Between 1870 and 1930, the modernist-liberal Protestant leadership was comfortably entrenched among the elite of American society, but their theological positions which they had readily conformed to the humanistic worldview of the secularizing activists were not representative of the majority of Americans who professed Christianity during that era. Some may suppose that the opponents of liberal Protestants were the original silent majority. But in reality, the conservative leaders of the once dominant populist evangelical churches were not silent but just didn’t have the cultural clout or platform from which to mount significant opposition to the liberal churches and their newly found secularist allies.

However, in 1910 twelve small volumes were published which were titled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. The books outlined the five fundamental doctrines held by populist evangelical churches since their beginnings in the early 1700s:

1. The Bible is free from error in every respect.
2. The virgin birth of Christ.
3. The substitutionary work of Christ on the cross (Christ suffered and died as a substitute for man to satisfy God’s wrath against sin).
4. The physical resurrection of Christ following His crucifixion.
5. The physical second coming of Christ.[1]

Two and one-half million […] Continue Reading…

We have written of the Protestant hegemony that dominated America life and its institutions up to 1870. But the so-called “common faith” that supposedly blanketed all denominations and their particular characteristics was in reality a weak facade which hid an American Protestantism that was deeply fragmented as they faced the coming assault by the humanistic secularizers between 1870 and 1930. The Protestant church was divided by denominations, geography, race, ethnicity, organizational types and methods, and social class lines. As the Protestant church began to experience loss of social power, cultural authority, and institutional influence, these various differences became polarized around two competing visions of Christianity and resulted in a modernist-fundamentalist split in the late nineteenth century which reached its rancorous end by the late 1920s.[1] As it had been for two thousand years of church history, the central issue was the truth and authority of the Bible. Just as the forces of the anti-religious Enlightenment exploited the two hundred years of strife within the church following the Catholic-Protestant split that began in 1517, those same anti-religious forces dressed in the clothes of modern humanism and secularism also exploited the division between the liberals […] Continue Reading…

The remarkable strength and vitality of the American church from its very beginning with the Pilgrims in 1620 until the mid-nineteenth century can be attributed to its success in resisting Satan’s two-fold attack that has plagued the church throughout its history since its birth 2000 years ago. The first attack comes from within through attempts to corrupt the doctrinal truths of the Bible and undermine unity within the body of Christ. The second attack arises from without through the assimilation and accommodation of worldliness in the church including the contra-biblical relationships between the church and state.

The humanistic spirit of the world became a cultural force that swept over the American Beulah Land during the last half of the nineteenth century. The enormous changes that occurred in the six decades between 1870 and 1930 profoundly transformed the way Americans thought and acted in all spheres of American life. By 1870 the nation had been guided for 250 years by a central cultural vision infused with the collective Judeo-Christian worldviews of the great majority of Americans since the Pilgrims undertook to establish a colony “…for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith…”[1] […] Continue Reading…

Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it… For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before me from their youth: for the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, saith the LORD. [Jeremiah 32:28, 30. KJV]

Industrialization and societal change

J. M. Roberts in his definitive The New History of the World described the large-scale industrialization of the Western world that began in the late eighteenth century and lasted through most of the nineteenth century. He wrote that the magnitude of societal change produced by industrialization was the “most striking in European history since the barbarian invasions”…and perhaps the “…biggest change in human history since the coming of agriculture, iron, or the wheel.” These events included great strides in agricultural production, increasing population, technological advances, replacement of human and animal labor with machines, increasing specialization, production in larger units, and centralization of the means of production.[1]

The magnitude and rapidity of societal change described by Roberts was massively […] Continue Reading…

America the exceptional

John Quincy Adams expressed the sentiments of many of the Founders when he wrote of the importance of the Bible and Christianity in the nation’s founding.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity…From the day of the Declaration…they (the American people), were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of their Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of conduct.[1]

The remarkable strength and vitality of the American church from its very beginning with the Pilgrims in 1620 until the mid-nineteenth century can be attributed to the American church’s success in countering Satan’s twofold attack as previously described. The European reformers had begun the reformation process. The American church’s continued devotion to the Bible as the final authority of truth greatly influenced the formation of the political structure of the United States. As a result, America became most successful nation in the history of the world, and soon after its founding, many nations recognized the exceptional nature of the American Republic.

A Frenchman named […] Continue Reading…