Fundamentalism is a major religious movement that has its origins in the United States. The movement first made its appearance in the early part of the twentieth century. However, the term fundamentalism wasn't really coined until about 1920. Fundamentalism was basically a response to the loss of influence traditional revivalism experienced in America during the early years of the twentieth century. Along with this loss of influence came the liberalizing trends of German biblical criticisms and the Darwinian theory. The Darwinian theory was about the origin of the universe and focused primarily on the evolution of humans and animals alike. The loss of influence, German criticism, and the Darwinian theory of evolution is what really gave rise to the fundamentalist movement and prompted conservative churchmen to react. This reaction was, in its purest form, fundamentalism. .
Right from the start, fundamentalism was a response of traditional evangelicals who declared war on modernizing trends. Forerunners of this movement saw it as a war that needed to be fought head on and on many fronts. What the Fundamentalists stressed was the major "fundamental" doctrines of faith. These doctrines being the virgin birth of Christ, his miracles, his bodily resurrection, his substitutionary atonement for sin, and Christ's second coming. These ideas laid the foundation for Fundamentalism. .
To define fundamentalism is very hard. There are several people that have tried to define the term. Bruce Lawrence states "the affirmation of religious authority as holistic and absolute, admitting of neither criticism nor reduction; it is expressed through the collective demand that specific creedal and ethical dictates derived from scripture be publicly recognized and legally enforced." He believes that fundamentalism is a specific religious idealogy. Lawrence believes that the fundamentalists are antimodern, but not antimodernist.
