abpnews takes a turn at defining fundamentalism

The Associated Baptist Press attempts to define the allegedly undefinable! Read all about it in “Fundamentalism & militancy: Defining ‘fundamentalism’“

“They were trying to find the boundaries of authentic Christianity,”

says one commentator.

A quote near the end that gets the original history succinctly and fairly accurately:

In the beginning — around the turn of the 20th century — fundamentalism originated among militant-but-nonviolent conservative American Protestants. They were primarily Presbyterians and Baptists in the North who resisted modernism, Olson said.

“What they did was network with each other to oppose the rise of liberal theology in mainline Protestant seminaries,” he explained. “They were afraid of a lack of doctrinal concern among liberals. They believed it was important to regain the seminaries or separate from them.”