The Dustbin of History
The Dustbin of History
This chapter explores three different attempts to write a fitting obituary for Protestant fundamentalism. The first, Stanley Kramer's 1960 film Inherit the Wind, portrays fundamentalism as a reactionary movement whose intellectual bankruptcy was dramatically revealed in a famous trial about the teaching of evolution. The other two obituaries—Norman F. Furniss' The Fundamentalist Controversy, (1954) and Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963)—were both written by professional historians. Both books present fundamentalism as a form of Christianity that in the past blocked Americans' search for knowledge; both assert that religious fundamentalism's influence peaked in the 1920s and then went into steep decline.
Keywords: Protestant fundamentalism, Stanley Kramer, Inherit the Wind, Norman F. Furniss, The Fundamentalist Controversy, Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
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