Thanks to Ken Saladin for his short history of fundamentalism. He made a
reference to the Niagara Bible Conference of 1895 and that set me to
remembering about that and the other Niagara Bible Conferences.

The "end-times prophecy" of modern fundamentalism with its emphasis on
rapture, antichrist, and the millennium is often spoken of by its adherents
as if it all began with the earliest Christians.  They have weaved a very
elaborate theory with many details, for example, the "seventy weeks of years"
of Daniel 9 the meaning of which is necessary to understand the
"tribulation."  A very detailed theory.  

But this theory can be dated to the ideas of an Irishman by the name of John
Nelson Darby.  Most of these "end-times" events are part of the theological
system known as "dispensationalism."  The rise of this theology can be traced
to its Civil War-era beginnings, with the Irish evangelist John Nelson Darby,
to present-day pulpits, newsstands, and TV evangelists.  

Anyway, there were a series of Bible conferences which met in the summer;
these came to be known as the Niagara Bible Conferences and they were held
from 1875 to 1897. This event became a focal point for the leading exponents
of Darby's system to come together to share their ideas and research about
this teaching.

<<At first the conferences were a rousing success, attracting many persons
and exciting them by holding out the hope that the Lord would return before
the conference concluded, perhaps even before the present meeting was over!
It was heady wine, but after a number of years the claims of Jesus' return
at-any-moment began to wear a bit thin.  Further, some people began to
question how one could justify taking bits and pieces of passages from
various parts of the Bible, disregarding their original setting and meaning,
and weaving them into such a system.>> (Source: End-Times: Rapture,
Antichrist, Millennium, by James M. Efird (Abingdon Press, 1986) 

By the way, this book is a great source for the person intrigued by all that
end-times stuff on TV.  It is written by a member of the liberal wing of
Christianity.  The author is a professor of biblical interpetation at Duke
Divinity School.  He presents one of the clearest examples of how modern
fundamentalists read into the text what they want and how specific
Apocalyptic Bible passages have been widely misinterpeted.

I believe that knowledge of the history of the ideas of modern fundamentalism
is very helpful, if not indepensable, to understanding.  This holds for the
creationists as well.  Their view of what science is can be traced to ideas
emanating in the eighteenth century.  I won't summarize them but if you are
interested, read Chapter Two (Creationism and Scientific Authority) in God's
Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World, by Christopher P. Toumey
(Rutgers Univ. Pr., 1994) Toumey, a professor of anthropology at the
University of North Carolina, identifies three models of science in American
history: the Protestant model, the secular model, and the trivial model.  He
traces three intellectual influences acting on the Protestant model: the
Scottish Common Sense philosophy, Baconian empiricism, and the Princeton
Theology.  When today's creationists talk about the nature of science one can
discern the traces of these early ideas.  Yes, Johnny, ideas really do have
consequences and they can continue to have influence for generations.

-- Robert Lockard
