Fundamentalism and Adventism

In the first eighteen centuries of the existence of Christianity all the great developments within this religion took place in Europe and during this period the history of Europe and the history of Christianity practically ran parallel with each other. Starting from the middle of the nineteenth century a number of Christian Churches were established in the U.S. which have grown and spread over the whole world. Most of these relatively young American Churches have arisen from an attitude of resistance against the tendency of modern Western societies to make Biblical views of all sorts of matters subordinate to scientific views, particularly in cases where these two clash with each other. Within this context one can think of the modern notion that the earth was not created by God but by a lucky chance and that the various species of animals were not individually created by God but developed through evolution. The same evolution that ultimately also produced man. In addition the young American Churches that are meant here resist the vision of practically all traditional Christian Churches that the Bible should not be taken literally and that the Bible must not be read as a history book. Finally these new Christian movements reject the modern idea that no Christian Church can possess the whole truth, that it stands to reason that all Churches have some bad aspects and some good aspects and that there is no such thing as the absolute truth that people can get to know. Each of these Churches considers itself the only truly Christian Church and radically rejects all other Christian Churches. They are sure that God has created the world and everything that exists, that the Bible is the infallible word of God and that the Bible must be taken literally unless in exceptional cases the context makes it perfectly clear that something is meant symbolically.

The kind of people and Churches which are meant here base all their religious convictions and their entire religious practice on the fundaments of the Bible and call themselves Fundamentalists. Or they are called Fundamentalists by others, sometimes against their will. From about 1870 onwards quite a number of fundamentalist Christian Churches have developed in the U.S. and many of them have spread all over the world.

---From as early as the 1830s a number of Christian Churches were founded in the U.S. which teach as their fundamental doctrine that the second coming of Christ and the establishing of God’s Kingdom will take place very soon. Such people and such Churches are called Adventists. Many Churches that are meant in this article may be considered both Fundamentalists and Adventists. They not only have a lot of followers in North America and Europe, but also in South America and Africa south of the Sahara.

Many Adventist Churches have made predictions as regards the year in which Christ would come back to earth, but these predictions have never come true. This was always a great disappointment for the people concerned and it always harmed the cause of Adventism. But all the disappointments have never stopped the continuous advance of this kind of Churches.