With the historical-theological approach in mind, then, the difficult task of defining “fundamentalism” remains. Approaching this endeavor from the vantage of theology and identity, I propose four conditions: (1) the embrace of an overarching supernaturalist and biblicist worldview, including an attitude of continuity with historic Christian traditions, (2) a personal commitment to the central doctrinal essentials of the movement, consonant with the theological convictions reflected in The Fundamentals, (3) a readiness to explicitly criticize and overtly condemn modernist theology, and (4) the willingness to utilize expressly fundamentalist language and terminology in defining one’s theological positions and religious identity. The first three conditions, which are primarily theological, build upon one another to form the doctrinal and attitudinal content of fundamentalism, such that the removal or denial of any one of them would clearly set someone outside of the fundamentalist realm. The fourth condition, which has to do with self-identification, is more subjective and therefore, by necessity, more elusive.42 The three theological tenets together are the essence of what I would define as “doctrinal fundamentalism”—that is, regardless of whether or not a historical actor explicitly claimed the fundamentalist moniker, these tenets reflect a fundamentalist posture from a historical-theological perspective, though of course not necessarily from an institutional one.43 The first three chapters of the book identify and examine these three elements in the black community.
The fourth element, self-identification as a fundamentalist, is rather more difficult because of the inherent subjectivity involved, but it remains important in demonstrating that some major black ecclesiastical leaders sought to overtly position themselves within the cultural maelstrom that was the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. When such self-identification appears in conjunction with the three aspects of “doctrinal fundamentalism,” as laid out above, it becomes difficult to deny that a significant historical-theological congruence between white and black Protestants has seemingly slipped through the cracks of the historiographies of fundamentalism and of African American religious history. Of course, self-identification as a definitional criterion has its own inherent limitations—most notably, that divorced from explicit theological affirmations, the term “fundamentalist” might well carry different connotations to each person who uses it. Two caveats, then, are in order. First, many of the figures in the following pages who sought to elucidate and defend “the fundamentals” or to identify as “fundamentalists” did so in light of their clear doctrinal affirmations, thus adding their self-identification to the already established contours of their “doctrinal fundamentalism” (as defined above). Second, those who designated themselves “fundamentalist” in the absence of a robust, detailed theological or doctrinal context may present more tenuous connections to the historical-theological formulation of fundamentalism, and thus the conclusions we can draw from their examples are somewhat more limited. Nevertheless, the existence of the raging religious controversy between fundamentalists and modernists during the interwar period meant that blacks’ very usage of the terminology implied a willingness to be identified in some respects with the common public perception of fundamentalism. So, while self-designation is obviously a limited criterion, it is nevertheless an important element of dealing with historical figures on their own terms, and it will recur throughout the following chapters as both an important marker in the process of identity construction and, in many cases, as a parallel affirmation of the other three theological elements of “doctrinal fundamentalism” as laid out above.
While consideration of this self-referential aspect of fundamentalism recurs throughout this book, the first three theological elements receive specific consideration in the first three chapters, since they progressively build upon one another. Chapter 1 explores the claims by commentators in the black press (on both sides of the theological divide) that fundamentalism was a widespread force within the black community. Using these weekly newspaper accounts to examine the contours of the basic fundamentalist worldview that was understood to exist among African Americans, this chapter both identifies a professed fundamentalist presence among black Christians and analyzes the theological and racial connotations of these black weeklies’ considerations of fundamentalism. In terms of broad theological characteristics, this fundamentalist worldview was characterized by a supernaturalist presupposition connected to the traditional beliefs of “the old-time religion,” a commitment to biblicism that was often termed “biblical literalism,” and a doctrine of creation that denied the rising tide of evolutionary thought. To deny a supernaturalist and biblicist worldview would, automatically and obviously, preclude a fundamentalist identity. Yet while many African Americans recognized a major fundamentalist contingent among themselves, the broad theological commonalities between black and white fundamentalists did not necessarily manifest in a similar overlap in social worldview, especially regarding issues of race. The fact that the black community was subject to ubiquitous structures of racial oppression meant that the press’s discussions of fundamentalism were also often tinged with questions and implications about the relationship of fundamentalist religion to racial identity and upright social action. In this case, a historical-theological perspective illuminates a self-identified fundamentalist contingent within the African American community, while an institutional perspective might obscure such a connection.
While a supernaturalist and biblicist worldview obviously constitutes the sine qua non of fundamentalist thought, it just as obviously needed to be joined with specific Protestant doctrinal propositions that formed the “fundamentals” of the faith that fundamentalists undertook to defend. To deny any of the basic doctrinal essentials that comprised the majority of the argumentation in The Fundamentals—such as, for example, the full divinity of Christ—would virtually axiomatically set someone apart from the “fundamentalism” of the early twentieth century.44 Chapter 2, therefore, focuses on the so-called five fundamentals, which consist of biblical inspiration, Christ’s divinity, the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, and Christ’s literal resurrection and second coming, and examines these doctrines as they were commonly taught by conservative black clergy and religious leaders. In terms of the positive affirmations attending the basic “fundamental” theological propositions, conservative African Americans very much resembled white fundamentalists. For both, the Bible represented the inerrant words of God Almighty, and Christ was as fully divine as he was fully human—he was literally born of a virgin, his bloodshed was necessary to effect the forgiveness of humanity’s sins, and he physically arose from the grave in anticipation of a literal future second advent. The doctrinal formulations, the accompanying argumentation, and the common appeal to solidarity with both biblical and church-historical sources demonstrated substantial similarity between members of different races who sought to champion the fundamentals.
But even possessing a supernaturalist/biblicist worldview and also embracing the core “fundamental” doctrines fail to fully encapsulate the fundamentalist perspective. These commitments might be sufficient to make one a theological conservative, but perhaps not a fundamentalist. Characterized not only by what it affirmed but also what it opposed, historic Protestant fundamentalism entailed an overt resistance and explicit opposition to the rising modernist theology in early twentieth-century churches and denominations. The most famed modernist preacher of the era, Harry Emerson Fosdick, drew this distinction: “We should not identify the Fundamentalists with the conservatives. All fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often