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This chapter charts the early life and work of Henry Parsons Crowell, his efforts to put the Moody Bible Institute (MBI) on a “business basis,” and his first attempt to influence middle-class Protestantism. Crowell was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1855; he would later go on to found the Quaker Oats Company in 1901, profoundly shaping the current economic landscape as it entered the modern era. He would use this same business acumen to revitalize the MBI, by becoming its president and quickly incorporating his business ideas into this religious work without a second thought, for Moody already had made borrowing such concepts unremarkable. But the business strategies themselves were new and thus would transform the purpose of Moody's institution even as Crowell stayed true to the founder's business spirit.

This chapter tells the story of the creation of The Fundamentals, the conflict and contingencies that shaped the project, and the methodology for creating the ad hoc “orthodoxy” that resulted thereof. The early twentieth century saw the encroaching influence of modernity introduced into the faith, and attempts to address the issue culminated in the development of a new theological product, as marketed by Henry Crowell himself. It would be a modern orthodoxy compatible across denominations and rooted in an evangelical orientation. More importantly, it would act as a permanent solution to the still-nagging question of why an institution like the Moody Bible Institute was needed. The project, eventually known as The Fundamentals, aimed to change the face of Protestantism in the United States.

This introductory chapter charts a brief history of how American Protestantism had developed in conjunction with modern consumer capitalism. There are many points of entry to this corporate evangelical network, but the story that follows focuses on one of its key institutions, the Moody Bible Institute (MBI) in Chicago. The MBI was founded by the salesman-turned-revivalist Dwight L. Moody, the most important evangelical of the late nineteenth century. He ingeniously weaved disparate ideas drawn from business and religion into a compelling, if unstable, form of evangelical Protestantism. After Moody's death in 1899, a second generation of evangelicals led by Henry Parsons Crowell transformed MBI in significant ways. They shifted focus from converting the working classes to influencing middle-class Protestantism and swapped their overarching metaphor of industrial work with modern consumption.