Douglas Wilson: "what deracinated evangelicalism looks like"

Word of the day - deracinated

This is the kind of writing that makes fundamentalists love Doug Wilson, just after they got done excoriating him. I find him to be both confusing and enlightening.

That is what I call this article. He uses fundamentalist to talk about people who have little idea about what they believe and why…that is not my experience with fundamentalism. To me, fundamentalists are part of the few that DO know what they believe. He also uses the term to mean “Christianity Lite”…My goodness, that CERTAINLY is not what I think of when I think of fundamentalist!!! If anything people accuse us of being TOO sure, TOO literal, etc.

He then implies Rob Bell is deracinated evagelicalism…We use to call Rob Bell a liberal. A heretic. A wolf in sheeps’s clothing. Now he’s a deracinated evangelical. No wonder people are confused.

Who is this guy talking about? Certainly not the fundamentalists I know!

Mark,

You must travel is special circles. I have been a fundamentalist pretty much all my life, including church, school, and vocational ministry, and I rarely find average, self-professing fundamentalists who can clearly articulate what they believe, much less why they believe it. Frankly, that’s an increasingly missing ability even among leaders.

Mark, when he says, “We used to be fundamentalists with a cheerful disposition,” Wilson is not talking about those who today would use “Fundamentalist” to describe themselves. This piece is a self-critique. He is speaking of the (New) Evangelicals in the tradition of Carl F.H. Henry- people who purported to be doctrinally sound and concerned about truth, but were also more concerned with what Wilson calls “catholicity” than they were with separation (as “we” are).

In other words, he certainly isn’t accusing you of having a “cheerful disposition.” :)

Yes I do live in a bubble of perfection….thanks for noticing;-)