In the Beginning is an apt title for Michael Lienesch's new book. After all, it is a study of the origins and evolutionary development of the antievolution movement. It begins by exploring in fascinating detail the movement's origins. If man was not created by a designer, certainly American fundamentalism had to be. Contrary to many accounts, Lienesch emphasizes that the movement was not a natural or spontaneous reaction to modernity, “it began as an elite enterprise, brought into being by a careful and self-conscious enterprise of political mobilization” (36).

Although this is not Lienesch's interest, this finding has important implications for the controversy over the culture wars, which has become mired in academic conflicts over whether Americans are really polarized politically. The subject of political polarization has been something of academic rage ever since James Davison Hunter's Culture Wars. Yet this obsession has tended to ignore Hunter's largest claim. According to Hunter, culture is more important than politics because it precedes and leads politics. Thus, politics is almost epiphenomenal.

Lienesch's careful account of the deep historical origins of antievolution suggests that the opposite is more nearly true. For Lienesch politics is clearly primary. A fundamentalist identity and consciousness simply did not exist in American culture. On the contrary, a fundamentalist consciousness had to be created often in spite of American cultural traditions. Its boundaries had to be defined and defended. According to Lienesch, The Fundamentals, a series of 12 paperbacks published between 1910 and 1915 — a “body of writings designed to create a collective consciousness, a shared sense of themselves” (10) — served these ends well. Americans, in other words, had to be encouraged to see themselves as orthodox Protestants rather than as simply Baptists or Presbyterians.

Creating a fundamentalist identity, much less a fundamentalist movement was not easy work. After all, evangelical Protestants tend to be deeply skeptical of movement politics and divided by sharp denominational loyalties. Protestant pastors, ever fearful of being caught up in an enterprise larger than themselves, needed convincing. And somehow new institutions and networks had to be created to hold this fledging movement together. These obstacles nearly sunk the entire enterprise. As Lienesch explains, “On its face, fundamentalism was a controlled and structured movement. … When considered more closely, however, it was a decentralized and disorderly conglomeration of often competing constituencies, many of them suspicious or resentful of one another” (57).

These problems encouraged leaders to identify an issue that would unite evangelicals in a common cause. According to Lienesch, they found it in an opposition to evolution. The choice may seem obvious in historical hindsight. Yet it had some real limitations. First, evolution was actually not of particular interest in The Fundamentals, which tended to focus on theological issues. Second, as Lienesch notes, it was “an abstract, often unfathomable theory” (70) that relatively few conservative Protestants had ever heard of. Evolution beat out its competitors, according to Lienesch, partly because it was more secular and therefore more appropriate for public discussion in a pluralistic country. Just as important, William Jennings Bryan demonstrated what an “expansive theory” evolution could be by blaming it for everything from war to racism to atheism.

Yet Lienesch is not just interested in the origins of the antievolution movement. Drawing on a wide range of social movement theory, he traces its development through the Scopes trial to the present-day campaign for intelligent design. A number of interesting themes run through his analysis. For example, there is a repeated appeal to liberal values, especially an emphasis on neutrality, in the antievolution movement. William Jennings Bryan argued that neither religion nor theories that attack religious faith should be taught in the public schools. By the 1970s advocates called for “equal time” between creationism and evolution. Today, intelligent design enthusiasts ask that evidence for and against evolution be presented in public schools.

One might suppose that such arguments would appeal to the American public, especially given the fact that the vast majority of citizens believe in either creationism or theistic evolution. However, Lienesch further shows that if Americans are generally sympathetic to these arguments, they are deeply suspicious of those who advance them. Creationists who managed to take control of school boards in Kansas and Dover, Pennsylvania, have found themselves quickly ousted by angry citizens. Drawing on prior scholarship, Lienesch partly attributes this discrepancy to “Scopes stereotypes.” As the historian Edward Larson has shown (Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion), a historical legend grew up around the Scopes trial that depicted fundamentalists as illiberal, proto-fascists. Yet Lienesch's own analysis seems to modify this account. For example, Lienesch argues that the early fundamentalists embraced common Southern stereotypes that are historically related to what would become “Scopes stereotypes” (235). Indeed, Lienesch argues that the movement only belatedly looked to the South for support partly because fundamentalist leaders initially saw it in “stereotypical terms, as a backward and provincial place” (52). Therefore, perhaps Americans tend to view the antievolution movement through the more general Southern stereotypes that the Scopes legend grew out of and extended. If this is right, it is the Southern embrace of the movement that compromised its respectability.

By tracing the development of the anti-evolution movement from the origins of fundamentalism to the campaign for intelligent design, In the Beginning is the first book to consider the movement as a whole. It should therefore be of great interest to scholars of social movements and conservative Protestantism.