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mia

(8,360 posts)
7. Excellent article!
Tue May 28, 2019, 08:09 AM
May 2019

The author's conclusion says it all.

...The political positions embraced by early fundamentalists, all of which flowed logically from their apocalyptic understanding of the biblical text, hardened over time. They called for limited government and battled anything that seemed to threaten Christians’ rights and freedoms. They fretted about changes in the culture, and especially those that upended what they saw as traditional gender roles. In foreign policy, they championed isolationism and, when they did want the United States to intervene around the world, they called on American leaders to act unilaterally. They also became some of the country’s most ardent and unapologetic Zionists.

In 1947, William Bell Riley lay on his deathbed. An aspiring young evangelist sat at his side. The veteran fundamentalist told the rookie preacher that God had destined him to lead the fundamentalist movement forward, to take the mantle from Riley. The young evangelist was Billy Graham.

In the years after World War II, Graham and his fundamentalist allies began calling themselves “evangelicals.” But little else changed. They continued to emphasize the imminent second coming of Christ, and they avidly aligned biblical prophecy with current events. They maintained a staunch antigovernment ideology and consistently fought the efforts of American leaders to cede any power to international organizations. They became some of Israel’s most faithful American allies and defended their vision of gender and family.

When Riley announced in 1919 that the fundamentalist movement was going to be bigger than the Protestant Reformation, he was wrong. Yet there can be no doubt that the work of fundamentalists and their evangelical successors produced one of the most significant and powerful religious-political movements in American history. They have driven religion into the center of American politics and culture, where it is likely to stay for many decades to come.
K&R DBoon May 2019 #1
One of the rewrites of history I caught onto late in life was gtar100 May 2019 #2
K&R UTUSN May 2019 #3
This is the problem with fundamentalists of all religions ... eppur_se_muova May 2019 #4
+1000 smirkymonkey May 2019 #5
Thanks for posting this article! Ramsey Barner May 2019 #6
Excellent article! mia May 2019 #7
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