National Association of Evangelicals
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) was formed in April 1942.[1] A group of 150 men and women met in St. Louis to establish an organization initially named "National Association of Evangelicals for United Action" after a national conference called "United Action Among Evangelicals." That "action" was to preserve Christian Fundamentalism in the United States and oppose the more liberal views of the Federal Council of Churches. The group's first vote was a move against affiliation with the Federal Council of Churches and the American Council of Christian Churches.[2]
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) was formed in April 1942.[1] A group of 150 men and women met in St. Louis to establish an organization initially named "National Association of Evangelicals for United Action" after a national conference called "United Action Among Evangelicals." That "action" was to preserve Christian Fundamentalism in the United States and oppose the more liberal views of the Federal Council of Churches. The group's first vote was a move against affiliation with the Federal Council of Churches and the American Council of Christian Churches.[2]
A National Association of Evangelicals for United Action, designed to speak for Protestant evangelicals (fundamentalists) throughout the country, was recently organized in St. Louis at a two-day meeting attended by 150 representatives of various church boards, Bible institutions, seminaries, and other fundamentalist groups[3]
- Atlanta Journal
One of the catalysts for the group's formation was the Fundamentalist-Modernist debate among American Christians, which included a strong position against teaching evolution in schools. Initial proposals in the NAE included motions to establish an educational committee to invite "qualified schools to adhere to this association."[4] Other motions included a separation from churches sympathetic to or leaning towards Christian Modernism. Modernist Christian denominations began to debate the authority of the Bible, the death, resurrection, and atoning sacrifice of Jesus, creationism, evolution, and more. Christian Fundamentalists were opposed to the views of the Modernists.
These themes were key selling points for evangelists in the Latter Rain movement. Latter Rain doomsday theology included the World Council of Churches in apocalyptic predictions, [5] and the Christian fundamentalist position was strongly favored over the liberal.[6] Over time, the movement positioned itself so firmly against the liberal Christian views that leaders of the revivals claimed liberal Christian leaders were controlled by Satan himself.[7] It should come as no surprise, since the leader of the Post WWII Healing Revival, William Branham, was trained in a fundamentalist church.[8] Branham claimed that "fundamentalism isn't a fight. It's the signs and wonders of a vindication of God's Holy Ghost being with the people."[9]
Before the creation of the National Association of Evangelicals, many disparate Fundamentalist leagues, groups, and organizations were created to rally Christians against Modernism. In the 1920s, American politician William Jennings Bryan championed the Fundamentalist movement via the highly publicized Scopes Trial and a series of lectures in the South to defend the Christian faith. After Bryan's death, fundamentalist organizations were created in his honor, most notably Gerald Burton Winrod's "Defenders of the Christian Fath."[10] Winrod also served on the board of directors of the World's Christian Fundamentalist Association, the leading conservative organization to wage war against modernism.[11] Branham's mentor and second-in-command of the Ku Klux Klan, Roy E. Davis, also served as one of the national directors of the WCFA.[12] Though the NAE may not have been fully aligned with the scattered fundamentalist organizations or their leaders, the council was a means to unite the groups for a common cause.
Paul Rood and Dr. William Bell Riley founded the World's Christian Fundamentalist Association. Rood worked closely with evangelist Billy Sunday[13] and leveraged Sunday's extensive following to unite fundamentalists under the umbrella of the WCFA. Riley leveraged Gerald Burton Winrod's Defenders of the Christian Faith organization to unite fundamentalists.[14] The WCFA and its network of fundamentalists were among the last organizations that strongly opposed the Federal Council of Churches.[15] When the National Association of Evangelicals formed, the WCFA saw it as a partner rather than a competitor and helped promote it as a web of evangelical networks that would grow stronger with each strand they connected to it.[16]
The promotion of the NAE by the WCFA was invaluable to its growth due to Rood's close ties to the Christian Business Men's Committee (CBMC) who sponsored the Latter Rain Revivals.[17] and the CMBC's ability to fund the movement. The group positioned itself in Washinton D.C., as lobbyists to become a counter-balance to the lobbying of the Federal Council of Churches and used the combination of religion and fears of global conflict to mobilize evangelicals against political threats to the fundamentalist ideology.[18]
The organizational consequences of the NAE's lurching finances illustrate the most basic and powerful role of businessmen within the evangelical subculture. Any purse they opened, they could close.[19]
- God's Business Men