Markku Ruotsila. Fighting Fundamentalist

Recent historical scholarship has pushed back the longstanding notion that Protestant fundamentalists remained uninvolved in American politics for the middle half of the twentieth century, retreating from public life after the embarrassment of the 1925 Scopes Trial only to come roaring back with the formation of the Moral Majority on the eve of the 1980 election. Daniel K. Williams and Matthew Avery Sutton both have examined active fundamentalist opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency and his New Deal programs. Kevin M. Kruse has also demonstrated how religious conservatives, including fundamentalists, joined with conservative business leaders to oppose the New Deal and secure Dwight Eisenhower’s election in 1952. Thanks to Joel A. Carpenter, we know of the religious vibrancy of conservative Protestantism through this period. And Molly Worthen has shown how mid-century evangelicals distinguished themselves from and debated with fundamentalists, setting the stage for the tensions and complications that would become more visible with the rise of the Religious Right.

Embarrassment · Fundamentalism · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Protestantism · Scholarship · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies