In the United States, however, many Protestant fundamentalists held to a literal interpretation of the Bible and rejected any alternative readings. A belief in the infallibility of the Bible was also a major principle of the American Bible League, founded in 1902. The World's Christian Fundamentals Association, established in 1919, called for a campaign against modernism and the teaching of the theory of evolution, which was denounced as a foreign doctrine that tended to undermine Christianity. Fundamentalists asserted that a literal interpretation of the story of the creation in the Book of Genesis was incompatible with the gradual evolution of humans and other organisms. Moreover, they asserted that Christian beliefs about the immortality of the soul and the creation of man "in God's image" were incompatible with the theory that humans evolved from animals. Anti-evolution crusaders demanded that the states pass laws to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools.During the 1920s more than 20 state legislatures attempted to pass laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution in their public schools.
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