Between Fundamentalists and Funnymonkeyists
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Abstract
<jats:p>“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” was the title of a 1922 sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick, announcing a question that fueled public dispute in the fundamentalist–modernist controversy in 1920s America. The question persists today, but this article turns to the metaphors of apocalyptic rhetoric and routine cynicism to suggest a deeper question energizing fundamentalist and antifundamentalist rhetoric: What does the future of faith look like in an era of cynicism? This article brings a philosophical hermeneutic approach to Fosdick’s sermon as well as the rebuttals of John Roach Straton and Clarence Edward Macartney. Macartney’s distinctive form of apocalyptic rhetoric, this article argues, offers a possible way to counter fundamentalism’s dangers without tacitly accepting its methodological premises of marginalization and polarization.</jats:p>