In the Beginning

During the 1920s, fundamentalists founded their own network of dissenting institutions. No longer able to control public or denominational colleges, activists opened new schools such as Bryan University, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Des Moines University. At the time, it was not clear exactly what those new schools hoped to accomplish, since the meanings of fundamentalism itself were hotly debated. Fundamentalism was often considered a loose, vague conservative impulse rather than any specific evangelical movement. Many self-identified fundamentalists themselves disagreed about the proper boundaries of their new religious and cultural identity. These uncertainties established the pattern of debate and disagreement that defined fundamentalist higher education throughout the twentieth century.