glazer who, along with many other prominent post-World War II intellectuals, were nurtured as young men in the political culture of the New York left (currently immortalized in countless bitter, sweet, and bittersweet memoirs). There they had learned to distinguish among Stalinists, Trotskyists, and Lovestoneites without a scorecard; subsequently even their most engaged writing about the left recognized the importance of such divisions as well as the power of ideas"ideology"during the Great Depression. On the other hand, the political culture of New York radicalism had rendered them ill-prepared to understand the complexity of American Protestantism. When they wrote about the right, "fundamentalism" served as a catch-all synonym for moralism and reaction rather than as a name for a coherent movement marked by internal divisions and

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