Development of Liberal Theology: An Overview (Part 3)

As senior pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New York, Fosdick preached a sermon one Sunday in 1922 that aroused the righteous indignation of fundamentalists and he suddenly found himself at the center of a heated theological controversy. In order to understand the tension that existed between fundamentalism and modernism, it is necessary that I briefly delineate the fundamentalist position at that time.

Fundamentalism is a rather broad movement within Protestanism which claims the absolute inerrancy of the words of the Holy Bible. It attempts to preserve what is considered to be the fundamental ideas of Christianity against criticism by liberal theologians. Bishop Pike noted that the fundamentalist regarded any particular assertion or narrative in the Scriptures that is challenged, qualified, or treated as myth; any attempt to rethink and restate the verities to which the Bible witnesses, fundamentalists suspects of infidelity and unbelief (A Time for Christian Candor).

Between 1909 and 1915, anonymous authors published twelve small volumes entitles, The Fundamentals. Millions of copies were distributed to various religious organizations and institutions. I believe it was about 85 or 90 articles that were written for the series with at least 30 devoted to the issue of biblical authority. The spirit of the work coincided with the spirit of early fundamentalism