North America Fundamentalist movements existed in most North American Protestant denominations by 1919 following attacks on modernist theology in
Presbyterian and
Baptist denominations. Fundamentalism was especially controversial among Presbyterians.
Canada Peter Wiley Philpott (18651957) founded the United Christian Workers in
Hamilton, Ontario, in 1892. This
working-class religious movement later became the fundamentalist
Associated Gospel Churches of Canada. In his speech at the 1919 World Conference on Christian Fundamentals in Philadelphia, he asserted that personal experience of conversion cannot be reasoned against or argued away. An early fundamentalist leader was English-born
Thomas Todhunter Shields (1873–1955), who led 80 churches out of the Baptist federation in Ontario in 1927 and formed the Union of Regular Baptist Churches of Ontario and Quebec. He was affiliated with the Baptist Bible Union, based in the United States. His newspaper,
The Gospel Witness, reached 30,000 subscribers in 16 countries, giving him an international reputation. He was one of the founders of the international Council of Christian Churches.
Oswald J. Smith (1889–1986), reared in rural Ontario and educated at
Moody Church in Chicago, set up The Peoples Church in Toronto in 1928. A dynamic preacher and leader in Canadian fundamentalism, Smith wrote 35 books and engaged in missionary work worldwide.
Billy Graham called him "the greatest combination pastor, hymn writer, missionary statesman, an evangelist of our time."
United States A leading organizer of the fundamentalist campaign against
modernism in the United States was
William Bell Riley, a
Northern Baptist based in Minneapolis, where his
Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School (1902), Northwestern Evangelical Seminary (1935), and Northwestern College (1944) produced thousands of graduates. At a large conference in Philadelphia in 1919, Riley founded the
World Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA), which became the chief interdenominational fundamentalist organization in the 1920s. Some mark this conference as the public start of Christian fundamentalism. Although the fundamentalist drive to take control of the major Protestant denominations failed at the national level during the 1920s, the network of churches and missions fostered by Riley showed that the movement was growing in strength, especially in
the U.S. South. Both rural and urban in character, the flourishing movement acted as a denominational surrogate and fostered a militant evangelical Christian orthodoxy. Riley was president of WCFA until 1929, after which the WCFA faded in importance. The
Independent Fundamental Churches of America became a leading association of independent U.S. fundamentalist churches upon its founding in 1930. The
American Council of Christian Churches was founded for fundamental Christian denominations as an alternative to the
National Council of Churches. Much of the enthusiasm for mobilizing fundamentalism came from Protestant seminaries and Protestant "Bible colleges" in the United States. Two leading fundamentalist seminaries were the dispensationalist
Dallas Theological Seminary, founded in 1924 by
Lewis Sperry Chafer, and the
Reformed Westminster Theological Seminary, formed in 1929 under the leadership and funding of former
Princeton Theological Seminary professor
J. Gresham Machen. Many Bible colleges were modeled after the
Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
Dwight Moody was influential in preaching the imminence of the Kingdom of God that was so important to dispensationalism. Bible colleges prepared ministers who lacked college or seminary experience with intense study of the Bible, often using the
Scofield Reference Bible of 1909, a
King James Version of the
Bible with detailed notes which interprets passages from a dispensational perspective. Although U.S. fundamentalism began in the
North, the movement's largest base of popular support was in the South, especially among
Southern Baptists, where individuals (and sometimes entire churches) left the convention and joined other Baptist denominations and movements which they believed were "more conservative" such as the
Independent Baptist movement. By the late 1920s the national media had identified it with the South, largely ignoring manifestations elsewhere. In the mid-twentieth century, several Methodists left the mainline
Methodist Church and established fundamental Methodist denominations, such as the
Evangelical Methodist Church and the
Fundamental Methodist Conference (cf.
conservative holiness movement); others preferred congregating in Independent Methodist churches, many of which are affiliated with the
Association of Independent Methodists, which is fundamentalist in its theological orientation. By the 1970s Protestant fundamentalism was deeply entrenched and concentrated in the U.S. South. In 1972–1980
General Social Surveys, 65 percent of respondents from the "East South Central" region (comprising
Tennessee,
Kentucky,
Mississippi, and
Alabama) self-identified as fundamentalist. The share of fundamentalists was at or near 50 percent in "West South Central" (
Texas to
Arkansas) and "South Atlantic" (Florida to Maryland), and at 25 percent or below elsewhere in the country, with the low of nine percent in New England. The pattern persisted into the 21st century; in 2006–2010 surveys, the average share of fundamentalists in the East South Central Region stood at 58 percent, while, in
New England, it climbed slightly to 13 percent.
Evolution In the 1920s, Christian fundamentalists "differed on how to understand the account of creation in Genesis" but they "agreed that God was the author of creation and that humans were distinct creatures, separate from animals, and made in the image of God." These "strident fundamentalists" in the 1920s devoted themselves to fighting against the
teaching of evolution in the nation's schools and colleges, especially by passing state laws that affected public schools.
William Bell Riley took the initiative in the 1925
Scopes Trial by bringing in famed politician
William Jennings Bryan and hiring him to serve as an assistant to the local prosecutor, who helped draw national media attention to the trial. In the half century after the Scopes Trial, fundamentalists had little success in shaping government policy, and they were generally defeated in their efforts to reshape the
mainline denominations, which refused to join fundamentalist attacks on evolution. Edwards (2000), however, challenges the consensus view among scholars that in the wake of the Scopes trial, fundamentalism retreated into the political and cultural background, a viewpoint which is evidenced in the movie
Inherit the Wind and the majority of contemporary historical accounts. Rather, he argues, the cause of fundamentalism's retreat was the death of its leader, Bryan. Most fundamentalists saw the trial as a victory rather than a defeat, but Bryan's death soon afterward created a leadership void that no other fundamentalist leader could fill. Unlike the other fundamentalist leaders, Bryan brought name recognition, respectability, and the ability to forge a broad-based coalition of fundamentalist religious groups to argue in favor of the anti-evolutionist position. Gatewood (1969) analyzes the transition from the anti-evolution crusade of the 1920s to the
creation science movement of the 1960s. Despite some similarities between these two causes, the creation science movement represented a shift from religious to
pseudoscientific objections to Darwin's theory. Creation science also differed in terms of popular leadership, rhetorical tone, and sectional focus. It lacked a prestigious leader like Bryan, utilized pseudoscientific argument rather than religious rhetoric, and was a product of California and Michigan rather than the
Southern United States. Webb (1991) traces the political and legal struggles between strict creationists and Darwinists to influence the extent to which evolution would be taught as science in Arizona and California schools. After Scopes was convicted, creationists throughout the United States sought similar anti-evolution laws for their states. These included Reverends R. S. Beal and Aubrey L. Moore in Arizona and members of the Creation Research Society in California, all supported by distinguished laymen. They sought to ban evolution as a topic for study, or at least relegate it to the status of unproven theory perhaps taught alongside the biblical version of creation. Educators, scientists, and other distinguished laymen favored evolution. This struggle occurred later in the
Southwestern United States than in other US areas and persisted through the Sputnik era. In recent times, the courts have heard cases on whether or not the Book of Genesis's creation account should be taught in science classrooms alongside evolution, most notably in the 2005 federal court case
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Creationism was presented under the banner of
intelligent design, with the book
Of Pandas and People being its textbook. The trial ended with the judge deciding that teaching intelligent design in a science class was unconstitutional as it was a religious belief and not science. The original fundamentalist movement divided along clearly defined lines within conservative evangelical Protestantism as issues progressed. Many groupings, large and small, were produced by this schism.
Neo-evangelicalism, the
Heritage movement, and
Paleo-Orthodoxy have all developed distinct identities, but none of them acknowledge any more than an historical overlap with the fundamentalist movement, and the term is seldom used of them. The broader term "
evangelical" includes fundamentalists as well as people with similar or identical religious beliefs who do not engage the outside challenge to the Bible as actively. Writing in 2023, conservative Christian journalist
David French quotes a former president of the
Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission,
Richard Land, as identifying fundamentalism as "far more a psychology than a theology," with characteristics shared by competing Christian theologies and competing religions. According to French, that psychology is one that shares "three key traits": certainty (of a mind unclouded by doubt), ferocity (against perceived enemies of their religion) and solidarity (of "comrades in the foxhole", a virtue surpassing even piety in importance).
Christian right , whose founding of the
Moral Majority was a key step in the formation of the "New Christian Right" The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a surge of interest in organized political activism by U.S. fundamentalists. Dispensational fundamentalists viewed the 1948
establishment of the state of Israel as an important sign of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and support for Israel became the centerpiece of their approach to U.S. foreign policy. United States Supreme Court decisions also ignited fundamentalists' interest in organized politics, particularly
Engel v. Vitale in 1962, which prohibited state-sanctioned prayer in public schools, and
Abington School District v. Schempp in 1963, which prohibited mandatory Bible reading in public schools. By the time
Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency in 1980, fundamentalist preachers, like the prohibitionist ministers of the early 20th century, were organizing their congregations to vote for supportive candidates. Leaders of the newly political fundamentalism included
Rob Grant and
Jerry Falwell. Beginning with Grant's American Christian Cause in 1974,
Christian Voice throughout the 1970s and Falwell's
Moral Majority in the 1980s, the
Christian Right began to have a major impact on American politics. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Christian Right was influencing elections and policy with groups such as the
Family Research Council (founded 1981 by
James Dobson) and the
Christian Coalition (formed in 1989 by
Pat Robertson) helping conservative politicians, especially
Republicans, to win state and national elections.
Australia A major organization of fundamentalist,
pentecostal churches in Australia is the
International Network of Churches, formerly known as the "Christian Outreach Centre".
Russia In
Russia, Christian fundamentalism is often based around the
Russian Orthodox Church or the
Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church. Orthodox Christian fundamentalism was often connected strongly to a sense of
Russian nationalism, since the Russian Orthodox Church often has a strong connection to the
Russian state. This Church-state connection has arguably existed since the time of
Vladimir the Great's conversion. In 2013,
composer Andrei Kormukhin and
athlete Vladimir Nosov founded the Orthodox fundamentalist and
conservative Christian organization known as the
Sorok Sorokov Movement. The Sorok Sorokov Movement was founded in reaction to
Pussy Riot's 2012 protests, which were themselves against increasingly
socially conservative policies in Russia, including moves towards
decriminalizing wifebeating and
criminalizing homosexuality. The Sorok Sorokov Movement has received support from many
priests of the Russian Orthodox Church, most notably
celebrate priest
Vsevolod Chaplin. Chaplin in particular supported the creation of "Orthodox squads" in order to punish people from carrying out "blasphemous acts" in religious places. Some have argues that the Sorok Sorkov Movement has been involved in protecting the construction of Russian Orthodox churches in
Moscow, though the facts have been hard to verify with this. Just as many sources have argued that these acts were more in line with violent
vigilantism against LGBT people in Russia. The Sorok Sorokov Movement has also been connected to the
Russian far-right, including
neo-Nazis and
Third Positionists. The group as a particular affinity for
Tsar Nicolas II. == By denomination ==