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 Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

This study of new atheism and religious fundamentalism advances two

provocative – and surprising – arguments. Fraser argues that atheism
and Protestant fundamentalism in Britain and America share a common
historical origin in the English Reformation, and the crisis of authority
inaugurated by the Reformers. This common origin generated two
presuppositions crucial for both movements: a literalist understanding
of Scripture, and a disruptive understanding of divine activity in nature.
Through an analysis of contemporary new atheist and Protestant
fundamentalist texts, Fraser shows that these presuppositions continue
to structure both groups, and support a range of shared biblical, scien-
tific, and theological beliefs. Their common origin and intellectual
structure ensures that new atheism and Protestant fundamentalism –
while on the surface irreconcilably opposed – share a secret sympathy
with one another, yet one which leaves them unstable, inconsistent, and
unsustainable.

Rev. Dr. Liam Jerrold Fraser is Church of Scotland Campus Minister at

the University of Edinburgh.
Atheism, Fundamentalism and the
Protestant Reformation
Uncovering the Secret Sympathy

LIAM JERROLD FRASER

University of Edinburgh
 University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom
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education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108427982
doi: 10.1017/9781108552141
© Liam Jerrold Fraser 2018
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2018
Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc.
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
names: Fraser, Liam Jerrold, 1986- author.
title: Atheism, fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation : uncovering the
secret sympathy / Liam Jerrold Fraser, University of Edinburgh.
description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Cambridge University Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
identifiers: lccn 2018006514 | isbn 9781108448611 (pbk.)
subjects: lcsh: Reformation. | Christianity and atheism. | Fundamentalism.
classification: lcc br305.3 .f73 2018 | ddc 270.6–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006514
isbn 978-1-108-42798-2 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
For Yvonne, Jerrold, Samantha, Theodore and Sebastian
amatus sum ergo sum
 Contents

Acknowledgements page ix

Introduction 1
1 The Unfinished Reformation 16
Reformation to Revolution 17
The Civil War 31
Restoration and Restraint 35
Freethought in a Protestant Key 43
Re-Narrating Nature 56
2 Things Fall Apart 67
Dissenters and Evangelicals 69
The Gathering of Infidels 73
Origins and Ends 88
Walking Apart 94
3 An Inductive Theology 111
The Scottish Philosophy 113
An Evangelical Empire 119
The Shock of the New 128
Death in Tennessee 142
4 The Secret Sympathy 149
Contemporary Context 150
The Bible: Literal, Univocal and Perspicuous 159
Divine Activity: Disruptive and Substitutionary 173
Opposites Attract 188

vii
viii Contents

5 A House Divided 205

New Atheists 206
Protestant Fundamentalists 222
Dialectic of Protestantism 230
Conclusion 245

Bibliography 248
Index 266
 Acknowledgements

While researching and writing this work, I have been frequently reminded
of the many debts I owe.
First and foremost, I wish to thank Nicholas Adams, David Fergusson,
Iain Torrance and Graham Ward. Nick saw the originality and utility of
this project when it was still in its genesis, and he provided invaluable
comments on a number of early drafts. To David I owe two debts. First,
he offered a number of helpful comments towards the later stages of the
project that saved me from unnecessary errors. Second, David has been a
great supporter ever since my undergraduate days, and it is to him that
I owe many of the opportunities I have been privileged to enjoy. I am also
grateful to Iain and Graham for taking the time to read my work and for
their comments on an earlier instantiation of this book.
I also wish to thank the many other University of Edinburgh staff who,
in different ways, played a role in this work’s development. In particular,
I wish to thank Zenon Bańkowski, Simon Podmore, Paul Nimmo and
Sara Parvis.
This project was made possible by a generous Arts and Humanities
Research Council award, which augmented my slender Church of Scot-
land stipend, and enabled my family and me to live comfortably during
the course of my research. For the provision of these public funds
I express my sincere gratitude.
For their support for this book, and for editorial and technical
guidance during its production, I also wish to express my gratitude to
Cambridge University Press, and especially to Beatrice Rehl and Margaret
Puskar-Pasewicz.

ix
x Acknowledgements

My final note of thanks is to my family, and in particular to my wife

Samantha, for all their love, care and support over the years. The path of
research can be a lonely one, and Samantha had to suffer many evenings
without her husband. This work stands as a testament to her forbearance.

Liam Jerrold Fraser

Holy Week 2017
 Introduction

This is a story about Protestantism. It is a story about the attempt to find a

new foundation for the Christian faith apart from the authority and
tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, and the instabilities and contra-
dictions that arose from it. The thesis of this work is that these tensions and
contradictions gave rise – in the fullness of time – to two opposing, yet
related, forms of thought: Protestant fundamentalism and new atheism.
This work began as an attempt to determine whether comparisons
between fundamentalism and new atheism were cogent. Investigation
revealed that these comparisons, far from being superficial, arose from
deep similarities in structure between the two groups. Yet investigation
also revealed that these similarities rest upon two shared presuppositions,
presuppositions whose intellectual and social genealogy stretches back to
the Reformation in England. In order to provide a complete answer to the
question of the relation of fundamentalism to new atheism, then, it
became necessary to integrate analysis of their contemporary structure
with a genealogy of the presuppositions that gave rise to it. The two
related questions that this work attempts to answer, therefore, are these:
first, what common historical and theological root do new atheist and
Protestant fundamentalist thought come from, and, second, how does this
common root, and the presuppositions that arise from it, structure their
thought? In answering these questions, the following argument will be
advanced: that new atheist and Protestant fundamentalist thought is
structured by the presupposition of a literal, univocal and perspicuous
Scripture, and the presupposition that divine activity disrupts and substi-
tutes for natural causation, beliefs that have arisen from a common
historical root.

1
2 Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

A number of commentators have made comparisons between new

atheism and fundamentalism. Armstrong, Beattie, de Botton, Vernon,
Cunningham, Robertson and Eagleton, inter alia, have all noted resem-
blances between the two groups.1 Nevertheless, the existing literature on
the subject of new atheism and fundamentalism suffers from three related
failures. First, the majority of these remarks are made in polemical and
popular works directed to attacking the social and intellectual standing of
new atheism. For this reason, comparisons with fundamentalism could be
rejected outright as being little more than insults. This failing is joined by
a second, the occasional nature of the existing literature. Most of these
comparisons are made in passing, and when more detail is given, it is
generally not supported with sustained argument. These problems are
compounded by a third factor, the serious neglect of atheism as a subject
for theological investigation. Although the profile of atheism in the public
life of Britain and America is greater than ever, and the publishing
opportunities available for atheist and anti-atheist writers unparalleled,
the majority of academic engagements with atheism are in the form of
polemical works written by academic theologians.2 This has two unfor-
tunate consequences. First, it represents a failure of academic theology to
fully address a serious social, political and intellectual challenge to the
Church and the Christian faith, as polemical works are not suitable for
the detail and depth of analysis necessary to critique the origins, structure
and arguments of new atheism. As Hyman notes, the lack of serious
research into the origins and structure of atheism mean that its nature
and true significance are apt to be misunderstood.3 The polemical nature
of the existing theological engagement with atheism leads, second, to the
impression that atheism is merely a ‘popular’ subject, and beneath the

1
Alain De Botton, Religion for Atheists (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012), 12; Mark
Vernon, After Atheism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 4, 7, 55–6; David Bentley
Hart, Atheist Delusions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 4, 231–2; David
Robertson, The Dawkins Letters (Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2010), 78–83; Karen
Armstrong, The Case for God (London: Vintage Books, 2010), 290; Terry Eagleton,
God, Faith, and Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 53; Conor
Cunningham, Darwin’s Pious Idea (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), xi;
Tina Beattie, The New Atheists (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007), 4;
Stephen LeDrew, The Evolution of Atheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2.
2
E.g. Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? (London:
SPCK, 2007); Keith Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God (Oxford: Lion Books,
2008); John F. Haught, God and the New Atheism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2008). Also see John Hughes ed., The Unknown God (Eugene: Cascade Books,
2013).
3
Gavin Hyman, A Short History of Atheism (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010), ix–x.
 Introduction 3

attention of serious theologians. This is doubly unfortunate, for not only

does it further stigmatise theological investigation of a prevalent intellec-
tual, political and pastoral issue, but, as the present work shall reveal,
prohibits investigation of the serious tensions and contradictions within
Protestant theology which gave, and continue to give rise, to atheism.
There are, however, exceptions to this judgement. Michael Buckley’s
At the Origins of Modern Atheism began the contemporary academic
study of atheism, arguing that atheism, contrary to popular opinion, did
not arise from an independent, non-Christian source, but from within
Christianity itself, and the natural-theological arguments advanced by the
Church to defend its core doctrines.4 The thesis of a theological origin for
atheism was continued by Alan Kors in Atheism in France 1650–1729:
The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief, which demonstrated how intra-
ecclesial debates concerning natural theology and philosophy generated
arguments later used by atheists.5 A similar story was told by Turner,
who in Without God, Without Creed charted the way in which American
Christianity became assimilated to secular forms of thought, and became
alienated from its own distinctive beliefs and patterns of reasoning.6
Drawing upon the dependence thesis concerning the theological origins
of atheism, yet focusing upon the doctrine of God, Gavin Hyman has
recently advanced the argument that changes in late medieval theology
laid the foundations for atheism by endangering God’s transcendence,
and re-conceptualising God’s being as merely the highest among other
beings.7 Reduced to an object within the universe, it was then easy for
science to reject God’s existence. This ‘modern’ conception of God is
passing away, however, and Hyman foresees a corresponding change in
the nature of Western atheism. Another recent academic work that has
engaged seriously with atheism, while also making connections between it
and fundamentalism, is Conor Cunningham’s Darwin’s Pious Idea. Cun-
ningham’s work uncovers the agreement between ultra-Darwinists and
creationists on the anti-religious import of evolution, yet argues that their
shared conception of evolution is faulty, and that a correct conception of
evolution by natural selection is compatible with faith.

4
Michael J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987).
5
Alan C. Kors, Atheism in France 1650–1729 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990).
6
James Turner, Without God, Without Creed (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1985).
7
Hyman, Short History, 47–80.
4 Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

In the last few years, two other works exploring the theological impli-
cations of unbelief have also appeared. Although not an academic work –
and hence not explicitly addressing the existing literature – Nick Spencer’s
Atheists: The Origin of the Species offered a partial history of the devel-
opment of British atheism from the late seventeenth century to the twen-
tieth, and offers a number of important insights that parallel my own
conclusions.8 Dominic Erdozain’s The Soul of Doubt is similar to the
works listed previously in arguing for a religious origin for atheism, yet
traces this origin less to specific ideas than the inculcation of conscience
among European thinkers, a development that led increasing numbers of
educated people to question biblical morality, and reject the faith.9
The present work draws upon this earlier research by defending the
argument that atheism in Britain and America had a theological origin,
yet differs from it by proceeding with an alternative methodology, and a
different estimation of the factors involved. First, one feature of all of
these works is the relative absence of discussion concerning the import-
ance of biblical hermeneutics. The overwhelming emphasis is on natural
theology and science, which, while of the upmost importance, cannot
fully be separated from the scriptural interpretations they were tasked
with explicating and protecting. This oversight is related to a second issue,
the relative absence of discussion concerning the Reformation and its
aftermath. While Turner undertakes discussion of Reformed theology,
its focus is more upon New England puritanism than the salient theo-
logical changes that made puritanism possible. Turner’s work also suffers
from a certain diffuseness, as his – relatively short – history attempts to
outline every reason for American unbelief. The third difference between
this and earlier works comes in the relation of history to our contempor-
ary context. All of the foregoing works, with the exception of Hyman’s
introductory text, focus on either history or the contemporary debate, so
that the insights from one area of enquiry are not brought to bear upon
the other.
This work remedies these oversights in a number of ways. First, it
focuses on both biblical hermeneutics and science and natural theology,
and stresses their interrelatedness. Second, it pushes back the origins of
British and American atheism to the English Reformation. Third, it relates
the historical to the contemporary, stressing the continuities between

8
Nick Spencer, Atheists: The Origin of the Species (London: Bloomsbury Continuum,
2014).
9
Dominic Erdozain, The Soul of Doubt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
 Introduction 5

contemporary atheism and its theological origins. The fourth – and

greatest – contrast with earlier works, however, is that I argue that the
same biblical and natural-theological problems that generated atheism
also gave rise to Protestant fundamentalism, and that this common heri-
tage gives rise to a similar intellectual structure in both groups. Central to
this is the identification of two presuppositions foundational to both
Protestant fundamentalism and new atheism in Britain and America: a
literal, univocal, and perspicuous understanding of Scripture, and a dis-
ruptive and substitutionary account of divine activity in nature.
The method that structures this work, and makes such an extensive
analysis possible, is adapted from R. G. Collingwood, and may be char-
acterised as textual, genealogical and analytic.10 This method minimises
three potential difficulties in carrying out a work of this kind. The first
potential difficulty is historical. A historical account of the origins of
atheism and Protestant fundamentalism in Britain and America would
require a multi-volume work, leaving little room for critical engagement
with their contemporary forms. The present work does not attempt to
provide a history of the origins of atheism and fundamentalism in Britain
and America, but only a genealogy of two key presuppositions that
structure them, and which played an important part in their genesis. It
is not argued that these presuppositions exhaust all the causal factors that
contributed to the development of atheism and fundamentalism. As we
shall see, a wide range of intellectual and social factors were implicated.
Rather, it is argued that these presuppositions played a particularly
important role in their development, and continue to play an important
intellectual function in their contemporary forms. Historical discussion is
undertaken only to explain the origin or development of these presuppos-
itions, or to show their effect in different time periods. The latter is of
equal importance to the former, for I argue that these presuppositions
have been unstable throughout history, and continually give rise to their
own negation. Furthermore, the strategies used to stabilise them are
equally unstable, or inadvertently contradict the presuppositions they
are employed to protect.
Even when qualifications are stated, however, the genealogical
approach used in this work may prove unsatisfactory to some, a dissatis-
faction aroused by the wide timescale that is surveyed. Yet as Brad
Gregory has recently argued, if historical investigation is confined to the

10
See Robert G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).
6 Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

life of one individual or one narrow timeframe then analysis of intellectual

development and long-term trends becomes impossible. We are then
robbed of important historical insights that can illuminate the present.11
To echo Peter Harrison, while there are many ways of doing history, to
the extent that they are governed by reasonable arguments and sound
evidence they are worthy of our attention and serious engagement.12
The second difficulty that a genealogical method avoids is that of
decontextualisation in the study of atheism. This approach is advanced
against two groups. First are those such as Peter Gay and contemporary
new atheist writers, who argue for the origins of atheism in science or
secular philosophy, and who trace its history back to eighteenth-century
France.13 Second, it is advanced against writers such as David Berman
and James Thrower who attempt to provide isolated histories of atheism,
as if there has always been an anti-Christian tradition running independ-
ently of Christian tradition, and that the beliefs of Greek philosophers and
seventeenth-century English peasants could be brought under a single
category.14 These assumptions can distort the questions we ask and the
investigations we undertake, leading us to overlook national contexts,
and the dominance of religion even in a reputedly religionless
Enlightenment.15
The danger of decontextualisation is related to a third potential prob-
lem that the method adopted in this work minimises: the danger of
conflating historical contingency with logical necessity. This potential
difficulty has two aspects. First, in tracing the genealogy of the two
presuppositions that form the primary basis of new atheist and Protestant
fundamentalist thought, it is not argued that atheism or fundamentalism
follow necessarily from Protestantism. Rather, it is argued that, under a
range of contingent social, political and intellectual conditions, certain
presuppositions established between the Reformation and Restoration
came to play an important role in atheist and fundamentalist thought.

11
Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2012), 3–5.
12
Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago and London: Chicago
University Press, 2015), 185.
13
E.g. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York: Knopf,
1966–1969).
14
James Thrower, Western Atheism (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2000); David Berman,
A History of Atheism in Britain (London: Crook Helm, 1988).
15
Cf. B. W. Young, Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998), 1–2.
 Introduction 7

The second aspect of this potential difficulty relates to the ‘Protestant

Reformation’ referred to in this work’s title. The genealogical method
adopted in this work does not pretend that all forms of Protestantism
from the Reformation to the present day are structured by a literal,
univocal and perspicuous understanding of Scripture, or a disruptive
and substitutionary understanding of divine activity. All that is argued
is that these presuppositions were present within a significant section of
Protestant thought in Britain and America, and that, at various times,
they held popular sway. Protestantism, in this regard, is wider than
professional Protestant theology and encompasses a range of popular
beliefs and practices. Just as the Lord left a remnant in Israel during the
days of Elijah that did not bend the knee to Baal, so there has always been
a remnant – sometimes greater, sometimes weaker – that refused to give
these presuppositions the honour others thought due to them.
While the method adopted in this work minimises a number of poten-
tial difficulties, there remains the question of how to define atheism and
fundamentalism themselves, and the related question of which texts to
examine. We can find an avenue into this question by considering Stephen
Bullivant’s views in the Oxford Handbook on Atheism. As Bullivant says,
‘The precise definition of atheism is both a vexed and vexatious question’
and ‘Atheism simply possesses no single, objective, definition.’16 In spite
of these observations, Bullivant comes to adopt a working definition of
atheism as the absence of belief in God or gods, as well as ruling out other
conceptions that would posit a dependence of atheism upon religion:
Certainly, there is some truth to this claim . . . But the fact that prevailing theisms
condition the focus and expression of certain kinds of atheism, does not mean that
either they or atheism in general have no wider referent.17

Bullivant’s views stand in contrast to those of Buckley:

Atheism is essentially parasitic . . . atheism depends upon theism for its vocabu-
lary, for its meaning, and for the hypothesis it rejects.18

We have here two different conceptions of atheism: the simple absence of

belief in God or gods, or a parasitic movement that is dependent upon the
religion it rejects. It is instructive to recall that these competing concep-
tions are advanced by a sociologist and an historian respectively. If we

16
Stephen Bullivant, ‘Defining “Atheism”’, in The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, ed.
Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 11, 12.
17 18
Bullivant, ‘Defining “Atheism”’, 18. Buckley, Origins, 15.
8 Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

bracket historical considerations, and look only at the current intellectual

and social manifestations of atheism, Bullivant’s definition is plausible.
Atheists have their own physical and online communities, their own
particular worldview, and they engage in a range of social practices that
mark them out from others. In this sense, they are as substantial and
‘positive’ as any other group. Yet when one comes to ask why they hold
the beliefs they do, looking not only to their current social form but
examining their historical origins, one very quickly comes to realise that
Buckley’s dependence thesis is more plausible. As we shall see, at every
turn, atheism and anti-Christian thought in Britain and America have
been dependent for their motivation, methods, arguments, vocabulary,
categories and social and political form upon the Christianity they reject.
In spite of this, Bullivant’s definition is helpful when we turn to the
present-day context, for it encourages us not to seek a theological explan-
ation for atheist or anti-Christian beliefs too readily. For that reason,
I attempt to assess atheist arguments on their own terms, paying close
attention to the self-understanding of the texts surveyed.
While this work advances a dependence model of atheism in general,
there remains a more specific issue regarding the definition of new athe-
ism. In spite of the wide use of the phrase, and the multitude of works
seeking to defend or attack it, Zenk has urged scholars to refrain from use
of the term:
By using the label ‘New Atheism’, several individuals are subsumed under one
unifying concept, thereby implying a uniform phenomenon . . . there is simply no
programme or manifesto of ‘New Atheism’ and there is no all-embracing organ-
ization, in which all, or even most, of the so-labelled persons are united.19

Zenk’s approach to atheism is similar to Bullivant’s, yet takes a negative

form. Like Bullivant, Zenk is concerned to find a positive definition for
atheism, yet, failing to find such a definition, he urges scholars to refrain
from using a term that suggests that such a definition exists. Yet the
existence of a spate of popular anti-Christian texts, written in English
since the early years of the new millennium, is a fact, as is the labelling
of these texts as ‘new atheist’. While Zenk claims to find ‘more differences
than similarities’ in these texts, as we shall see, the textual evidence to the
contrary is so great that it is difficult to see how Zenk can hold this view.20

19
Thomas Zenk, ‘New Atheism’, in The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, ed. Stephen
Bullivant and Michael Ruse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 255.
20
Zenk, ‘New Atheism’, 255.
 Introduction 9

Nevertheless, Zenk presents a helpful warning for scholars not to see

connections where there are none. In particular, he reminds us that not
all new atheist writers claim to be atheists. For the purposes of this
work, however, this observation is not particularly important. First, the
results of the genealogical method adopted in this work make it clear
that British and American atheism – as a historically contingent and
theologically dependent phenomenon – possess a fluid nature, some-
times resembling an extreme form of Protestantism while at other times
resembling something that stands over and against Protestantism, and,
indeed, Christianity itself. This is not a failing of scholarship, but the
scholarly recognition of what is a complex social and intellectual phe-
nomenon. Second, I do not seek to address the issue of whether new
atheist texts are truly ‘atheist’ or not, but only whether the range of
texts called ‘new atheist’ have similarities with Protestant fundamental-
ist texts, and, if so, why this is the case. For this reason, the selection
of texts is not dependent upon them meeting a certain definition of
‘atheist’ but upon the far more modest criterion of being popular anti-
Christian works written in English since the millennium. The only
addendum to this criterion is that occasional reference will be made to
earlier texts by new atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins, or, less
commonly, other texts that have been particularly influential on new
atheist writers. Such works can help illuminate the current phenomenon
of new atheism.
Analogous difficulties, however, attend the definition of ‘fundamental-
ist’. Recent decades have witnessed a great expansion in the quantity of
literature on fundamentalism, and a corresponding increase in the range
of phenomena labelled as such. This trend reached its climax in The
Fundamentalism Project of Martin Marty and Scott Appleby, which
examined fundamentalism as a global phenomenon, encompassing a
range of diverse religions, practices and beliefs.21 The use of the word
‘fundamentalist’ is, however, deeply problematic, as there is no agreement
on its definition.22 As Partridge and Ruthven note, in practice, it is
sometimes little more than a term of abuse, used by culturally dominant
groups within Western society to label other groups they view as socially

21
Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds., The Fundamentalism Project (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1993–1995).
22
Kathleen C. Boone, The Bible Tells Them So (Albany: State University of New York,
1989), 7–8.
10 Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

undesirable.23 It is a ‘receptacle for socially undesirable qualities,’ an

‘intolerant epithet for those we regard as intolerant . . . a label that
immediately delegitimates’.24 The difficulties are particularly great when
the term is used to describe communities and social phenomena very
different from the conservative evangelical culture in which it originated.
While factors such as exclusivity, foundationalism and antipathy to the
core narratives of other groups serve as useful criteria for the application
of the term, it is better to speak of fundamentalisms rather than funda-
mentalism, and any researcher must be attentive to the particular histor-
ical and social context of the phenomena they are studying.25
The current work navigates these difficulties in two ways. First, it
examines the form of fundamentalism that gave its name to all others:
conservative Protestantism. Importantly, the use of the word ‘fundamen-
talist’ was first used by members of this group to describe their own beliefs
and was not meant pejoratively. For this reason, it is a native term, and
not imposed upon the material in an arbitrary manner. Second, this study
deploys the term in a very specific way. There are two methods that one
might adopt when investigating the relation between Protestant funda-
mentalist and new atheist thought. The most common would be to begin
with a set of criteria for ‘fundamentalism’, and then compare each form of
thought with it to discern whether they are, or are not, ‘fundamentalist’.
Alternatively, one might compare new atheist and Protestant fundamen-
talist texts, and consider their similarities. It is the latter method that is
adopted in this work. In doing so, much of the difficulty in defining and
limiting the term ‘fundamentalism’ is avoided, and the discussion is given
a textual specificity that militates against abstraction and generality.
Nevertheless, while the term ‘fundamentalist’ is native to conservative
Protestantism, there are many different kinds of conservative Protestant-
ism, and reference to every work by conservative Protestants would be
unfeasible. For this reason, the majority of Protestant fundamentalist
texts examined are from the Reformed tradition, including those strands

23
Christopher H. Partridge, ‘Introduction’ in Fundamentalisms (Carlisle: Paternoster,
2001), xiv; Malise Ruthven, Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 6–7.
24
Sara Savage, ‘A Psychology of Fundamentalism’, in Fundamentalism: Church and
Society, edited by Martyn Percy and Ian Jones (London: SPCK, 2002), 31; Mark
Juergensmeyer, ‘The Debate over Hindutva’, Religion 26, no. 2 (1996): 130.
25
Harriet A. Harris ‘How Helpful is the Term “Fundamentalist”?’, in Fundamentalisms,
ed. Christopher H. Partridge (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2001), 14–16; Partridge,
‘Introduction’, xvi.
 Introduction 11

of the Baptist tradition that have been most influenced by Reformed

theology. In this way, Pentecostal texts – which may also conceivably be
called ‘fundamentalist’ – have not been examined. Even with this limita-
tion, however, the range of possible texts for examination would still be
too great. For the purposes of this work, therefore, investigation has been
limited to English-language works produced since the late 1960s – when
the seminal Genesis Flood was produced – with particular attention
directed towards texts that oppose evolution. The reason for a focus upon
evolution is threefold. First, it is the issue of evolution around which
fundamentalist opposition to contemporary social and intellectual norms
has crystallised. Second, it is upon the issue of evolution that the similar-
ities and differences between new atheists and Protestant fundamentalists
become most clear. Third, it is the debate between atheists and funda-
mentalists over the issue of evolution that has received most attention
from commentators. A focus upon this issue therefore allows engagement
with an existing corpus of literature.
Focus upon Protestant fundamentalist texts that oppose evolution,
however, raises two further issues that require comment. First, it might
be objected that the focus of this work should not be upon Protestant
fundamentalism but six-day creationism. While understandable, this
argument is misguided for historical, logical and social reasons. Historic-
ally, six-day creationism does not have an independent genealogy from
Protestant fundamentalism. For a work employing a genealogical
method, this is a decisive consideration. The argument also fails on logical
grounds. Six-day creationism is unintelligible without a belief in scriptural
inerrancy and a preference for a literal, univocal and perspicuous under-
standing of the biblical text. It is dependent upon such Protestant funda-
mentalist beliefs for its existence. Lastly, the argument fails for social
reasons. Creationists do not form a separate community from other
Protestant fundamentalists. There are not, for example, special six-day
creationist churches that only preach on six-day creationist themes. The
illusion that six-day creationism is a separate intellectual and social
phenomenon is created by the existence of Protestant fundamentalist
ministries established to demonstrate the scientific accuracy of a literal
reading of Genesis 1–3. Notwithstanding, there is a second issue concern-
ing the choice of anti-evolutionary works. Occasional reference is made in
what follows to the work of intelligent design theorist Philip E. Johnson.
While there are important differences between six-day creationism and
intelligent design theory, the more conservative and philosophical of
intelligent design theorists – like Johnson – share almost exactly the same
12 Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

philosophy of science as six-day creationists do, and there is now an

increasing cross-pollination occurring between the two, with creationists
adopting many arguments that first arose with Johnson. Occasional
reference to intelligent design theory can therefore be used to illuminate
certain features of Protestant fundamentalist thought.
With these methodological considerations complete, we turn now to
the structure of the following work. It is divided into five chapters, with
Chapters 1–3 tracing the genealogy and historic effects of the key presup-
positions of new atheist and Protestant fundamentalist thought. Chap-
ters 4 and 5 then examine the way in which these presuppositions
continue to structure each form of thought, and the problems that
attend them.
Chapter 1 examines how the English Reformation and its aftermath
generated presuppositions and oppositions that gave rise to the first
anti-Christian forms of thought in British history. By assaulting the
authority and tradition of the Roman Catholic Church with the prin-
ciples of sola scriptura and sola fide, the reformers set in motion a crisis
of authority, a dialectic within Protestant thought that would see the
polemical weaponry wielded by Protestants against their theological
adversaries being used, in turn, to undermine the position of the
Church of England. This crisis of authority resulted in a proliferation
of heterodox and anti-Christian sects during the Civil War. The Restor-
ation Church, seeking to inhibit the caustic effects of sola scriptura and
sola fide, adopted a robust literalism, yet one grounded in reason rather
than theological tradition. This strategy reached its apogee in the phil-
osophy of John Locke, who manifested and furthered the philosophical
and theological trends of his time. Unfortunately, this strategy back-
fired, giving rise to the first freethinkers, who, looking to Scripture
alone, and adopting the new robust literalism, questioned the authority
of Scripture. The growth of freethought was temporarily averted, how-
ever, by the promotion of natural theology, which wed theology to the
burgeoning sciences, and made a disruptive and substitutionary under-
standing of divine activity in nature a vital component of cosmology,
physics and biology. Yet this had the effect of making divine activity
one cause among others, so that the customary distinction between
primary and secondary causation – and the related notion of general
concurrence – became largely redundant in relation to the question of
origins, as well as certain aspects of preservation. At the end of these
developments, the presuppositions foundational to new atheist and
Protestant fundamentalist had crystallised: a literal, univocal and
 Introduction 13

perspicuous understanding of Scripture, and a belief that divine activity

in nature substituted for or disrupted natural causation.
Chapter 2 charts the way in which these presuppositions were placed
under increasing strain in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British
society, before inverting themselves and coming to be held negatively,
thereby giving rise to anti-Christian and atheist forms of thought. The
rise of evangelicalism brought large numbers of poor, uneducated
Britons into the practice of unaided Bible reading for the first time,
with the majority joining nonconformist churches. Yet, having rejected
theological tradition to a greater extent than Anglicans, nonconformists
lacked the theological apparatus needed to harmonise apparent inaccur-
acies and contradictions within Scripture. When such contradictions
and inaccuracies were found, the result was sometimes the abandon-
ment of faith, and the adoption of a militant atheism that mirrored the
literalism and anti-Establishment ideology of the dissenting denomin-
ations. Whereas natural theology had previously provided an alterna-
tive justification for faith, the discoveries of geology and biology, added
to existing forms of literalism, did irreparable damage to the hermen-
eutical and natural-theological synthesis established at the Restoration,
thereby claiming an increasing number of middle- and upper-class
Anglicans for agnosticism and atheism. While these groups may have
lost their faith, however, they retained many of its presuppositions
regarding Scripture, divine activity, and the capacity of science to help
or harm faith, presuppositions that would be later be transmitted to
new atheist thought.
Chapter 3 turns to the genealogy of Protestant fundamentalism, and
how the presuppositions of a literal, univocal and perspicuous Scripture
and the disruptive and substitutionary nature of divine activity were given
new emphases through the adoption of Scottish Common Sense philoso-
phy by American theologians. While the philosophy of Thomas Reid
arose as a reaction against the development of Locke’s philosophy by
David Hume, Reid actually strengthened the connection between know-
ledge with immediate consciousness, thereby reinforcing a tendency
already found within Locke. This gave rise to an inductive method in
theology and the sciences known as ‘Baconianism’, which rejected
hypotheses and theories in the construction of knowledge. When radical-
ised by war and unprecedented social upheaval, this ideology would
enable large numbers of Americans to view evolution and biblical criti-
cism as unscientific, irrational and socially pernicious. These develop-
ments resulted in a breach between conservative evangelicals and
14 Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation

contemporary thought, thereby laying the foundations for contemporary

Protestant fundamentalism.
Chapter 4 brings us to the present day and uncovers the secret sym-
pathy that exists between new atheist and Protestant fundamentalist
thought. While, at first sight, it appears that these forms of thought are
utterly unrelated, analysis reveals that they share the same intellectual and
social structure, one that arises from their inheritance of the presuppos-
itions of a literal, univocal and perspicuous Scripture, and the belief that
divine activity in nature disrupts and substitutes for natural causation.
These presuppositions give rise to a common conception of Scripture and
biblical hermeneutics, the belief that evolution disproves faith, the rejec-
tion of postmodernity and a dismissive attitude towards non-
fundamentalist Christians. These beliefs, and the presuppositions that
ground them, arise from each group’s shared theological and historical
roots in Protestantism, a Protestantism that, in the face of scientific
advances and social change, has now broken apart into two opposing
forms, opposing forms that, paradoxically, share the same structure, and
are mutually reinforcing.
Chapter 5 completes the work and argues that the presuppositions that
structure new atheist and Protestant fundamentalist thought are intrinsic-
ally unstable. The beliefs and strategies used to stabilise them, moreover,
contradict their foundational presuppositions, rendering each form of
thought self-contradictory. The chapter concludes with a recapitulation
of the genealogy of Chapters 1–3, and its integration with the analysis of
Chapter 4.
In course of advancing its primary argument, this work reaches a
number of important conclusions regarding atheism, fundamentalism
and the structure of Protestant thought in Britain and America, conclu-
sions that call for new kinds of theological and historical enquiry. First, it
will be demonstrated that, while lacking detail, popular comparisons
between new atheists and Protestant fundamentalists are cogent. Second,
it will be shown that atheism in Britain and America grew out of problems
within Protestantism. This discovery undermines a range of academic and
new atheist authors who see no such connection, or who vehemently deny
any historical dependence of atheism upon Christianity. Third, it will be
shown that Protestant fundamentalism was itself a response to the same
train of problems that gave rise to atheism. Fourth, it will be shown that
new atheism is not an areligious movement but an atheological one,
which finds it necessary to engage in the task of theology in order to
reject the existence of God and the truth of the Christian faith. Fifth, this
 Introduction 15

study casts doubt on the self-understanding of both Protestant fundamen-

talism and new atheism. It shows that Protestant fundamentalism is not
properly biblical, nor new atheism scientific, and that both are heavily
indebted to presuppositions that neither can properly justify, and which
render both self-contradictory.
In addition to these substantive contributions to scholarship, the diag-
nosis of problems and tensions within Protestant – and in particular
Reformed – theology in Britain and America makes the study program-
matic, and provides a basis for future academic study. First, it highlights a
number of areas which ecclesiastical historians should examine further in
order to understand the genesis of atheism. Second, it raises awareness of
areas of Protestant theology that stand in need of repair by systematic
theologians, especially when these continue to inform contemporary
thought. The need for such work is pressing, and it is the hope of this
work that, if nothing else, further research will be carried out to diagnose
and repair the theological problems that engender atheism, and which
continue to structure much of the Church’s practice and proclamation.
With these introductory remarks complete, we begin our story.
 1

The Unfinished Reformation

This chapter examines the development of two presuppositions that

would come to structure new atheist and Protestant fundamentalist
thought and the role they played in generating the first anti-Christian
writings in British history: a literal, univocal and perspicuous understand-
ing of Scripture and the belief that divine activity disrupts, and substitutes
for, natural causation.
In order to undermine the authority of the Roman Catholic Church,
the Reformers established a series of oppositions between Scripture and
Church, literal and non-literal readings of Scripture’s text and personal
and institutional faith. Yet these oppositions set in train a crisis of author-
ity, a dialectic within Protestant thought that would see the polemical
weaponry wielded by Protestants against Roman Catholics being used, in
turn, to undermine the position of the Church of England. The political
and theological weapons forged – often in haste – to defend against this
assault gave rise, in turn, to yet more attacks. By attending to the tensions
present within English Protestantism, and the hermeneutical and natural-
theological strategies adopted to overcome them, we can understand why
many came to abandon the faith of their ancestors, and why English
Protestantism could only preserve itself in this first phase by adopting
principles contrary to the spirit of the Reformation that founded it.
There are two potential misunderstandings that are necessary to
address before we begin. First, throughout this chapter, we do wrong if
we attempt to discern, at each juncture, whether or not a specific claim or
argument is ‘really’ atheistic. Apart from the danger of anachronism, this
is to miss the true significance of the developments surveyed. For the true
significance of these developments is that beliefs, contrasts and lines of

16
 The Unfinished Reformation 17

reasoning which, under certain conditions, are Christian and theological,

come, under changed conditions, to be atheistic and anti-theological. This
method of analysis is supple enough to accommodate the continuities and
discontinuities between Protestantism and atheism, and patient enough to
trace the complex genealogy that converted arguments against the Roman
Catholic Church into arguments against Christianity itself. Second, it is
not argued that the causes of atheism arising from the Reformation were
purely intellectual, and can be reduced to the two presuppositions we are
investigating. Rather, it is argued that a series of intellectual, political and
social changes ushered in by the English Reformation gave rise to the two
presuppositions we are examining, and that these presuppositions played
an important role in the genesis of anti-Christian thought. This is particu-
larly important for the second of our presuppositions. It is not argued that
the Reformation, in itself, changed theological understandings of divine
agency in any decisive way. Rather, the social and political instability
created by Reformation, and conflict between competing Christian and
anti-Christian groups, gave rise to an apologetic use of science, and a
correspondingly close identification between divine activity and natural
causation that would, in time, provide the intellectual conditions for
atheism.

reformation to revolution
It is sometimes difficult for us to understand that texts have not always
been read in the way that we now read them. When we read a text, we
typically read it in its plain sense, each word referring to distinct ideas or
objects and nothing else. This has not, however, always been the case. The
medieval world understood words and their significance in a very differ-
ent way. This conception of language played a definitive role in the
religious life of the time, and it is only by uncovering something of this
intellectual world – now lost to us – that we can understand why the
Reformers and their immediate successors adopted the hermeneutical
strategies they did.
The medieval world was a world of objects, words and ideas, related to
each other by sympathies of appearance, sound and function. Animals,
flowers, insects and trees represented moral attributes, divine lessons and
medicinal cures. Gold was not simply a metal but a cipher for the divine,
the incorruptibility of soul and the perfected character. All transitory
things exceeded their particularity and participated in a wider reference
of meaning. Objects functioned as signs, and signs signifying objects
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