Doran, Minnick & Bauder Discuss Fundamentalism and Conservative Evangelicalism

There seems to be a lot of uncertainty in classification. We have all sorts of modifiers for evangelicalism, none for fundamentalism. I would encourage those involved to try to identify themselves a little more clearly. All I hear them say is “fundamentalist”. You can argue that fundamentalism is outmoded. That’s fine. Come up with something that defines you better. If you want to go back to the “biblicist” label (i.e. McLachlan) it’s not a problem. I’m sure you wouldn’t want some of the other KJVO, etc. crowd to define you because they already are calling you evangelicals.

That brings up a good point. The common complaint among the more conservative fundamentalists (where my roots are), is that you have to add a few qualifiers to the fundamentalist label. As in, “old-fashioned, KJV-only, independent” and all that.

In the mean time, we only give one additional label for our evangelical opponents. We admit some of them are “conservative evangelicals”.

Maybe labels just don’t work, as Doran says. We should stick to hearing people out rather than judging them before they get out of the starting blocks.

My beef with some fundamentalists is they act as if everyone in the world should know that all the battles have been fought already, and should just side with them. Meanwhile, people that are fighting to preserve truth in various associations and denominations today, people that are most likely fairly ignorant of those who jettisoned from the movement several decades prior, those people aren’t given any quarter by fundamentalists. Because they aren’t out, because they haven’t cut ties, because they don’t act like fundamentalists (of whom they’re largely ignorant), they are worthy of scorn and public repudiation. Where’s the mutual encouragement and Christian brotherhood?