Biblical Inerrancy and 20th Century North American Political Movements

This paper examines the conservative political influence of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI). The impetus for the organization came from missionary-turned-pop-intellectual Francis Schaeffer who insisted that American evangelicals had lost their commitment to both the inerrant Bible and the US Constitution that it allegedly inspired. Other politically-active evangelical leaders, and others abstained precisely because they saw the “political cast” of the ostensibly theological organization. Through its 1982 Congress on the Bible, the 1983 “Year of the Bible,” and its 1986 Statement on Biblical Application, the ICBI made its connection with the Reagan Revolution clear. Ultimately, the ICBI showed that evangelical biblicism was not separate from the emerging culture wars. Rather, a literalist theo-political hermeneutic of biblical and constitutional interpretation drove a much larger and more lasting fight over definitions of evangelicalism, religious liberty, and American law.