As the twentieth century opened modernism seemed to have established a firm grip on many of the denominations and most of the seminaries. Against this tide, Gresham Machen (1881-1937) stood as the intellectual center of conservative Christianity. Born in Baltimore, Machen was a tremendous scholar who studied at Johns Hopkins and Princeton in the United States and at Marburg in Germany. Ordained in 1914 he became a professor of New Testament literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. He left the school due to his conservative theology and the school’s rapid drift toward liberalism. In 1929 he founded the Westminster Theological Seminary and became its president and professor of New Testament. He took similar steps when he resigned from the Presbyterian Board of Missions to found an independent society and when he and a group of like-minded clergy started the Orthodox Presbyterian church. On a popular front, the Fundamentalist movement was aided by the publication of The Fundamentals, a series of books financed by the president of the Union Oil Company, Lyman Stewart. The Fundamentals covered many doctrinal issues and were written by leading conservative preachers. Within six years nearly three million copies had been distributed.
Impact: For nearly 60 years, between the mid-1920s and the 1980s, Fundamentalism was a separatist movement that had little public influence. This changed when preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell took up the mantle of past leaders and began stressing the need for national repentance and a return to conservative values.