The Great Evangelical Mea Culpa

When I read this it sounded very familiar and, alas, it is reprinted from a 2006 Frontline article.

Dr. Talbert is right! Evangelicalism’s obsession with relevancy and academic prestige has had a corrupting influence on the veracity of evangelical doctrine. (Just look at Ligoner’s recent polling data.)

However, as a “younger Fundamentalist,” my attraction to “evangelical thinkers” is not to these type of men. It is to the men in Evangelicalism who are calling out this type of Evangelicalism. Their message of contending for the faith resonates with me. Men like MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Paul Washer, Al Mohler, and, to an increasingly lesser extent, John Piper, that have been critical of Evangelical compromise, continue to have a seemingly greater influence on the theological spectrum of Evangelicalism. This is what is appealing. It is precisely because they talk like a Fundamentalist that they continue to exert influence on younger Fundamentalists. What commends them all the more is that they are willing to be critical of their own movement.

What concerns me regarding certain versions of Fundamentalism is an unwillingness to be critical of Fundamentalism. It seems that Fundamentalism is always sniping away at other camps (or at those within the Fundamentalist camp who are attracted to the Evangelical camp). I appreciate recent Fundamentalist leaders who are willing to introspectively critique the Fundamentalist movement (Bauder and Doran), but an honest, introspective evaluation of Fundamentalism is rare.

To take from Dr. Talbot’s phrase: Yes, the cows are lowing in Evangelicalism. But what about the equally loud (and perhaps louder) lowing of the cows in Fundamentalism. Instead of pointing out the errors of the “Evangelical pasture,” perhaps it is time to seriously address the problems in the Fundamentalist pasture. At least, for me, this would be an encouraging move in the right direction.

I consider myself a fundamentalist as well and I add my amen to what Tyler and Philip have said. While I would like to see their suggestions occur, experience tell me that fundamentalism does not enjoy standing in front of a mirror as evidenced by their response when other respected fundamentalists like Bauder and Doran have offered them one.

I was going to use the beam/mote illustration but decided against it.

Ah this article will invite the usual hand-wringing and finger pointing that all the previous articles did years ago. This article is only about 20 years too late. It’s like closing the gate after the cows have left the pasture.

Here’s a sentence from the article that pretty much embodies the problem with Fundamentalist thought and commentary today. I quote:

” Symptomatically, the most influential evangelical is no longer an evangelist (Billy Graham), but a psychologist (James Dobson).”

Seriously? Dobson’s voice faded YEARS ago. He’s not even CLOSE to being “the most influential evangelical”. But should we be surprised when fundamentalism was warning against the evils of Steve Green when most kids were recording far worse secular stuff over sermon tapes in the 80’s and 90’s. You can’t influence a culture, a movement or a nation when you are 20 years too late and standing so far behind where folks actually live in the real world.

EDIT: Well, I went back to see that the book being cited was written in 2002, so Dobson was A leading voice — still not ready to say THE most influential” at that time. But then again, this proves my point. Why is he citing a 15-year old book in this article/review? Does he not get how MUCH the world has changed in the last 15 years?

I dearly wish that I could argue with Tyler or Phil. Sorry, guys, we’re going to have to take it outside over the best type of BBQ or something instead. I like Big Bob Gibson’s in Decatur, AL. Or maybe we can argue over pizza—Gino’s East on Superior is my fave. Fight on? :^)

(sadly, I haven’t been to either place in well over a decade!)

Or chow on?

Seriously, with all the creepy-crawlies inhabiting fundamentalist bellybutton lint, so to speak, I can think of few better things to do than a little bit of navel-gazing, followed of course by a call to “Orkin” as it were. Moreover, I really don’t have time to point that many fingers elsewhere—apart from pointing out “this church has female pastors” or “this church denies the Trinity, can I really paint all those thousands of different types of evangelicals (fundagelicals) with the same broad brush? It all starts at home.

Young Fundamentalists sidling toward the Evangelical fence, tempted by the sight of seemingly greener grass, need to take a closer look and listen carefully to the lowing of the cattle over there. The ones whose hearts are closest to yours are not happy over there.

I think it’s important to take this article in context of what was recently published in the “Convergence” issue of Frontline. With that said, how are we gaging the “sidling” of the “Young Fundamentalists”/now labeled Convergents?

As I alluded to some degree in the other thread on the “Convergence” issue, there was a day where it was much more of a controversial thing to use modern (per)versions. One of the reasons that would often be cited, apart form the textual arguments and manuscript appeals, was that the translators and people using these newer translations were firmly in the “Neo” camp. One might even say that someone using those versions in their church might be “sidling toward the Evangelical fence.” Certainly similar and harsher language was employed on the matter in decades past.
People like Mike Harding have demonstrated that was simply not the case. Someone could indeed be just as principled a separatist, maintain a Fundamentalist identity and philosophy, and so on while using a modern translation. Agree with him or not on that one application, you can’t really argue that such a decision was an indicator that Mike was eyeing the “greener grass.”
All I’m saying here is that today’s critics need to be careful in their assessments. Not everyone who makes different musical choices than the apparent established norms is succumbing to Greener Grass Syndrome. Your own recent history can provide you with some perspective, if you would take the time to consider it.

As several previous comments have shown in one way or another, a key part of the problem with conversations on these topics is lack of clear definition… “evangelicals”…”fundamentalists”… “sidling”

It might help if more people recognized that these terms no longer describe anything monolithic, if they ever did. Arguably, circa 1945-65 or maybe as long as ‘75, evangelical and fundamentalist were terms with relatively little ambiguity? I’m just surmising, because it was before my “age of paying attention.”

But it’s as hard now to clearly defining what’s being sidled up to as it is to tell what’s being sidled away from.

My vote is for looking at the whole thing in a more modular way. You have your “handling of Scripture in preaching” module, your “cultural ideals in worship” module, you’re “perceived nonconformity to this world” module, your “getting the gospel right” module, your “attitude and practice toward social programs/social justice” module, and your “organizational ties” (aka “ecclesiastical separation”) module. … and probably a few more (translations?)

Table the whole “who’s fundy and who’s evangelical and who’s not” question and look at the modules one by one. Rank their importance. Identify criteria for evaluating faithfulness to Scripture. Identify a process for making organizational ties choices.

Then see who you can work with, who you can’t, and who just doesn’t really matter, since no partnership is on the table anyway.

There’s never going to be a really simple way to do it. Part of the reason there was much more consensus in biblical fundamentalism the 60’s-80’s (and pretty rapidly declining in the 90’s and later) was that people were much more willing—so it seems to me—to look to an authoritative leader or institution and back their judgment enthusiastically (or just disagree silently). So things were simplified in this way. “So and so says…” so that’s what defines who is “safe” and genuine, etc., vs. who is pseudo/neo/whatever.

But those times are gone, and the original set of issues and combatants was gone even long before that.

Every generation has to take a fresh look at why movements rose up in the first place and then, assuming those purposes were biblical (in this case, they were), how do we accomplish them as best we can today?

Neither what remains of fundamentalism, nor the causes that gave birth to it, will be served adequately by recycling the old, vauge “us vs. them” rhetoric of the 60s-90s. That rhetoric offered no thorough, intentional, careful process for evaluating ministry relationships/organizational ties because it was really driven by a handful of authority figures… who pretty much just decided things and handed them down.

I don’t resent them for that, really. Best I can tell, they all did what they believed was right and would best serve the body of Christ. They just happened to be mere mortals and were wrong about (a) how these evaluations and alignment-decisions need to be made and (b) sometimes wrong about where the lines should have been drawn.

But the bigger problem is not incorrect classifications of who’s fundy and who isn’t. The bigger problem was/remains “how is that decision to be made?” (And when does it even need to be made? So much of it had nothing at all to do with local churches, much less individual believers)

Forgot the point I meant to make under the title “priorities” :-D

Looking at the factors in a modular way, surely “getting the gospel right” and “handling Scripture properly in preaching and teaching” have to be top priorities… though the latter is a reflection of underlying bibliology (as is the translation issue). So gospel/bibliology/practical bibliology need to be top tier going forward. … because this is where we see most of the serious erosion, in both fundamentalism and evangelicalism.

As Phil Golden noted up the thread, whatever we are calling the “better than evangelical mainstream” neighborhood, it needs to learn to be self-critical. You can’t grow and improve if you can’t tear your eyes off the “Them” and look at the “Us” and see where we need to be better.

Had we done that, we might not have the mostly-the-same-mess bibliology that we see today in the evangelical mainstream.

Having lived through the 1950s to 1990s era of the New Evangelicalism and having analyzed, written and taught on the subject since the mid-60s, I keep thinking of what all we allegedly did wrong, or more particularly in light of the above, what we should have done to prevent the present-day turmoil. If someone can put himself back in those days with the issues, institutions, personalities, and ongoing events of the time, I would like to see what more precisely could/should have been done, said, etc. I suppose it hinges on the thought that we did next to nothing about “us” and way overspent on the “them.” But when, where and how.

In other words, put in some names of the “us vs them” vis-a-vis what the “us” should have said or done in agreement or collaboration with “them” that would have prevented the situation of today. Is it the idea that we should have taken the Neo Evangs less seriously on some of the issues, given them more of the benefit of the doubt more often, etc.? Or can someone be named who did do what is being recommended today, but was shot down by the fundamentalists? Where was the fork in the road that led down the path to the problems in fundamentalism today? I’m not talking about who didn’t show enough of a sweet spirit or had no such at all. We are light years past that in my judgment. Pietism never solved anything in these situations.

What I am desiring to see is chapter and verse from the events that should have taken place back then but of which fundamentalism (idea, movement, et al) is bereft today, and that led to the present impasse. Who were the Dever, MacArthur, Johnson, Mohler types, et. al., of the Neo Evang era that should have been listened to back then? There was no lack of critics in those days that we might have heeded.

Dr. McCune,

Why does the present day action one way or another have to lead to the conclusion that the Fundamentalists of the past were wrong?
It’s an honest question… because whatever you assume about what people are doing today, the reality is that how we behave today as Fundamentalists with one another isn’t quite like Fundamentalists of the past interacted. The positions and practices of the SBC, for example, aren’t exactly what they were a generation or two before, either. There are also objectionable elements within “Fundamentalism” (at least those using the label) that one would desire not to be identified with.
Re-assessing how we behave today doesn’t necessarily mean that we believe our predecessors were wrong or misguided.

Greg,

Pleasant greetings to you and the good people in Marshall. I have many fond memories of preaching there and having fellowship in different homes.

Greg, unless I missed something quite obvious, I can’t imagine what you mean by the last sentence, and the multitude of references and/or inferences in the previous posts. If you are speaking personally, it is encouraging to those of us longer in the tooth. But I confess to not hearing the same in these present blogs and many like them over the past few years.

Let me add a hearty Baptist Amen to Greg. I am overjoyed at the legacy of the Fundamentalists of the past both the Old Guard who fought against theological liberalism in the major denominations and those who called out the compromise of the “new” evangelicals. I think the major issue for Fundamentalists and (new) Evangelicals has always been cooperative Evangelism and Ecumenism. As a “younger Fundamentalist,” both of these issues are still important to me.

I think the disconnect comes when current Fundamental leaders don’t recognize what Evangelical leaders have done to correct the errors of cooperative Evangelism and Ecumenism. It is precisely because men like Mohler, MacArthur, Dever, Johnson and the like have sought to correct that error that I am drawn to them. The failure of Fundamentalism and its leaders to recognize and rally behind and with this movement within Evangelicalism is the problem. When this happened is probably harder to pin down. It would have been more useful, instead of always looking for the wrong in Evangelicalism, to look for what, and specifically who, was speaking the right. Just because someone was not in the Fundamentalist camp did not mean they were not speaking the Fundamentalist message. But previous generations seemed to think that if anyone came up through Evangelicalism or remained in Evangelicalism, they were “tainted” by the compromise of Evangelicalism. This just was not, and still is not the case.

I think this is where denying any possibility of “Convergence” with these men is damaging to Fundamentalism. As a younger Fundamentalist, I don’t desire to “sidle up” to Fuller Seminary, the National or World Council of Churches, or BGEA. I want to fellowship with an grow from the men inside Evangelicalism who hold the same values that I do.

Of course, there is also the issue of the elevation of secondary issues (like worship styles, casual dress, etc.) to the seeming irreducible minimums of the Faith, but thats a whole different discussion and when that happened or what capstone event marked that as a defining characteristic of Fundamentalism is also very hard to pin down.