Southern fundamentalism (the historic Baptist variety) has been influenced by Bob Jones fundamentalism and KJV-only (offshoots of Hyles, Landmark, and Peter Ruckman). And they are rapidly disappearing from the landscape.
I seriously have no clue what you are talking about when you mention 400 years. The Puritans, if that is what you are referring to, were not fundamentalists. They served in some way to the ‘nostalgic’ foundation of fundamentalism. But as I said, that was based on nostalgic mythology of a ‘golden age’ of American Christianity.
In the South, American fundamentalism is better traced from the Civil War.
There IS an interesting parallel in history involving the birth of fundamentalism and the KKK. The RISE (post-Civil War and the 1920s) of both movements were similtaneous and loosely connected.
Fundamentalist forebearers, are considered ‘heroes’ to these groups, and they were pretty chummy with the Klan. Bob Jones Sr. is the most nortorious. One of the buildings on his campus is named after a state govenor and Klan grand dragon. The racism of his school continues to this very day.
Another ‘hero’ of fundamentalism was William Bell Reilly who not only was a supporter of the Klan (if they were members, they curiously kept it quiet), he also supported the infamous Protocols of Zion.
No, not the Puritans. Early in British colonization of North America, significant numbers of Scots-Irish, Borderers and no few Welsh were brought here as settlers and workers. Many of them took to the hill country, which they thought healthier than the lowlands, (though for some it was to avoid indentured servitude) first in the Appalachins, then to the Smokies, Ozarks, and so on. They were very isolated from the remainder of society, all the way up to the early 20th Century. Not much in the culture has changed even to this day, including the use of a slightly modified Elizabethan English which still persists in some remote areas.
In recent decades, they have tended to actually engage preachers, largely from the local Baptist Bible schools, but even when I was a kid they tended to draw preachers from their own congregation; preachers whose only “theological” education was their own lifetime reading of the bible and what others in the congregation said. They wouldn’t know Bob Jones University from Bob the Builder.
In the early 20th Century, the KKK, at least in this part of the country, was composed of middle class mainline protestants who lived in towns. Country fundamentalists were not part of that group. There was a brief reign by Baldknobbers after the Civil War, who were sort of Klan-like, but probably contained as many Union veterans as Confederate. The post Civil War KKK was not all that big in the hill country.
We really are talking about different things, you and me.
And there’s not much point in pasting them with racism because in most of the southern hill country, there’s nobody to be “racist” toward, or at least there wasn’t until Hispanics began coming into some of the industrial towns. Among the hill people in the Smokies and in the Ozarks, virtually all are partly Indian, and proud of it, though they don’t look it.
