Geology Reference
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Employing charismatic preachers with little or no education who could relate to the masses
heading west, these sects grew into the largest Protestant congregations by the close of the
frontier.
Populist preachers who considered the common sense of ordinary men more reliable than
opinions espoused by seminary-trained theologians and topic-learned professors encour-
aged people to cast off the chains of religious authority and interpret the Bible for them-
selves. The most successful preachers—those whose flocks grew the fastest—adopted pop-
ular language and manners. When coupled with belief in the Bible as the sole source of
religious authority, populism encouraged settling theological disputes in the court of public
opinion where everyone was entitled to interpret the Bible for him- or herself. This pro-
duced an interpretive free-for-all in which discredited ideas could compete with reasonable
ones.
Sectarianism flourished in America's religious marketplace. Splinter groups left main-
stream denominations in disputes over doctrine, practice, and/or belief. Although the
founders of these new denominations obviously disagreed on matters important to them,
most shared the belief that the Bible was the only real authority for Christians and that its
meaning was laid out plainly. Scripture meant exactly what it said, even if they didn't agree
on what it meant.
The advent of the American Civil War presented a theological crisis for American Chris-
tians. Both North and South used the Bible to either condemn or defend slavery. How could
a plain-sense interpretation of scripture be infallible if one side had to be wrong? Such di-
lemmas only hardened divergent interpretations of the Bible.
Conservative Protestants began to forge a reactionary biblical literalism, based on bib-
lical inerrancy. They believed that admitting even the slightest error in or sign of human
influence on the sacred text would undermine the whole notion of Christian salvation. One
need not look for deeper meanings because common sense tells us what the Bible means.
Efforts to uphold literal, plain-sense scriptural interpretations began to distance evangelic-
als from mainstream thought.
Fundamentalism arose among conservative Protestants who viewed liberal accommoda-
tion of modern ideas and values as a betrayal of the core doctrines they viewed as funda-
mental to their faith. Foremost among these was biblical inerrancy. In 1895, the founding
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