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. that of religion. After the Civil War a number of utopian schemes with religious foundations were adopted to meet the needs growing out of the War. -The fear-~ 0f-·=-Ror.ran--·catholicism, or "papery" as it was frequently called, rea- ched a new high in America as a result of the immigration of a large number of Irish Catholics to the United States. Mormanism, Adventism, and Spiritual- ism were all born during this era. However, the most important development for the future of fundamentalism was the rise of millennialism to a new prominence. Rev. William Miller was the early leader of this concept because of his strong emphasis on the second advent of Christ, a doctrine that had been dormant in the Church for centuries. While the prediction of an exact date for this advent was in error, nevertheless, his emphasis prompted an extensive study of this subject. As a consequence, the doctrine of the im- minence of Christ's return became prominent in fundamental theology. The period between the American Civil War and 1920 saw a clash between two distinct cultures in America, the spiritual and the secular. New dis- coveries in science revealed the potential of man's mind. Unfortunately, this resulted in the adoption of man's reasoning with respect to biblical truth as well as to the sciences. This new outlook challenged the place of revelation as a source of knowledge. Many churchmen were shocked when col- leges began to replace religious courses with secular subjects. They were more shocked when evolution became an accepted hypothesis in almost every discipline, including religion. Darwin's Origin of Species, published in 1859, transformed speculation into an accepted view in the minds of many scholars, including theologians. Darwin's theory became an accepted scien- tific fact in the minds of modernists in religious circles. To them it con- firmed what they really wanted to believe, namely, that human progress is "always onward and upward." This speculation was one of the roots of liberal ism in the Church. Having rejected the Scriptures as the final authority, the early liberal
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