Christian fundamentalism

For more information on Christian fundamentalism, visit Britannica.com.

A reaction by Protestants in Britain and the United States from the 1800s onwards to modernist readings of the Bible which challenged the literal truth of the supernatural and miraculous episodes of biblical history, and the status of Scripture as a direct and unchallengeable revelation of the word of God. In particular, fundamentalists resisted the teaching of Darwinian evolutionary science in American public schools (culminating in the famous Scopes ‘Monkey trial’ in Tennessee in 1925, in which a teacher was convicted under a state law which forbade the teaching of Darwinism).

The more overtly political incarnation of Christian fundamentalism stems from the alliance of religious and political conservatism in the American South. From the 1970s onwards, groups such as the ‘Moral Majority’ became powerful populist lobbies in state and national politics on issues ranging from family and welfare policy to defence and foreign affairs, particularly during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. The Iranian Revolution in 1979 heralded the rise of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, which has led to fundamentalism becoming a watchword for militancy, fanaticism, and intolerance for many in the Western world.

— Stewart Wood