FUNDAMENTALISM
94a reflexive, reciprocal relationship (love
or affection between friends is to be
mutual), and one that is particular rather
than general. That is, it is customarily
believed that both parties in a friendship
deserve or merit preferential treatment
by each other. The particularity of friend-
ship vexed medieval monastic tradition
as it was thought of as incompatible with
Christ’s command to love all persons.
Aelred of Rievaulx (c. 1110–1167)
launched a successful defense of prefer-
ential friendships in Spiritual Friendships.
Important questions in a philosophy
of friendship include: Can a good person
be friends with someone wicked? Can
one be friends with someone who pos-
sesses far greater power? If a friendship
ends in enmity, was it ever a bona fide
friendship? Does friendship consist in or
give rise to moral duties? Can a friend-
ship be considered analogous to a work
of art? Is friendship a basic good or some-
thing that is good for other reasons, e.g., it
leads to happiness? Can one be friends
with God?
FUNDAMENTALISM. The label “fun-
damentalist” was coined in 1920 by Curtis
Lee Laws, a Northern Baptist in the U.S.,
to name those who were doing “battle
royale for the fundamentals” of the faith.
From there “fundamentalism” became the
title of an unofficial coalition of evangeli-
cals who found common cause in defend-
ing the authority of the Bible against
higher criticism and liberal theology.
This coalition included: members of
the Prophetic and Holiness movements,
dominant among whom were premillen-
nial dispensationalists; scholars, most
notably those from Princeton Theological
Seminary; and anti-evolution crusaders.
Throughout the 1920s fundamentalists
fought the modernists in their denomina-
tions, and many left to form their own
churches. The main issues over which
they fought are sometimes referred to as
the “five points of fundamentalism”: the
inerrancy of scripture, the Virgin Birth of
Christ, his substitutionary atonement, his
bodily resurrection, the authenticity of
the miracles (the 5th of the Presbyterian
points), and premillennialism / the literal
Second Coming of Christ (the 5th of
the popularly known “Five Points of
Fundamentalism” in the 1920s).
Creationism was not a major point of
contention until anti-evolution crusaders
from the southern U.S. allied themselves
with the fundamentalist cause. Then the
historic Scopes Trial of 1925, in which a
schoolteacher was successfully tried in
Dayton, Tennessee for teaching evolution
in school, gained such bad press for fun-
damentalists that they began to retreat
from public life. They developed a dis-
tinctive doctrine of separation, or purity;
keeping themselves separate from worldly
activities and attitudes, from non-funda-
mentalist Christians, and even from any-
one who mixes with non-fundamentalist
Christians. Politicized fundamentalists,
who emerged in the 1970s, mark a turn
back toward social engagement, and are