American Decades
The Rise and Retreat of Fundamentalism
The Fundamentalist Challenge.
In the 1920s, to the surprise of many observers, American Protestants returned to issues that had seemingly been resolved decades earlier, and the nation was presented with a series of spectacular clashes between people calling themselves Fundamentalists and their opponents, whom they called modernists. In the early years of the decade the Fundamentalists seemed to be riding high, challenging their opponents for control of denominational machinery and of American culture itself. But they failed to drive their enemies from their denominations, and the farcical aspects of the so-called Scopes "Monkey" Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, along with the weaknesses of Prohibition, signaled their loss in the conflict. The Fundamentalists were forced to the sidelines and obscurity, into a quiescence in which they licked their wounds and prepared for the renewal of the struggle that would come at the end of the...
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1920's Religion
