The movement began with considerable enthusiasm. The first World Christian Fundamentals Association meeting was held in May 1919 as an outgrowth of the Philadelphia Prophecy Conference, The focus was expanded beyond eschatological speculation and study in order to form an interdenominational association consisting of a variety of theological conservatives with the purposes of confronting “false teachers, damnable heresies, and the Great Apostasy (Fitzgerald, 115).” However, this effort to win back the faith and hopefully the nation along with it lost much of its steam when it hit something of a cultural brick wall in the form of the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial. The parameters of this pivotal battle in the ongoing war for the soul of America transpired in response to numerous meetings convened by the World Christian Fundamentals Association primarily across the South in opposition to the theory of evolution.
Inspired by a crusade against evolution spearheaded by famed Populist Williams Jennings Bryan along with the founder of the World Christian Fundamentals Association William B. Riley, in March 1925 the Tennessee legislature enacted a law making it a crime to teach evolution in terms of denying the Genesis creation account. Both sides were itching for a fight. Instead of rushing to the defense of an educator whose liberty had already been violated independently of an orchestrated campaign, the American Civil Liberties Union even had to advertise for a litigation guinea pig to challenge the law. Two Dayton Tennessee businessmen actually had to cajole teacher John Scopes to step forward as the test case. From the way the account is presented in “The Evangelicals: The Struggle To Shape America”, had the ACLU had its way the law would have been rendered unconstitutional as a result of a demure legal proceeding. However, to its credit, the World Christian Fundamentals Association realized that so much was at stake that Byran lobbied to get himself appointed as counsel to the prosecution.
The trial itself became a media event. With the legendary William Jennings Bryan a part of the prosecution, a trial lawyer as profoundly renowned in his own right Clarence Darrow stepped forward on behalf of the defense. The nation was enthralled by the festering spectacle.
Frances Fitzgerald writes, “For two weeks in July that year Dayton, a hill town of 1700 people ... became the news capital of the nation (135).” A Chicago radio station broadcast live from the town across the country. A swarm of journalists descended to cover the proceedings along with a litany of entrepreneurial sorts --- both secular and sacred --- to hawk their wears and to promote their particular understanding of the Gospel message.
Bryan could not be faulted for the sincerity of his enthusiasm. However, it could be argued that perhaps his pride got the better of him and the task before him one for which he was not sufficiently prepared. Unable to get the testimony of the defense's expert witness holding to the compatibility of Darwinism and Christianity admitted as evidence, Darrow in an unorthodox move called on Bryan of the prosecution as an expert on the Bible. The firebrand could not turn down such an apologetic challenge despite advice to the contrary.
Like the Serpent in the Garden of Eden detailed in Genesis 3, Darrow found a dangling string that when tugged could unravel the conceptual web holding much of Bryan's case together and in a sense ultimately the perceived rationality of the worldview he professed with such vehemence. Without a doubt, the faith held by Bryan was indeed sincere. Yet like so many of us, he was out of his element in defending it when under hostile assault. The line of questioning pursued by Darrow began by examining the miraculous elements at the heart of a number of the Biblical accounts and the attendant contradictions supposedly befuddling the most erudite of scholars.
For example, Darrow made a fuss how in regards to the account of Jonah that the sea creature that swallowed the disobedient prophet in the Old Testament was referred to as a large fish but as a whale in the New Testament. It is pointed out that Byran did not know this. Apparently it was not within his wherewithal to ask for a time frame of at what point in history it was discovered in terms of the English language that a whale was not the same thing as a large fish from the perspective of technical biology.
Like a wily serpent, Darrow knew now was the time to strike. In perhaps the most devastating move, Darrow manipulated Byran into acquiescing that that the six days detailed in the Book of Genesis did not necessarily constitute literal twenty-four hour periods but rather could have been epochs of indeterminate lengths of time. As such, the door had been opened to the possibility that evolution was the means by which God directed organisms from one level of advancement to the next.
Technically, the prosecution won the case. A sense of foreboding defeat, however, hung in the air in regards to Fundamentalism as a robust cultural influence and dynamic social force. The judge put a halt to the increasingly acrimonious exchange between Darrow and Bryan. Bryan's hectoring was stricken from the record. Reporters covering the trial spun the account as a victory of rational science over ignorant Biblical literalism. Though Bryan seemed as if he was rallying to continue the fight through other means such as the publication of his own unread closing remarks, he died in his sleep a mere five days after the trial prompting speculation that he was no doubt heartbroken over what had transpired.
Of this culture war defeat, Ed Dobson writes, “In the aftermath of the trial, fundamentalists withdrew from the public square and focused on building their own subculture of churches, denominations, schools, organizations, ... and associations (35).” Fundamentalists, probably even more so than with other of Christianity's interpretative branches, held rigorously to the notion of ecclesiastical and cultural separation derived in part from Scriptural admonitions to “come out of and be ye separate” and “touch not the unclean thing” found in II Corinthians 6:17. By adhering to such principles, it was believed that the church as a body and the individual as a believer could maintain doctrinal integrity awaiting the consummation of all things at the end of the age as the world waxed worse and worse while presenting the saving truth of the Gospel to the few of the remnant willing to embrace Christ as Lord and Savior.
For decades, from that point Evangelical conservatives for the most part pursued a defensive sociopolitical strategy. Such a sense of detachment was easy to maintain when the culture remained adorned in a broadly Christian veneer despite increasingly prominent assaults against the foundations. However, by the late 1970's and early 1980's, a number of developments had taken place some might insist were exacerbated in part due to such Christian disengagement such as the legalization of abortion, the removal of prayer from public schools, and a generalized disregard for traditional morality as epitomized by increasing rates of divorce, the broadening acceptance of homosexuality, and the expansion of salacious entertainment.
Dobson writes that Moral Majority was founded by Jerry Falwell as a nonpartisan organization to promote morality in public life. The name was derived from the term “silent majority” referenced by President Richard Nixon to categorize Americans who in no way supported the radical political movements of the 1960's and 1970's such as demonstrations against the Vietnam War that often degenerated into outbreaks of anti-American violence but who were often afraid to articulate their own policy preferences out of a fear of reprisals or an aversion to contentious confrontation (38). After assuring that the purpose of Moral Majority was not to take over America, Dobson proceeds to elaborate what exactly it was the organization did and did not advocate.
The Moral Majority platform consisted of the following. Firstly, despite positing an ethical system steeped in Judeo-Christian presuppositions, the Moral Majority held to the Separation of Church and State in terms that the organization did not require adherence to a singular theological perspective in the form of an established national church. Secondly, the Moral Majority was pro-life. The organization opposed pornography and drug abuse. Moral Majority believed that a strong national defense was the best way to deter war and ensure liberty. Relatedly, the Moral Majority for religious as well as human rights reasons articulated an indefatigable support for the nation of Israel. And while supporting equal rights for women, the Moral Majority did not believe that the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was the most prudent means of doing so.
Along with such a statement regarding what the organization believed, the founders of Moral Majority such as Ed Dobson for purposes of clarification also provided a statement of what Moral Majority was not (39). Foremostly, Moral Majority was not a political party. As such, Moral Majority did not officially endorse candidates. While motivated by Christian principles, the leaders of Moral Majority were not out to explicitly elect born again Evangelical candidates nor to take over the government to the exclusion of other religions. While working to curtail the influence of pornography, Moral Majority did not advocate censorship. Neither was it the organization's objective to deprive homosexuals of civil rights as explicitly delineated in the Constitution. Likewise, neither did Moral Majority intend to castigate as necessarily immoral those with whom the organization disagreed.
The sincere believer would be hard pressed to find fault with Moral Majority's initial motivations and agenda. However, as Dobson and Thomas readily admit, the scope of the agenda aimed for was broader than any one organization could hope to effectively address. Even more importantly, the sorts of issues that Moral Majority decided to focus upon were not necessarily of the sort where significant change could be effected from the top down. Rather, for such profound societal change to take root, it would most likely need to be from the bottom up.
By Frederick Meekins