Love Truce? Donate to help Chris make the show! So far this season I've covered William Jennings Bryan, a man who enjoyed the nickname "Mr. Fundamentalist". But he wasn't really a fundamentalist. Experts point to another man as the true face of fundamentalism. That man was William Bell Riley. He was a famous preacher in his day, bouncing around the midwest until he settled in Minnesota. He founded the Northwestern schools to spread his vision of Christianity and picked debates with...

Love Truce? Donate to help Chris make the show! Send checks to: Truce Media LLC PO Box 3434 Jackson, WY 83001 The modernish/ fundamentalist controversy was heating up in the early 1900s. Conservatives saw this coming a long way off but could not stop modernism from taking control of seminaries and popular pulpits. It was everywhere. It all came to a head with WWI. Theological conservatives saw WWI as evidence that the world was getting worse. To them, it was a chance to fight for patriotic...

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Love Truce? Donate to help Chris make the show! Walter Rauscenbush published his classic book Christianity and the Social Crisis in 1907. It went on to become a defining work of the social gospel movement. We've spent a lot of time talking about the social gospel this season. That is because it has been identified by historians as the key movement that fundamentalists rebelled against. So we really should understand it, right? In this episode, Chris takes us through highlights of this...

Between 1910 and 1915 a collection of 90 essays was distributed by two wealthy oil magnates. These essays attempted to nail down the basics of the Christian faith and counteract the growing modernist movement. "The Fundamentals" is often mentioned in history books about Christian fundamentalism, but it is rare for anyone to discuss the essays themselves. So I thought we should break down at least 6 of them together! I'm joined this episode by some good friends to introduce you to "The...

What kind of Bible do you have? Most of us would answer with the translation we carry. Maybe it's New Living, the King James, or the New International Version. I've heard plenty of conversations about translations in my life. But I've never heard a serious discussion about the notes in various Bibles. Continuing our long exploration of the Christian fundamentalist movement, we explore the Bible version that nudged the United States toward a particular negative theology. One that encouraged...

William Jennings Bryan. If we know him at all it is from the Scopes Monkey Trial at the end of his life. Or maybe we know of his 3 failed campaigns for President of the United States on the Democratic ticket. But many of us are unaware of his efforts to establish world peace. William Jennings Bryan hated war. He wasn't a pacifist - he enlisted for the Spanish-American War after all. But he saw the meaningless carnage of war and vowed to do his best to reduce the amount of bloodshed. So "The...

Now that we've read In His Steps together and discussed it, let's talk about another work of fiction. Looking Backward was written by Edward Bellamy. That name may sound familiar! We talked about his cousin Frances Bellamy in the episode about the Pledge of Allegiance. Frances was a Christian socialist. Edward wrote his famous book looking forward to the year 2000. He predicted that the United States would be a socialist paradise. People would work hard, retire early, and equality would...

Support the Truce Podcast via Patreon or through the website you can do Paypal, check, or Venmo! We've been reading the book "In His Steps" together for the last few weeks. It was written by Charles Sheldon, a man whose book is often associated with the social gospel movement. While some historians struggle over the significance of this work, it's pretty plain how it fits this movement. I invited patrons of the show to listen early and then discuss their thoughts on this controversial...

This is part 3 of an audiobook presented on Truce. Please start at part 1! Become a patron of the show to keep more content like this coming your way! In His Steps by Charles Sheldon is a classic of Christian fiction. It is also one of the top-selling Christian books of all time. We've been running through the history of Christian fundamentalism this season. It's worth noting that fundamentalism was a reaction to liberal theology, especially modernism. Another form of liberal theology was...

This is the second part of the series. Please start with part 1. In His Steps by Charles Sheldon is a classic of Christian fiction. It is also one of the top-selling Christian books of all time. We've been running through the history of Christian fundamentalism this season. It's worth noting that fundamentalism was a reaction to liberal theology, especially modernism. Another form of liberal theology was the "Social Gospel". It was a movement led by people like Walter Rauschenbusch that...

Want more Truce? Give a little bit each month and you'll gain access to a patrons-only Zoom event! We'll be getting together to discuss "In His Steps" and answer listener questions. This event is open to anyone who gives $10/month or more on Patreon. Link: https://www.patreon.com/trucepodcast Event details: Tuesday August 9, 2022 at 8pm EST/7pm CST/ 6pm MT/ 5pm PST. Zoom link will be posted on Patreon for those who give $10/month or more. If you cannot give to help the show, but still really...

In His Steps by Charles Sheldon is a classic of Christian fiction. It is also one of the top-selling Christian books of all time. We've been running through the history of Christian fundamentalism this season. It's worth noting that fundamentalism was a reaction to liberal theology, especially modernism. Another form of liberal theology was the "Social Gospel". It was a movement led by people like Walter Rauschenbusch that emphasized the socially conscious aspects of Christianity, while...

Can a Christian be holy? Can we go a week, a day, or an hour without sinning? These are questions that modern Christians struggle with. They have their origin in John Wesley, a hymn writer, preacher, and one of the founders of Methodism. In this episode of Truce, we track how this seemingly simple concept got tied up in movements from fundamentalism to Pentecostalism. This episode is going to seem a bit "out there". But this information is important to fundamentalism. Keswick Holiness in...

After the evangelist D.L. Moody died at the end of the 1800s, he left behind a series of lieutenants, guys who carried on the work of sharing the gospel and shaping culture. It was these men who went on to set the foundation of the fundamentalist movement in the United States. James Gray, Arthur Pierson, A.J. Gordon, Charles Blanchard, and William Erdman, C.I. Scofield, and William Bell Riley. These guys went on to found schools, start radio ministries, spearhead publications, and amass large...

DL Moody. The name may be familiar. There is a Moody Publishers, a Moody Bible Institute, Moody Radio. His name is all over evangelicalism. His remarkable life story is something worth noting. Though Moody was not a fundamentalist, some of the tactics he used to build his ministry would be employed by some of his lieutenants when they built the foundation of the movement. So we're going to spend this episode talking about this remarkable man. Born in poverty, educated to only about a...

The 1800s were an era of big questions, many of which we answered in cruel and selfish ways. Is one race better than another? Is one religion? If so, which one? In what ways? Is one economic system better than another? Is one system of governance like a democratic republic like the US, or socialist, or monarchy, theocracy, communism, best? Some people answered these questions with a resounding "yes". But if we think our people and ways are better than anyone else's, what responsibility...

Give to help Truce. www,trucepodcast.com/donate Populism is a tricky subject. We use it these days as a slur, but populism can be a useful phenomenon. History professor and author Michael Kazin says that populism is an important tool when it comes to regulating power. In the late 1800s, railroads and banks were out of control. Industrialists like John D. Rockefeller had uninhibited control of their markets. Rockefeller believed in social Darwinism and didn't mind using dirty tactics to...

The Great Depression. Some say that it was caused by a failure of the stock market. Well... that's not all. Jacob Goldstein, host of NPR's Planet Money podcast and author of "Money: the Truce Story of a Made-Up Thing" joins us to discuss the role the gold standard played in making the depression what it was. Here is why the gold standard made the Great Depression much worse. Simply put, the panic of 1929 caused people to run to the bank and demand their money back in the form of gold. We were...

There was a time not so long ago when the value of an ounce of gold cost $20.67. That was true not just in one moment or one year. It was true in the 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1920s... This was the gold standard. A person could take $20.67 to a federal bank and receive an ounce of gold in return. This system worked really well... for a while. But by the 1890s the constant deflation caused by the increasing value of gold meant that people with loans had to work harder and harder to pay them back....

This season of the Truce Podcast tracks the history of Christian fundamentalism. So far we've covered the rise of para-church ministries through preachers, the creation of dispensationalism, and the rising threat of modernist theology in the late 1800s. That is a lot to digest! So in this episode, I thought it would be helpful to sit down with some of the smartest guys I know and ask them, "how do we deal with Christian fundamentalism?" Christian fundamentalism has impacted our lives in...

George Marsden characterized Christian fundamentalism as "militantly anti-modernist protestant evangelicalism". Right there you see that fundamentalism is a reaction against something. And that something is modernist theology. Modernism is a broad term used to describe a few different schools of liberal theology. In this episode, we discuss the Tubingen and Berlin schools. Modernist theology is often marked by the desire to discuss the "historic Jesus". This term can be a bit confusing...

The 1800s were a time of milking cows and going to the county fair. Sure... but what else? We tend to think of this century as a quiet, pastoral era when people were friendly and life was simple. But the 1800s were a crazy time! The American Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Spanish-American War, conquest, the suffrage movement, the prohibition movement, massive technological changes. It's a wonder we ever made it out alive. In this episode, we explore the early life of William Jennings...

Become a patron of the show and help make the Truce episodes you love. This season we're tracing the history of Christian fundamentalism through the life of William Jennings Bryan. But first, we need to learn some important definitions. Our big word of the week is dispensationalism. It's not as complicated as it sounds. Dispensationalism is (in part) the notion that God treats humankind differently depending on what era we are in. It is not accepted by all Christians, but it is a building...

Give to help keep Truce going! What is the difference between premillennialism and postmillennialism? And what does it matter? After the French Revolution in the late 1700s, Christians began to see the world as coming to an end. Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 describe an oppressor who will wear the people out for a period of time. Some Christian interpret that as being 1260 years. That 1260 years can be placed over the reign of Justinian all the way through history up until the French...