Darryl Hart

Beginning with discussion of the problematic nature of the term ‘fundamentalist’, this chapter examines the role of Princeton Seminary within the fundamentalist–modernist debates of the early twentieth century. After placing Princeton within the context of nineteenth-century American Protestantism, the chapter looks at its initial reaction to theological liberalism, arguing that the response of the Princeton theologians was at first nuanced and sophisticated. It was not until the intra-Presbyterian controversies in the 1920s that the lines became more firmly drawn. Examining the career of J. Gresham Machen in detail, the chapter shows that while Machen battled liberalism and modernism, his critique was of a very different nature to the more populist arguments sometimes adopted by fundamentalists more widely. The chapter contends that fundamentalism was far from being a monolithic movement.

Reformed Protestants inherited older biblical and medieval understandings about the difference between civil rule and ecclesiastical authority which fostered a variety of responses to secularization. After the Reformation, Calvinists worked from received categories even as they adapted to a diverse set of political circumstances, sometimes being a persecuted minority, sometimes having unrestrained access to municipal governments, and sometimes disappointed with monarchs who promised more than they gave. Once the political revolutions of the eighteenth century upended the prevailing Constantinian pattern of ecclesiastical establishment (whether Roman Catholic or Protestant), Calvinists made even further adjustments to the sacred–secular distinction. Those adaptations contribute to ongoing debates about society, the church, and a Christian’s civic responsibilities. No matter how varied Calvinists have been in their responses to secularization, they are no stranger than other Christian communions that also struggle to make sense of Jesus Christ’s assertion that his ‘kingdom is not of this world’.

From its inception, Reformed Protestantism was an international phenomenon. Invariably, the places where European and American missionaries went were the very same locations where European powers operated a vast set of economic and political enterprises. Furthermore, because the missionaries themselves were the product of Christian developments in the West—whether the Protestant opposition to Roman Catholicism or intra-Protestant squabbles (Lutheran vs. Reformed, pietist vs. confessional)—missionaries faced a considerable challenge in trying to adapt a faith heavily bound up with Western civilization for people for whom Europe’s history, language, and culture were alien. In other words, the challenge of foreign missions was how to decouple the simple Christian message from a set of understandings and practices thoroughly situated for over a millennium in the West. The globalization of Reformed Protestantism, then, was a by-product of European expansion around the world chiefly for the purpose of commerce and conquest. This process happened in two stages. The first, as exemplified by the experience of Dutch Reformed Protestants in Africa, involved the creation and establishment of European-styled churches for Western settlers in a foreign land. The second, as the history of Presbyterianism in Korea shows, occurred through the modern missionary movement where Protestants of European descent sought to evangelize and disciple an indigenous population. In both cases, despite the best of intentions eventually to rid Christianity of its cultural assumptions, European-based patterns of theology and church life continue to set the standard for Christians around the world who constitute what some scholars refer to as ‘global Christianity’.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, assessing the relations between Baptists and Reformed Protestants is in the mind of the historian. Although some use historical methods and evidence to argue that Baptists and Reformed are closer than R. Scott Clark and D. G. Hart have alleged, this historiography often relies as much on religious convictions as academic expertise. If religiously informed perspectives are possible in professional scholarship, the case for insisting on differences between Baptists and Reformed Protestantism, as this chapter maintains, still makes sense.