A Mote in the Eye

Without any higher organizational control such as denominational boards or conventions, fundamentalist schools struggled to figure out how to make difficult decisions. This chapter examines three cases from the 1930s in which different schools solved the dilemma of authority in very different ways. Some schools insisted on a rigid top-down autocratic system; others spread authority around. The chapter also looks at the contentious debate among fundamentalist intellectuals over the proper meaning of creationism between 1920 and 1940. A few endorsed the notion of a young earth, but many more argued that the “days” of Genesis actually represented long ages, or that a long gap stretched between early creation and the creation of humanity in Eden.