Black Fundamentalists - by Daniel R Bare (Paperback)

About the Book

"Black Fundamentalists illuminates how early twentieth century fundamentalism manifested in unique ways across the color line, illustrating how racial context, racial identity, and concerns for racial justice can shape religious expression even within theologically conservative traditions"--

Book Synopsis

Reveals the history of Black Fundamentalists during the early part of the twentieth century

As the modernist-fundamentalist controversy came to a head in the early twentieth century, an image of the "fighting fundamentalist" was imprinted on the American cultural consciousness. To this day, the word "fundamentalist" often conjures the image of a fire-breathing preacher--strident, unyielding in conviction . . . and almost always white. But did this major religious perspective really stop cold in its tracks at the color line?

Black Fundamentalists challenges the idea that fundamentalism was an exclusively white phenomenon. The volume uncovers voices from the Black community that embraced the doctrinal tenets of the movement and, in many cases, explicitly self-identified as fundamentalists. Fundamentalists of the early twentieth century felt the pressing need to defend the "fundamental" doctrines of their conservative Christian faith--doctrines like biblical inerrancy, the divinity of Christ, and the virgin birth--against what they saw as the predations of modernists who represented a threat to true Christianity. Such concerns, attitudes, and arguments emerged among Black Christians as well as white, even as the oppressive hand of Jim Crow excluded African Americans from the most prominent white-controlled fundamentalist institutions and social crusades, rendering them largely invisible to scholars examining such movements.

Black fundamentalists aligned closely with their white counterparts on the theological particulars of "the fundamentals." Yet they often applied their conservative theology in more progressive, racially contextualized ways. While white fundamentalists were focused on battling the teaching of evolution, Black fundamentalists were tying their conservative faith to advocacy for reforms in public education, voting rights, and the overturning of legal bans on intermarriage. Beyond the narrow confines of the fundamentalist movement, Daniel R. Bare shows how these historical dynamics illuminate larger themes, still applicable today, about how racial context influences religious expression.

Review Quotes

"Showcases a range of African American responses to and engagements with fundamentalist Protestant ideas and principles in the interwar years of the twentieth century. In doing so, it challenges a long-standing scholarly and popular inattention to Black fundamentalism."-- "American Historical Review"

"Daniel Bare seeks to correct the record... by showing there were indeed black Christians, in addition to those who were white, who actively participated in the fundamentalist crusade. He not only demonstrates this definitively, but in the process of tracing the history of black fundamentalism makes several noteworthy observations about Christianity and race in America... Bare, an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Texas A&M University, is to be commended for this fine work."-- "Southeastern Theological Review"

"Black Fundamentalists uncovers some important and powerful new sources and shows us how some African American Christians wrestled with some of the great theological issues of the era."--Matthew Avery Sutton "Reading Religion"

"Bare is to be commended for taking seriously the theological convictions of African Americans during the emergence of fundamentalism and trying to understand the diversity that existed even within black Christianity."-- "American Religion"

"Bare's book joins Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews's Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism between the Wars (The University of Alabama Press, 2017) as one of the first significant historical studies on Black religious conservatives during the interwar period."-- "Journal of the American Academy of Religion"

"Daniel R. Bare's splendid book . . . will become one of the essential works on American fundamentalism, carrying major implications for the troubles over race and politics confronting many American churches today."--Thomas S. Kidd, Vardaman Distinguished Professor of History, Baylor University

"Daniel R. Bare's well-researched Black Fundamentalists is a fine and valuable contribution to American and African-American religious and general history...The author with solid documentation demonstrates that this Black embrace of fundamentalism was consistent with, and was regarded as indispensable to, the pursuit of the political and economic liberation of African Americans."-- "Baptist History and Heritage"

"This book is a well-researched account of Black fundamentalism in the United States. Moreover, as an essential contribution to scholarship in general and American religion in particular, Black Fundamentalists opens new possibilities and areas of study for graduate students and scholars of race and American Christianity."--Dara Coleby Delgado "Journal of Southern History"

"This book's investigation into the neglected history of black fundamentalism is a most welcome addition to the fields of both fundamentalist history and black church history...Black Fundamentalists provides a well-structured and interesting treatment of a timely and overlooked topic and is worthy of readers' attention."--Charles Gillett "Theophron"

"Too often the history of Protestant fundamentalism has been an incomplete one, largely omitting the black experience. Black Fundamentalists is a welcome and needed contribution, demonstrating that black Protestantism has never been monolithic. . . . Bare has retrieved a forgotten history of the black church, but also of the varieties of broader American fundamentalism in the first half of the twentieth century."--Matthew J. Hall, Provost & Associate Professor of Church History, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

"Uncovers a generation of African American theological conservatives who shared the 'fundamentals' of the faith with their white counterparts. At the same time, they sought progress in racial matters in ways fundamentally differing from those same white counterparts. This book tells the story of these progressive fundamentalists skillfully and with rich detail."--Paul Harvey, Distinguished Professor of History, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

About the Author

Daniel R. Bare is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Texas A&M University.