Defining the American Evangelical Movement: Doctrine and Denominations (Episode 3)

In January 1953, the Reverend Donald Gray Barnhouse published a striking New Year's resolution in his magazine Eternity. After 25 years of building a ministerial empire — through Bible conferences, books, a widely syndicated radio broadcast, and a national magazine — Barnhouse confessed that he had fallen short in one significant area: unity. Long known for his willingness to call out anyone he disagreed with, even on minor points, Barnhouse declared that he wanted to widen his "circle of Christian fellowship" — defined not by doctrinal alignment, but by a simple question: Is this person going to be in heaven with me?It was a remarkable resolution for a man forged in the fires of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. And as historians Maggie Capra, Dan Hummel, and John Fea discuss, it offers a revealing window into the dynamics of American fundamentalism — a movement defined as much by its internal fractures as by its battles with modernism.This episode dives deep into one of the most defining and contested threads in American evangelical history: fundamentalism. What does it actually mean to be a fundamentalist? Where did the term come from? How did the movement evolve — and fracture — across the twentieth century? And what does it have to do with debates still raging today?The conversation traces fundamentalism from its origins in The Fundamentals pamphlets of the early twentieth century, through the cultural watershed of the Scopes Trial, to its complex relationship with the neo-evangelical movement and Billy Graham. Along the way, the historians examine:The three core characteristics of fundamentalism: Protestant militancy, doctrinal orthodoxy, and a deep sense of certaintyWhy fundamentalism was originally a Northern movement centered in Baptist and Presbyterian denominations — not the Southern, rural phenomenon it later became associated with in popular memoryThe crucial divide between premillennialist and amillennialist eschatology, and how it fractured the movement and gave rise to rival institutions like Dallas Theological Seminary and Westminster SeminaryThe Scopes Trial of 1925 — what it actually meant, how it was misrepresented by journalists like H.L. Mencken and later by films like Inherit the Wind, and why the fear about children and Nietzschean philosophy was central to William Jennings Bryan's caseHow fundamentalists didn't disappear after Scopes, but built a thriving parallel subculture of Bible institutes, radio broadcasts, Christian schools, and media empiresThe surprising ways fundamentalism was thoroughly modern — embracing new technology, print culture, and a rationalist, inductive approach to Scripture — even while opposing certain hallmarks of modernityThe relationship between fundamentalism and politics, from Frank Norris's anti-Catholic crusade to Karl McIntyre's anti-communism to the emergence of the Christian RightThe episode closes by reflecting on what fundamentalism teaches us about evangelicalism more broadly: that the movement's most significant tensions have often been internal, and that to understand fundamentalists, we must take seriously their own sense of what they were doing — and why.Send us Fan MailHosts:JOHN FEA - Visiting Fellow in History, Lumen Center; Distinguished Professor of History, Messiah UniversityMAGGIE CAPRA - Visiting Instructor in American History, Beloit CollegeDAN HUMMEL - Director of the Lumen Center; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-MadisonThis podcast is brought to you by the Lumen Center and STUDIO, both initiatives of the SL Brown Foundation. Find out more about our work:slbf.org/lumen-centerslbf.org/studioProduced by Daniel Johnson and Dave ConourEdited by Dave Conour