Revive Us Again

By the end of the 1920s, fundamentalism in America was intellectually bankrupt and publicly disgraced. Bitterly humiliated by the famous Scopes "monkey trial", this once respected movement retreated from the public forum and seemed doomed to extinction. Yet fundamentalism not only survived, but in the 1940s, re-emerged as a thriving and influential public movement. Today it is impossible to read a newspaper or watch cable TV without seeing some mention of fundamentalism in American society. In this study, the author illuminates this remarkable transformation, exploring the history of American fundamentalism from 1925 to 1950, the years when, to non-fundamentalists, the movement seemed invisible. Blending research, anecdotes and analysis, Carpenter - a scholar who has spent 20 years studying American evangelicalism - brings this era into focus. He reveals that, contrary to the popular opinion of the day, fundamentalism was alive and well in America in the late 1920s, and used its isolation over the next two decades to build new strength from within. This book is intended for scholars and students of American religious history.