ABSTRACT
One swelling response to the age of doubt was the reassertion by conservative evangelical Protestants of their unchanging belief in the basics of Christianity. These were concretely expressed by an interdenominational and international group of conservative theologians in a series of booklets published between 1910 and 1913 under the general title of The Fundamentals. Important amongst them was the divine inspiration of the whole Bible and thus its inerrancy. William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), three-time presidential candidate, Wilson's Secretary of State and, at the end of his life, participant in the trial of John Scopes for infringing a Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution in the public schools, took this fundamentalist position on the Bible. He saw himself fighting the major threat to orthodox Christianity: theological liberalism and the higher criticism of the Bible. He prided himself on his close contact with ordinary Americans and believed he spoke for their convictions.
