Religious Fundamentalism And American Education

For the past twenty-five years, 'ultra-fundamentalist' Christians have put increasing pressure on American public education to conform exclusively with their own philosophy and vision of education and culture. Eugene Provenzo considers and addresses the impact that the fundamentalist movement has had on such issues as censorship, textbook content, Creationism versus Evolution, the family and education, school prayer, and the state regulation of Christian schools. In exploring both sides of the debate, however, the author concludes that many fundamentalists' concerns are justified, due to a basic inconsistency between the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment and the position that many public schools have legally assumed.

This book, the second volume of the Fundamentalism Project, provides a systematic overview of the advances made by antisecular religious movements over the past twenty-five years and shows the impact these movements have had on human relations, education, women's rights, and scientific research. The essays consider developments within the religious traditions of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism in over a dozen nations. What do individual fundamentalist movements regard as the foundations for and limits of knowledge? What do they understand the proper role of science to be? And how do their world views determine the application of technology? The distinguished contributors to this volume - anthropologists, historians of religion, historians of science, and sociologists - address these and other questions through a discussion of topics such as educational structures of Hindu revivalism, women in fundamentalist Iran and Pakistan, and the creationist cosmos of Protestant fundamentalism. In a concluding essay, William H. McNeill situates contemporary fundamentalisms within a world historical context. The Fundamentalism Project is a monumental undertaking by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that involves an international group of scholars. Taken together, the volumes in this series will become a standard reference for educators and policy analysts for years to come.

This book takes a new look at one of the most contentious periods in American history. The battles over schools that surrounded the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925 were about much more than evolution. Fundamentalists fought to maintain cultural control of education. As this book reveals for the first time, the successes and the failures of these fundamentalist campaigns transformed both the fundamentalist movement and the nature of education in America. In turn, those transformations determined many of the positions of the "culture wars" that raged throughout the twentieth century.

This book takes a new look at one of the most contentious periods in American history. The battles over schools that surrounded the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925 were about much more than evolution. Fundamentalists fought to maintain cultural control of education. As this book reveals for the first time, the successes and the failures of these fundamentalist campaigns transformed both the fundamentalist movement and the nature of education in America. In turn, those transformations determined many of the positions of the "culture wars" that raged throughout the twentieth century.

Adam Laats offers a provocative and definitive new history of conservative evangelical colleges and universities, institutions that have played a decisive role in American politics, culture, and religion. This book looks unflinchingly at the issues that have defined these schools, including their complicated legacy of conservative theology and social activism.

Is Bethany Baptist Academy God's choice? Ask the fundamentalist Christians who teach there or whose children attend the academy, and their answer will be a yes as unequivocal as their claim that the Bible is God's inerrant, absolute word. Is this truth or arrogance? In God's Choice, Alan Peshkin offers readers the opportunity to consider this question in depth. Given the outsider's rare chance to observe such a school firsthand, Peshkin spent eighteen months studying Bethany's high school—interviewing students, parents, and educators, living in the home of Bethany Baptist Church members, and participating fully in the church's activities. From this intimate research he has fashioned a rich account of Christian schooling and an informed analysis of a clear alternative to public education.

Many American's today are taking note of the surprisingly strong political force that is the religious right. Controversial decisions by the government are met with hundreds of lobbyists, millions of dollars of advertising spending, and a powerful grassroots response. How has the fundamentalist movement managed to resist the pressures of the scientific community and the draw of modern popular culture to hold on to their ultra-conservative Christian views? Understanding the movement's history is key to answering this question. Fundamentalism and American Culture has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements. For Marsden, fundamentalists are not just religious conservatives; they are conservatives who are willing to take a stand and to fight. In Marsden's words (borrowed by Jerry Falwell), "a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something." In the late nineteenth century American Protestantism was gradually dividing between liberals who were accepting new scientific and higher critical views that contradicted the Bible and defenders of the more traditional evangelicalism. By the 1920s a full-fledged "fundamentalist" movement had developed in protest against theological changes in the churches and changing mores in the culture. Building on networks of evangelists, Bible conferences, Bible institutes, and missions agencies, fundamentalists coalesced into a major protest movement that proved to have remarkable staying power. For this new edition, a major new chapter compares fundamentalism since the 1970s to the fundamentalism of the 1920s, looking particularly at the extraordinary growth in political emphasis and power of the more recent movement. Never has it been more important to understand the history of fundamentalism in our rapidly polarizing nation. Marsen's carefully researched and engrossing work remains the best way to do just that.

Educational Research Monographs, V6, No. 1, January, 1931.