In this series
Growing Concern: 1870-1900
1876 What will eventually be called the Niagara Bible Conference first meets (meeting annually until 1901); it inspires Bible and prophecy conferences nationally, which defend the Bible's verbal inerrancy and promote holiness and premillennialism
1881 Presbyterian theologians B. B. Warfield and A. A. Hodge write "Inspiration," which defends the inerrancy of Scripture; such articles begin to appear increasingly
1889 Moody Bible Institute founded, inspiring the founding of hundreds of Bible institutes and colleges that will become centers of fundamentalism
1892 Charles Briggs, liberal professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary, New York, is convicted of heresy for his liberal interpretations of the Bible
Defining the Issues: 1900-1920
1909 Scofield Reference Bible, whose notes teach dispensationalism and Keswick holiness, published; will become best-selling Bible among fundamentalists
1910-1915 The Fundamentals published; promotes conservative teaching
1910 Northern Presbyterian Church affirms five essential doctrines: inerrancy of the Bible, the Virgin Birth, Christ's substitutionary atonement, his bodily resurrection, and miracles
1919 World's Christian Fundamentals Association formed, the largest and longest-lasting (until the 1940s) international fundamentalist association
1920 Curtis Lee Laws, editor of the Baptist Watchman-Examiner, coins the term fundamentalist
1920 Conservatives in the Northern Baptist Convention organize the Fundamentalist Fellowship to combat spreading liberalism
Public Confrontations: 1920-1930
1923 J. Gresham Machen's Liberalism and Christianity defines liberalism as another religion
1923 Baptist Bible Union formed to gather Baptist fundamentalists of various denominations
1924 Evangelical Theological College (later Dallas Theological Seminary) founded; will become a dispensational stronghold
1925 At the Scopes trial, fundamentalism fares poorly in most Americans' eyes
1929 Presbyterian fundamentalists found Westminster Theological Seminary
Institution Building: 1930-1950
1932 Northern Baptist fundamentalists form the General Association of Regular Baptists
1936 Presbyterian fundamentalists form the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
1937 Disgruntled Orthodox Presbyterians form Bible Presbyterian Church
1941 American Council of Churches formed as a conservative alternative to World Council of Churches
1947 Moderate Northern Baptist fundamentalists form the Conservative Baptist Association
Liberalism and Neo-Orthodoxy
1874 John Fiske's Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy is one of many books that try to combine Christianity and the new scientific learning
1880 Society of Biblical Literature formed to promote scientific study of the Bible
1891 Washington Gladden's Who Wrote the Bible popularizes the new biblical criticism
1894 William N. Clarke's An Outline of Theology is the first systematic theology from a liberal perspective
1908 Federal Council of Churches adopts "The Social Creed of the Churches" to promote the social gospel
1917 Walter Rauschenbusch's A Theology of the Social Gospel further popularizes the political and social optimism of liberalism
1922 Harry Emerson Fosdick creates a stir with his sermon, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?"
1924 Shailer Mathews's The Faith of Modernism will become the most widely distributed book promoting modernism
1927 Presbyterian General Assembly decides the five fundamentals are no longer binding for ministerial candidates
1932 With Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society, neo-orthodoxy ascends, critiquing liberalism's optimism and its accommodation to culture
1936 John Mackay assumes presidency of Princeton Theological Seminary; leads Presbyterianism in neo-orthodox directions
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