Evangelicalism

[All Along The Watchtower]

Short answer: No!

Long answer?

Sure.

The term fundamentalist has two definitions. The first refers to Protestants who rejected the Social Gospel and subscribed to the "fundamentals" of Protestantism. The second is what Useful Idiot was talking about; Protestants who continue to emphasize separation after the rise of evangelicalism (KJV Baptists, Bible Presbyterians etc.)

The second definition is almost mutually exclusive with evangelicalism. The first isn't quite so bad, but with the rise the emerging churches and some established evangelicals abandoning orthodoxy, the first definition doesn't mean evangelical either.

Speaking of which, I've read that the Democratic Party did better among the more fundamentalist/orthodox/liturgical Protestants (and of course, Catholics-who weren't quite so far removed from the aforementioned orthodox Protestants in theological terms that they couldn't be political allies )   in the 19th century (in Northern as well as Southern states), while the Republicans did better among the fast-growing evangelical churches (though the Republican advantage among evangelicals was mostly confined to the Northern states, of course). Notice the distinction?

The Social Gospel was very popular among middle-class evangelicals in the North, in terms of reforming society to reflect the ethos of moralistic Protestant piety. Though it should be noted that the descendants of those Northern evangelicals grew more "liberal" or "Progressive" in political terms by the time of the 20th century.

By the 1920s or so (IIRC-don't quote me on that date!), the term "mainline Protestantism" was being applied to the most influential Protestant denominations in American society, all of whom were marked by their commitment (though the extent of this varied among and within denominations) to the Social Gospel, their generally educated middle-to-upper class demographics, their theological Modernism (or liberalism), and as I said before, their hegemony over American society in general. They were, in other words, the "Establishment".

The early 20th century saw a theological realignment among Fundamentalist-Modernist lines (with both groups containing many of the ancestors of today's "Evangelicals").  This is when fundamentalism becomes much more rural (and "Southern" or Southern-influenced). A lot of fundamentalists, as DC Al kind of implied with his post, did later call themselves "evangelicals" to emphasize their commitment to engaging with the world and social issues, at least to some extent.

 I guess my point with this post is that the meaning of the term "evangelical" has been applied to many different groups in American history, and so thus, has a convoluted and complicated history.

[All Along The Watchtower]

One more thing-perhaps part of the reason (in addition to the Solid South's poll taxes and Jim Crow laws, along with the humiliation of the Civil War)  for why Southern evangelicals would not be Republicans was because the evangelical movements of the successive Great Awakenings had a particular appeal to the poor and the least educated. Since the South was so much poorer than the North (post-Civil War) due to-for various reasons-its lack of industry (among other things), and social mobility for poor Southerners (white and black) was so limited in the brutal stratification of Southern society after Reconstruction, the prospects for forming an educated, entrepreneurial, evangelical middle class in the South that could challenge the authority of the planter elite simply didn't exist like they did in the North.

Consequently, while Northern evangelicals became more educated, urban, and upwardly mobile, Southern evangelicals remained largely poor, rural, and uneducated. Perhaps that contributed to their separation from mainstream American society in the latter part of the 19th century, and their increased theological and political distance from Northern evangelicals.