At times in history, groups of people with very different ideologies have allied with one another because of a common threat. The most striking example of this was the World War II alliance of the United States and the Soviet Union. In a religious matter, Baptists and other free-church evangelicals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries joined with deists like Thomas Jefferson to combat the threat to religious liberty posed by the establishment of religion. At other times, groups with similar ideas have been unable to come together because they did not share similar attitudes toward or positions within their cultures. This essay is concerned with the latter phenomenon and uses Southern Baptists and northern evangelicals as a case study. The historical relationship of these two groups illustrates something profound about the very nature of religious alliances; specifically, it illustrates how cultural factors and intuitive notions of uneasiness about theological security determine whether or not religious groups with great theological similarities can find common ground.

From the 1920s onward, many individuals and denominations have referred to themselves as Baptist-fundamentalists or fundamentalist-Baptists. Increasingly, however, scholars are emphasizing the stark contrast between fundamentalism and Baptist life.1 More than any other, the life of J. Frank Norris stands as an example of the tension, if not irreconcilability, between the two camps. The enigmatic, or perhaps oxymoronic, nature of Norris's theological life was paralleled by his political endeavors in which he claimed to be a Democrat, but almost always supported Republican candidates. Being from Texas, it was natural that Norris would begin his career as a Baptist Democrat. In time, however, he evolved into a fundamentalist Republican. He actually attempted to be a fundamentalist-Baptist religiously and a Republican-Democrat politically. The fusion of these two religious traditions was no less problematic than fusion of the political parties.