I Learned it from Fundamentalists

What follows should not be seen as any kind of “answer” to the essay by Dr. Kevin Bauder we posted here last week (what minor points I differed with him on are already expressed in the comments there).

But it is a reaction of sorts.

Many have been announcing the death of the “Fundamentalist Movement” for some time. And these death knells are coming increasingly from those still inside whatever Fundamentalism now is. I don’t care to argue the question of the movement’s deceased status one way or the other here. But even contemplating its passing stirs me, because Fundamentalism (both the “movement” and the “idea”) has been a source of great blessing to me as God has used it my life.

1. Fundamentalism taught me expository preaching.

From early childhood, I was exposed to a broad spectrum of Fundamentalist preaching. At school, I heard the preaching of passionate evangelists who knew how to penetrate the apathy of hardened Christian school kids’ hearts and move us to walk aisles by the dozens. Sometimes (only God knows how often) the Holy Spirit was at work in these efforts as well and produced His fruit in lives.

But being “in” Fundamentalism also exposed me to well trained pastors who—even when I was too young to understand—began training my “preaching ear” in the cadences of exposition. At age five I couldn’t have told you what the difference was, but I sensed that my pastor was doing something different in the pulpit from what many of the visiting evangelists were doing. As I grew older, the frequent sound of congregants turning pages in their Bibles became one noticeable difference. The impulse to bring an ink pen and mark up my Bible became another—as when “Pastor Aseltine” (to me, his first name will always “Pastor”) walked us through Ephesians, verse by verse.

Later, when our Fundamental Christian high school began requiring us all to take notes during all the sermons we heard in chapel and in our churches, the differences between one style of preaching and the other became even more pronounced. No one told me then that the most persuasive and enduringly powerful preaching I was hearing—and had grown to love—was called “exposition” or “expository preaching.” The Fundamentalist college I attended next taught me that this kind of preaching had a name as well as a long and glorious tradition.

Could a young man learn expository preaching outside of Fundamentalism at the time? Absolutely. But I learned it from Fundamentalists.

2. Fundamentalism taught me to appreciate the original languages.

Within “the movement” as a youth, I did not often hear encouragement to use other translations of the Bible. All of the preachers I heard used the KJV as their English text. But we often heard references to Greek and Hebrew terms and grammatical concepts. Words like parakletos, agape, phileo, pneuma and ecclesia were familiar. The idea of a Greek tense being a factor in the interpretation of a verse was something I discovered under the tutelage of Fundamentalists.

And I’m pretty sure that the whole concept of using another translation as a Bible study tool came from the same expositional preachers who served as my pastors in those days. I acquired my first copy of a “modern translation” from a Fundamentalist bookstore (I did have to dig a little to find it).

Could I have discovered the value of digging down to the original languages from non-Fundamentalist evangelicals? Definitely. But as it turns out, I learned it from Fundamentalists.

3. Fundamentalists taught me to be mindful of doctrine.

I can still hear one of my elementary school Bible teachers raving (so it seemed at the time) that “the Bible is not a book of cunningly devised fables, but was given by inspiration of God!!!” My parents were stunned once to see me doing an imitation of this teacher, complete with bulging eyes, bellowing voice, and shaking fist. I had absolutely no idea what any of those words meant.

I wouldn’t recommend this method of indoctrination to anyone, but in my own case it was an important beginning. What I learned was that there were really big ideas with really big words that were of extreme importance to our faith—and that I should get used to wrestling with heavy concepts in my Christian life.

I learned about propitiation, reconciliation, adoption, sanctification, illumination and a host of other “tions”—all from Fundamentalists.

So when I went to college, long complicated outlines of Bible doctrines were not all that new to me. Nor was I surprised—when I went to seminary—to encounter even longer and still more complicated outlines of Bible doctrines. I would have been shocked if it were otherwise.

The attitude that doctrine is extremely important and that believers should expect to put their thinking caps on and wade through it somewhat regularly was an attitude I caught from Fundamentalists.

4. Fundamentalists taught me critical thinking.

The lessons in critical thinking may have been accidental from the point of view of those involved. Their goal was not to teach critical thinking but to argue from Scripture that “Idea A, which you have heard, is not the best way to understand the Scriptures or the issues involved.” The thing is, I had just heard a really compelling case for Idea A in chapel the day before, or in my home, or in a book that was required reading. And often an Idea B that one teacher or pastor held up as a better way to understand the Bible was dismantled pretty effectively some time later by someone making a case for Idea C.

Some might say this kind of conflicting teaching is recipe for confusion, and for some it seems to have turned out that way. But most of the competing views I was hearing on one issue or another were delivered thoughtfully, with serious attention to the relevant Scriptures and without much malice toward those who saw the issues differently.

By behaving this way, the Fundamentalists in my life taught me to expect godly men to disagree and to expect that I would have to do some sorting out of things on my own. They also, in every case, pointed to Scripture as their authority (though with widely varying credibility on that point). The effect was to encourage me not to be critical, but to listen critically and look for the answers in the Book.

5. Fundamentalists taught me to read and write.

The seemingly rules-obsessed, rigidly disciplinarian elementary school teachers at John R. Rice Baptist Academy had us diagramming long, complex sentences in fourth grade. Somehow, they had most of us loving it. I can remember rubbing my hands together with glee at the prospect of digging into another sentence that was longer and more complicated than any I’d diagrammed before. If memory serves, they had given us extremely large pieces of paper so we could fit the whole thing on one sheet.

The same school utterly failed to teach me math! But I thank God for the foundation in readin’ and writin’. These were Fundamentalists who understood well the value of the written word and the importance writing skills would have in our futures. That attitude continued throughout my education.

In high school and college, Fundamentalists encouraged me to read broadly. In seminary, Fundamentalists taught me to read deeply.

I still stink as a reader. But I owe it to Fundamentalists that I’m even aware of that!

6. Fundamentalists taught me the gospel.

Best of all, Fundamentalists taught me the pure, biblical gospel of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. They taught it early, and often, and clearly. Yes, there were some silly songs, some inept illustrations, some less-than-ideal wording—all that. The fact remains that I learned the true gospel, and learned it well, from Fundamentalists.

So, to me, they still have beautiful feet (Rom. 10:15).

Fundamentalists gave me the gospel in its simplicity, but also later taught me its complexity. Fundamentalists taught me what total depravity meant, what imputation meant, what regeneration meant, even what election meant.

7. Fundamentalists taught me to hate legalism.

Some believe I am a “legalist.” After all, I believe rules are very helpful things and that they are often even instrumental in sanctification. But I learned from Fundamentalists that you can keep all the rules and not love God—that you can look the look, and say the words, and have no personal convictions. Fundamentalist preaching taught me to despise the Pharisees with their proud looks and self-righteousness.

Some might consider it a small miracle, but all the same, the people who taught me that we must glorify God in all we do, believe and desire were Fundamentalists.

Conclusion

I don’t know what all this “goes to show,” if anything. I don’t know how common my experience in Fundamentalism is. It feels completely ordinary and “normal” to me. What I do know is that though I could have learned all these things from Conservative Evangelicals (and a few from not-so-conservative ones), I didn’t. In my life, this is not evangelicalism’s legacy; it’s Fundamentalism’s legacy.

Aaron Blumer, SI’s site publisher, is a native of lower Michigan and a graduate of Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He, his wife, and their two children live in a small town in western Wisconsin, where he has pastored Grace Baptist Church (Boyceville, WI) since 2000. Prior to serving as a pastor, Aaron taught school in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and served in customer service and technical support for Unisys Corporation (Eagan, MN). He enjoys science fiction, music, and dabbling in software development.