Fundamentalism is usually dated from a series of twelve small books published from 1910 to 1915 containing articles and essays designed to defend fundamental Christian truths. Three million copies of the books, The Fundamentals, were sent free to theological students, Christian ministers, and missionaries all over the world. The project was conceived by Lyman Stewart, a wealthy oilman in Southern California, who was convinced that something was needed to reaffirm Christian truths in the face of biblical criticism and liberal theology.
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."
"Ben kuş değilim ve hiçbir ağ beni tuzağa düşüremez: Ben bağımsız bir iradeye sahip özgür bir insanım."
Liberals welcomed higher criticism because they recognized a radically different view of the Bible was necessary for intelligent moderns. They felt free from the need to defend the whole Bible as the infallible Word of God. They no longer had to take into account a God who killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians or who ordered the Israelites to kill their enemies to the last woman and child or who sent bears to maul children who poked fun at a prophet.
The studies of the higher critics, said the liberals, make it clear that God has revealed himself through an evolutionary process. It began with primitive, bloodthirsty ideas of a tribal God and showed how the Jews slowly came to grasp the idea of a righteous God who can be served only by one who does justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with his God. This evolutionary revelation of God, they said, finds its fulfillment in Jesus, where God is portrayed as the loving Father of all humanity.
“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”
“Ancak her şeyimizi kaybettikten sonra her şeyi yapacak kadar özgür oluruz.”
For what is a man without desires, without free will and without choice?
In June 1871 Victor Emmanuel transferred his residence to Rome, ignoring all protests and excommunications of the pope. The new government offered the pope an annual subsidy together with the free and unhindered exercise of all his spiritual functions. But Pius angrily rejected the offer and continued his protests as the “prisoner of the Vatican.” He forbade Italy’s Catholics to participate in political elections. But this only left a free field to the radicals. The result was an increasingly anticlerical course in the Italian government. This unpleasant condition, the Roman Question, reached no solution until Benito Mussolini concluded the Lateran Treaty in February 1929. In the treaty, the pope renounced all claims to the former Papal States and received full sovereignty in the small Vatican State.