Bible & Christianity › Christianity today › Modern biblical criticism
Fundamentalism and the Scopes trial
The Fundamentals 1910–15; Scopes trial 1925· Church or tradition· Books & writings
Historical recordConfirmed by archaeology, outside sources or contemporary records.
An early-1900s American Protestant movement defending traditional 'fundamentals' of faith against modern theology and evolution, dramatized by the 1925 Scopes trial.
See it on the Bible & Christianity map →What it is
From 1910 to 1915, oilmen Lyman and Milton Stewart funded The Fundamentals, 90 essays in 12 volumes mailed free to pastors and missionaries. They defended the Bible's inerrancy, the virgin birth, Christ's atoning death, his bodily resurrection and his miracles. Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws coined 'fundamentalist' in 1920. In July 1925 Tennessee tried teacher John Scopes for teaching human evolution; William Jennings Bryan helped prosecute and Clarence Darrow defended. Scopes was convicted and fined $100.
Why it matters
It split American Protestantism into conservative and liberal camps and built a separate world of Bible schools, radio ministries and churches that fed today's evangelicalism and its political role.
Sources and history
The Fundamentals themselves, the trial transcript, press coverage by H. L. Mencken and others, and histories such as George Marsden's Fundamentalism and American Culture and Edward Larson's Summer for the Gods.
Questions and debates
The play Inherit the Wind (1955) distorted the trial. Historians debate whether Scopes was really a defeat; fundamentalists left mainline churches but kept growing.
Connections (3)
▸Darwin's evolution and the faith debate was resisted by Fundamentalism and the Scopes trialHistorical record
The connection
Darwin's accounts of evolution (1859) and human descent (1871) seemed to many to undercut Genesis and human dignity. By the 1920s fundamentalists made fighting evolution a crusade: William Jennings Bryan tied 'Darwinism' to German militarism and backed laws like Tennessee's 1925 Butler Act, which led directly to the Scopes trial.
When and where
United States, 1920s; Bryan's speech 'The Menace of Darwinism' (1921); the Butler Act, March 1925; the Scopes trial, Dayton, Tennessee, July 1925.
Historical evidence
The Butler Act and similar laws in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Scopes trial record, and Bryan's published speeches.
Questions and debates
Several authors of The Fundamentals accepted some evolution, so historians such as Ronald Numbers ask why anti-evolution became central only in the 1920s, and young-earth creationism later still.
▸Fundamentalism and the Scopes trial rejected Modern biblical criticismHistorical record
The connection
Fundamentalists rejected the 'higher criticism' that read the Bible like any ancient text, splitting the books of Moses into later sources and doubting miracles. The Fundamentals included essays attacking it and insisted the Bible was without error. The fight split Presbyterians and Baptists in the 1920s, as in Harry Emerson Fosdick's 1922 sermon 'Shall the Fundamentalists Win?'
When and where
Princeton Seminary's defense of inerrancy (1881); The Fundamentals, 1910–15; Northern Presbyterian and Baptist battles of the 1920s; J. Gresham Machen's founding of Westminster Seminary, 1929.
Historical evidence
The essays themselves, heresy trials such as Charles Briggs's (1893), and the sermons and pamphlets of both sides.
Questions and debates
Some fundamentalists, like Machen, were serious scholars who rejected critics' naturalistic assumptions, not scholarship itself. How to define inerrancy is still debated (Chicago Statement, 1978).
▸Billy Graham moved evangelicals beyond Fundamentalism and the Scopes trialHistorical record
The connection
Raised a fundamentalist, Graham briefly attended Bob Jones College, but he chose to work with mainline Protestants. When the Protestant Council of New York sponsored his 1957 crusade, separatists such as Bob Jones Sr. and Carl McIntire denounced him. The break defined a cooperative 'evangelicalism' distinct from separatist fundamentalism.
When and where
New York, Madison Square Garden crusade, May–September 1957; alongside the National Association of Evangelicals (1942), Fuller Seminary (1947) and Christianity Today (1956).
Historical evidence
Fundamentalist papers such as John R. Rice's Sword of the Lord attacked Graham openly; historians such as George Marsden document the split.
Questions and debates
Graham kept conservative beliefs about the Bible, so historians debate whether the split was over doctrine or over cooperation, style and culture.