The Second Coming of Paisley: Militant Fundamentalism and Ulster Politics

2. The Twentieth-Century Reformation: The Gospel of Militant Fundamentalism

38 2 The Twentieth-Century Reformation The Gospel of Militant Fundamentalism In the 1930s, the concerns of the American fundamentalist community transcended theology and refocused on politics and social mores. Within militant fundamentalism, national and international politics and a defense of American capitalism rivaled the defense of Bible Protestantism . Whereas communism had worried militants during the interwar period, the onset of the Cold War created a morbid fear of the Soviet Union and the expanding ecumenical movement that militants believed appeased communism.1 A coalition of Christian “patriots,” fundamentalist associations, and independent preachers led the American response. The most vocal voice that arose was that of the Reverend Carl McIntire of Collingswood, New Jersey. McIntire’s crusade began as a defense of fundamentalist Protestantism against ecumenism, Christian liberalism, and the Roman Catholic Church, but after the Second World War it took on an ideological component that was unique to North America. From the 1940s on, McIntire crusaded against what he perceived as the weakness of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. He also campaigned against Communist infiltration of the US government and military as well as the “Red” subversion of Protestant churches.2 To understand McIntire’s crusade, it is necessary to examine the factors that drove McIntire to split from both mainstream Presbyterianism and conservative fundamentalists who had left the Presbyterian Church and to assert his views publicly. To comprehend how McIntire and American militant fundamentalism influenced Paisley’s ministry, it is accordingly essential to analyze McIntire’s early career, his style of protest, The Twentieth-Century Reformation † 39 and the developing relationship between McIntire and Paisley. Through McIntire’s international network, Paisley gained valuable friendships, which were important in shaping the Ulsterman’s theological and political ideals and to raising his stature in the British Isles. The Presbyterian Schism Although most American denominations experienced the fundamentalist controversy, it hit Presbyterianism the hardest. As previously mentioned, the Princeton Theological Seminary took the lead in the mid–nineteenth century in defending traditional conservative Presbyterianism, although some professors held a view on creation and biblical inerrancy that differed from the Westminster Confession. Princeton’s conservatives were influenced by James McCosh, recruited from the Free Church of Scotland in 1868 to be the institution’s president. McCosh brought with him Scottish commonsense rationalism, which argued that science and scripture could be reconciled through reason and philosophy. Moreover, the Scotsman saw a need to compromise with orthodox Calvinism as a means to combat Darwinism and biblical criticism. The imported philosophy established a conservative base at Princeton in contrast to Presbyterianism ’s other, more liberal seminaries. To militant fundamentalists, proponents of Germanic higher biblical criticism and modernism increasingly corrupted these institutions, all of which were located in the American North. The most important Presbyterian college infected was the Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, maintained by the liberal Presbytery of New York.3 During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the conflict within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. erupted into open battles. There were a number of heresy trials, the most important being that of Dr. Charles Briggs, the professor of biblical theology at Union Theological . Brought to trial in 1891 for asserting modernist concepts,4 Briggs attacked Princetonian Old School Presbyterianism as a new version of medieval Scholasticism and as a doctrine that contradicted Calvinism. He articulated his theological ideas in three books published in the 1880s: Biblical Study: Its Principles, Methods, and History, a history of higher criticism; American Presbyterianism: Its Origin and Early History, which 40 † The Old Testament argued against church authority (specifically the use of church authority to sanction modernists) and the concept of subscription; and Whither? A Theological Question for Our Times, which called for a modernist revision of Presbyterianism that accepted evolution and promoted ecumenism. Throughout his works, Briggs argued that liberals and the New Theology were the true defenders of the Bible and the Westminster Confession.5 Briggs also allowed a series on higher criticism to be published in the Presbyterian Review, a periodical he coedited. After he outlined his views during his Inaugural Address to the Union Theological Seminary in 1891, conservatives could no longer remain quiet. At the General Assembly in Detroit the same year, a vote to remove Briggs from his professorship passed. At first, the New York Presbytery refused to bring Briggs to trial, but during the 1892...