In his book Summer for the Gods Edward J. Larson documents the battle between religious Fundamentalists and Modernists, while also examining the conflict between majoritarians and those who defended minority rights, in America during the 1920s.  He uses the Scopes Trial in order to demonstrate how the underlying differences within the religious communities in America had become irreconcilable, and that the trial caused an open split between the two theological perspectives.  The Scopes Trial and the events surrounding it were only the opening skirmishes in a war that continues to this day.  A war for control of society and culture, and in which both sides hold very different views about the underlying nature of the human person and religion.  Larson's book perfectly illustrates what Walter Lippmann in his book A Preface to Morals called "The Acids of Modernity."  Thus two conflicting world views were battling for control of American culture throughout the twentieth century.  On the one hand the Fundamentalists and political majoritarians were fighting a battle against secularism and for the rights of taxpayers to control public education.  While on the other side of this battle, the theological Modernists and the defenders of minority rights were struggling to develop an American culture that favored pluralism and tolerance of differing viewpoints in both the religious and political arenas.  

          The Scopes versus Tennessee court battle appeared to be a failure for the Modernists, because they lost the court case itself, but in reality it was the Fundamentalists who lost, because they were exposed to ridicule from the press and this damaged their image in the larger society.  But in their defeat they were able to create a viable subculture in the United States, and they did this by establishing Churches, colleges, missionary societies and other institutions to replace the mainline institutions now closed to them.  As Larson points out the Fundamentalists grew more rapidly in the 1930s than the mainline Modernist Churches [see Larson, 233].  This theological split was at the same time a geographical divide, with the north and west generally following a more liberal or modern theological position, while the south held a more traditionalist and fundamentalistic view of the meaning of Christianity.

          The Fundamentalists continued the exclusivist tradition of Christian thought concerning the nature of salvation, holding that explicit faith in Christ was the only way to enter heaven.  The Modernist ministers had accommodated themselves to a more scientific view of human origins and they had also come to accept as inevitable a more inclusivist or pluralist view of American religion.  The theological divide was clearly expressed by Unitarian minister Charles Francis Potter who managed to give the opening prayer on one of the days of the trial.  In the prayer he expressed the modern theological inclusivism very clearly when he concluded the invocation by saying that it is "Thou to Whom all pray and for Whom are many names" [Larson, 117].  It is this kind of theological indifferentism that is tantamount to heresy for a Fundamentalist, because it denies the unique nature of Christianity. 

          The Modernists wanted to expunge Christianity of its supernatural and dogmatic elements in favor its moral teaching.  But to the Fundamentalists and other conservative Christians this emptied Christianity of any real meaning, because for them the dogmatic concepts support Christ’s moral teaching.  In other words, they could not reduce Christianity to a system of ethics, because for them Christian ethics are based on the dogmatic principles of the faith.  This battle of ideas was not new, it had been going on for many decades, and in fact begun as early as the 1860s.  Theological Modernism had been influencing all the churches, and even the Catholic Church had issued documents that clarified and reaffirmed its traditional teachings in the face of modern revisionism.  Several Popes at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, including Pius IX (Syllabus of Errors), Leo XIII (the letter on Americanism called Testem Benevolentiae), and Pius X (Decree of the Holy Office Lamentabili and the Encyclical Pascendi), had issued documents in opposition to Modernist theology.  The First Vatican Council itself (A.D. 1870) had condemned certain Modernist propositions and even more importantly, it dogmatically defined the infallibility of the Pope on matters of faith and morals.  So as early as the turn of the century in Catholic circles Modernism had been called a heresy.

          In the political sphere the majoritarians were represented by William Jennings Bryan, who was also a fundamentalist Christian, the two groups were basically allied in this conflict.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was allied with Clarence Darrow, although the leaders of the ACLU were not really pleased with this situation.  If Bryan had limited his arguments to the majoritarian position he would have had less difficulty in court, because he could have even quoted Thomas Jefferson who said, "that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical" [Allitt, 110].  To apply this Jeffersonian principle to the modern circumstances involved in the Scopes case would mean that the teaching of evolution at taxpayers expense in the public schools would be an infringement of the rights of those who opposed this scientific theory, and thus would be a form of state tyranny.

          In the trial William Jennings Bryan erred when he presented himself as an expert on the Bible, something he obviously was not.  He should have kept the case centered on the rights of the majority to determine what is taught in public schools, had he done this he not only would have won the court case, which the prosecution did win, but would also have won the propaganda war.  It was in putting Bryan on the stand that Clarence Darrow gained his greatest victory, because he was able to show the inconsistencies inherent within the Fundamentalist interpretation scripture.  The modern Fundamentalist view of the Bible should not be confused with the view of the early Church.  In reference to those who investigate natural phenomena through reason, St. Augustine had interpreted Genesis figuratively, saying that "it is too disgraceful and ruinous in many ways ... and greatly to be avoided, that he [the common investigator of nature] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are" [Jurgens, 3:82].  Far from taking a modern Fundamentalist attitude toward the Bible, the ancient Fathers of the Church understood that scripture was multivalent, and that it contained various levels of meaning.

          The Scopes trial did not resolve the conflict over human origins and the nature of theology in Christianity.  What it did accomplish was to force the more conservative elements within the Protestant tradition to take a more defensive posture.  It also caused the Fundamentalists within various mainline denominations to either attempt to take over those existing denominational structures, or if this was not possible, to establish their own ecclesiastical structures.  Thus modernist theology and science created a new division among Protestants in America, one which exists to this day.  In fact the Fundamentalists within the Southern Baptist Convention have been cracking down on certain ministers who do not support Biblical inerrancy, as the Convention leadership understands the concept.  While at the same time the Vatican has issued a document called Dominus Iesus that reasserts an exclusivist view of salvation through Christ alone.  Clearly the issues involved in the Fundamentalist versus the Modernist battle continue to exert an influence on religion in America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Patrick Allitt.  Major Problems in American Religious History.  (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000).

William A. Jurgens.  The Faith of the Early Fathers.  (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1979).  3 Volumes.

Edward J. Larson.  Summer for the Gods.  (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Fundamentalism versus Modernism in American Religion

by Steven Todd Kaster

San Francisco State University

History 482:  Religion in America

Dr. William Issel

12 April 2002

Copyright © 2002-2025 Steven Todd Kaster