Religious Confrontation in an Age of Normalcy

1. Religious Confrontation in an Age of Normalcy Joe Mendi at Dayton Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Others, 1919-1930

2. Fundamentalist v. Modernists • The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (1910-1915) (funded by Lyman Stuart, edited by A. C. Dixon and R. A. Torrey) • Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” • J. Gresham Machen • Scopes Trial

3. Rueben Archer Torrey (1856-1928) Amzi Clarence Dixon (1854-1925)

4. Anti Evolution League William Bell Riley Riley was born in Indiana, Straton was born in N. Y. John Roach Straton—R.

5. Shall the Fundamentalists Win? If a man is a genuine liberal, his primary protest is not against holding these opinions, although he may well protest against their being considered the fundamentals of Christianity. This is a free country and anybody has a right to hold these opinions or any others if he is sincerely convinced of them. The question is—Has anybody a right to deny the Christian name to those who differ with him on such points and to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship? The Fundamentalists say that this must be done. In this country and on the foreign field they are trying to do it. They have actually endeavored to put on the statute books of a whole state binding laws against teaching modern biology. If they had their way, within the church, they would set up in Protestantism a doctrinal tribunal more rigid than the pope’s.

6. In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called "modernism" or "liberalism." Both names are unsatisfactory; the latter, in particular, is question-begging. The movement designated as "liberalism" is regarded as "liberal" only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed the movement is so various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism--that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity. –J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (1923)

7. Catholics, Jews, and Normalcy • Knights of Columbus (1882) • Third Plenary Council (1884) • CYO (1930) • Synagogue Council (1926) • Jewish Reconstructionism • Hiram Wesley Evans and the KKK

8. African Americans • Great Migration • Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) • Timothy Drew [Noble Drew Ali] (1886-1929) • Major Jealous Divine (1876-1965)

9. 1928 Presidential Election

10. God, Media, and the New Deal • Aimee Semple McPherson • Father Charles Coughlin • Gerald Burton Winrod • Dorothy Day

11. NEO ORTHODOXY • Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) • “If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.” • “Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.” • “The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.” • “The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.” • “There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.”