Word: fundamentalistism
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Nonetheless, this single-minded force is waging its campaign for social retrenchment at what may be a propitious time. Fundamentalists detect a widespread feeling in America of spiritual bafflement and dissatisfaction. Many commentators outside the movement agree. Sociologist Rodney Stark of the University of Washington, no Fundamentalist himself, thinks that the religious right makes quite accurate assessments. Antireligion and amorality have in fact been spreading in the public schools, he asserts, and "a majority of Americans are scandalized" by the apparent flouting of traditional values on television and in the press. Similarly, Michael Novak, the neoconservative Roman Catholic, says that...
Preachers of this conservative message have long sought to disseminate it to millions by means of radio and television. About 1,000 of the 9,642 U.S. radio stations have a religious format, and the vast majority of their programming is Evangelical or Fundamentalist in tone. The same is true of television. A 1984 survey estimated that regular viewers of religious TV shows number more than 13 million. When politics comes up on these broadcasts, as it increasingly does, the message is resolutely "pro-family" and conservative. The TV empires greatly increase the public clout of conservative preachers, who have...
...opinions of the religious right are shared by large numbers of people who do not belong to Fundamentalist churches. "A majority of Protestants are simply dissatisfied with what they regard as a moral breakdown in American society," asserts Sociologist Phillip Hammond of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Conservative Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Mormons, Orthodox Jews and many secularists are understandably concerned about such developments as the more than 16 million abortions performed since 1973, the fourfold increase since 1970 in children raised by unwed mothers, the rise in drug use, the emergence of gay liberation and the glamorization...
...recounted by Historian George Marsden in his definitive 1980 study, Fundamentalism and American Culture, many of the conservatives turned into angry militants during the cultural upheavals following World War I. The term Fundamentalist was coined in this period to identify a battler for orthodoxy. Presbyterian Evangelist Billy Sunday typified the new ornery style of combat. The liberal, Sunday fulminated, was a "hog-jowled, weasel-eyed, sponge- columned, jelly-spined, pussyfooting, four-flushing, charlotte-russed Christian." At the 1925 Scopes trial, in which a Tennessee schoolteacher was convicted of expounding evolutionary theory, Fundamentalists were ridiculed by the press and perceived...
...Today Fundamentalists and Evangelicals share very similar beliefs and values. But the Evangelicals tolerate a somewhat broader range of Bible interpretation and cultural outlook, and tend to be against doctrinal witch- hunts. The gut difference is a matter more of attitude than of theology. In Historian Marsden's tongue-in-cheek but perceptive definition, "a Fundamentalist is an Evangelical who is angry about something...