I need to clarify some terminology. I mentioned in the first post in this series that the Holiness churches were “fundamentalist.” Now, I know many people use that as a term of abuse for basically any conservative religious organization that they don’t like but I do have a specific meaning for it.
I believe I got this from James Ault’s book Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church, which I read shortly after leaving the Holiness churches. It was very influential on me, as it put words to so much of my experience.
Fundamentalism was a term first coined for early 20th century American Protestants who resisted what they perceived as modernism or liberalism, e.g., evolution, critical study of the Bible. The movement was thus named because of the publication of an influential series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals. These pamphlets advocated for an inerrant Bible, the virgin birth and bodily resurrection of Jesus, and many other doctrines that would come to characterize fundamentalism and then evangelicalism.
Many ministers and churches left their denominations in order to form their own independent churches, seminaries, and parachurch organizations uncorrupted by modernism. Their vehement rejection of modernism formed a habit in them of fiercely policing their borders. In the postwar years, some of these fundamentalists would temper their separatism in order to work together on common goals. These people would become the first evangelicals: fundamentalism minus the separatism.
So, for my purposes, fundamentalism is:
- Any Protestant church
- that holds the characteristic fundamentalist teaching of an inerrant Bible (and related doctrines)
- and emphasizes separation for the sake of moral and doctrinal purity.
Evangelicalism fits point one and mostly fits point two (though that’s less certain than it used to be) but does not fit point three. Evangelicals get together with other evangelicals of various stripes (Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, and so on) to work on joint projects; fundamentalists don’t.
So separatism is the key characteristic of fundamentalism for me. Evangelicalism is conservative, yes, but it is meant to be a big tent. Fundamentalism is an intentionally closed system.