In 1922, a Baptist minister serving a Presbyterian church in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village kicked a hornet’s nest with his Sunday message.
Far from the first, or for that matter, last Baptist preacher to do so, he pleaded to those packed in the echo-producing sanctuary to be “an intellectually hospitable, tolerant, liberty-loving church.” His words calling for unity over conformity and diverse hermeneutical interpretation rippled out of the impressive Gothic Revival-style doors onto pamphlets distributed by the influential hands of people with last names like Rockefeller.
The minister was Harry Emerson Fosdick. A native New Yorker who cut his academic teeth at Colgate University and Union Theological Seminary, Fosdick quickly became known as a gifted and sought-after orator. This led to an invitation to fill the pulpit of what would affectionately become known as “Old First” after his brief stint as an Army chaplain during the First World War. There, his reputation grew.
Justin Cox
The sermon he delivered that morning, titled “Shall the Fundamentalist Win?” caused heads to shake and some to nod, as it dared to propose and argue biblical scholarship through a modernist 20th-century understanding. From the pulpit, Fosdick pointed to a growing problem he was witnessing in the name of perceived correct orthodoxy.
Fundamentalists, or those he identified as holding to a strict and literal interpretation of Scripture, were unsurprisingly rigid in their religious views and zealous in their pursuit to shut down anything differing from their own perspectives. He critiqued their limitedness in suggesting Scripture was the product of divine transcription and challenged concepts like the Second Coming. For Fosdick, Jesus’ return was more about a restorative hope than a judgmental God’s descent from the clouds.
“He believed, left unchecked, fundamentalists would drive out liberal voices like his own.”
His reasoning for bringing this growing controversy to the attention of the masses was that he believed, left unchecked, fundamentalists would drive out liberal voices like his own. Fosdick would go on to warn those with ears to hear that to strangle the next generations of seekers and science-minded questioners would rob the church of the population it desperately needed and might never get back if released. The situation was dire, and much was at stake.
And yet, as he brought his sermon home, he was optimistic. “I do not believe for one moment that the fundamentalists are going to succeed.”
Reasons for concern
Unlike Fosdick, I am not so confident.
Roughly a hundred years later, with denominations hemorrhaging and dismantling over polity and politics, the numbers indicate that within Mainline Protestant churches, the fundamentalists are indeed winning if they haven’t already won outright.
Ryan Burge
I blame Ryan Burge for popping my own bubble around this issue.
Burge is a statistician, college professor and an ordained pastor. He’s also the reason why you’ve probably heard of the term “nones.” His data on the trends of religion in the United States has been stark, often showcasing how the institutional Christian church as a whole is losing members left and right and falling apart before our very eyes.
In a recent Substack post, Burge’s research turned its attention to what he describes as a misconception of Mainline Protestant Churches (United Methodists, Presbyterian USA, Disciples of Christ, etc.) as social justice-oriented, LGBTQ-affirming, refugee-harboring, liberal think tanks. He provides data from the Cooperative Election Study indicating how, since 2008, all but one denomination, the Episcopal Church, is leaning less and less liberal with each presidential election.
The rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement is undoubtedly part of the discussion.
“I want to make this point exceedingly clear now — it’s demonstrably, empirically, objectively false to use the term ‘liberal Mainline,’” Burge wrote. “The only way that makes any kind of sense is if your definition of liberal is ‘less conservative than evangelicals.’ Which, essentially means that every other religious tradition in the United States is liberal.
What does this mean?
I read Burge’s report. I reread it. I looked over the graphs. Outside of a slight spike in 2020, I saw a drop in liberal voting. I processed how even the more historically progressive denominations like the United Church of Christ and American Baptist Churches USA became more conservative.
Of course, I know not all conservatives are fundamentalists, but if I could invoke Fosdick once more, “all fundamentalists are conservatives.” If this is the case, mainstream churches will steadily continue to become more conservative and thus filled with more fundamentalists.
I suppose they always have been.
“I know not all conservatives are fundamentalists, but all fundamentalists are conservatives.”
When you become a pastor, you quickly get invited into a vocational fold unlike any other. Ministers regularly hang out, clinging to each other like sailors to a mast during a Nor’easter when the waters in our congregations get too choppy. We eat lunch together, grab coffees, lament to other ears resembling our own. We swap tales rooted in truth. Think of bass fishing without the hard proof of a whopper of a catch at the end. We laugh at each other and pass a handkerchief or tissue when the occasional tear rolls down a comrade’s cheek. We give assurance that if it can happen, it’ll probably happen in a church. Most of the time it involves a choir member or a possessed organist.
Yes, churches are full of different kinds of people, but folks’ idiosyncratic routines don’t waver much. People’s uniqueness bleeds over fairly easily, and because of this, all pastors can produce similar stories.
Over the years, I’ve sat with pastors, many having roles in Mainline churches. All have told me in one way or another that they, and most of the time their staff if they’re fortunate to have one, are more liberal than their congregations. This is always the formula. It never runs the opposite way. I’ve yet to hear a fellow minister say, “My congregation is just so doggone liberal and I’m such a staunch literalist.” Fundamentalist pastors don’t find themselves shepherding liberal flocks. However, liberal pastors often find themselves in the minority in their own congregations.
I thought back on those conversations, holding in my heart the admissions of my peers as I processed Burge’s findings. I couldn’t help but think, too, if this trend continues, will there be such a thing as a liberal church in the next 20 years? Will there be a gathering ground for the broad-minded? A place welcoming the inquisitive who see the value of a question over an easy answer. Will there be a space for out-of-the-box pastors like me who don’t claim to have the divine systematized and figured out?
Can the United States, now Trump’s America, allow such heterogeneity concerning the holy? Or will the trend Burge identifies continue, forcing all of us to aimlessly stroll down a path where every First Baptist Church across the nation slowly transforms into the next Global Vision Bible Church?
I do not know.
And it scares the hell right into me.
Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University and Wake Forest University School of Divinity and is currently enrolled in the doctor of ministry program at McAfee School of Theology. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.