Bible, Theology & Philosophy

A variety of electronic periodicals reach my inbox regularly. One that arrives nearly every day is published by a retired seminary professor. Most days I derive a great deal of pleasure and often profit from glancing through his cogitations.

Today’s number, however, evoked a bit of concern. The dear fellow was reprinting some criticisms that he had received. Here is what they said.

The oft-repeated mantra coming out of Dr. Piper and Dr. Storms is that it is impossible for human beings to enjoy too much pleasure. We are made for pleasure, but it’s the pleasure of enjoying God. These guys are full-bore new evangelicals and Piper is a hard line Calvinist…. Why are you promoting this sort of thing?

While I can appreciate many things coming out of Dr. Piper’s ministry, are you endorsing such a leading New Evangelical with no disclaimer?…I am sure you do not endorse the New Evangelicalism that is Dr. Piper’s ministry, but when we simply laud a New Evangelical by attending his conference and praising it, that is the result at the practical level.

These responses are typical of the way that some Fundamentalists view conservative evangelicals in general. These men apparently divide all American Christians into only two categories: Fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals. If a Christian leader is not recognized as a Fundamentalist, then he is considered to be a new evangelical, with all the opprobrium that follows.

This binary system of classification is far too simplistic. American Christianity never has been neatly divided between new evangelicals and Fundamentalists. Other groups have always existed, and one of them is the group that we now designate as conservative evangelicals.

Like a traitor, scorning justice,
Head unbowed before God’s Law,
Given glimpses of the Holy,
Tyranny was all I saw.

Soul infused with serpents’ venom,
Purposing unholy war,
Hands devising clever mischief,
All of this was I, and more.

He, dispensing awful justice
Haled me up before His throne,
Bound on me the grave indictment
Of commandments hewn in stone.

“Answer now,” the judge demanded,
“Justify yourself to me.
Saints and angels wait your answer—
Enter your judicial plea.”

I, exposed by blinding justice,
Naked in its righteous glare,
Stripped of every self-deception,
Stood with nothing to declare.

The year was 1986. I was about a year into my first senior pastorate, preaching to a church with a membership that was pushing 200. After a year in this ministry, I was experiencing frustration from two sources.

First, I was wondering why my college and seminary had not taught me more about what the real pastorate would be like. I felt that I had been poorly trained to face many of the actual situations that present themselves in ministry. Second, while I had grown up in one of the more balanced versions of fundamentalism, I had reason to question the model of leadership that I saw employed by many Fundamentalists. On the one hand, these leaders could be authoritarian to the point of brutality. On the other hand, they seemed preoccupied with trivial questions to which they gave answers that were either irrelevant or simply silly.

For instance, one of my earliest written pieces was a response to someone who was trying to impose the “no pants on women” theory on our church. I regarded Fundamentalist speculations about music as simply pathetic. In fact, the typical answers to the whole orbit of “cultural taboos” (as they were sometimes called) struck me as vacuous. The case that some Fundamentalists made for their version of separation was utterly unimpressive.

To be sure, there were still Fundamentalist figures whom I admired both for their leadership and for their thoughtfulness. The number of these, however, was declining. I had begun to look for other answers than I had been given and other models than I had received. In short, I was on the brink of a crisis.

The press is full of reports about Baptist missionaries who have been arrested in Haiti. They are accused of—and, as of yesterday, formally charged with—attempting to abduct children illegally into the neighboring Dominican Republic, ostensibly with the purpose of eventually selling the children into adoption. The missionaries have been moved from lodging in a public building and sent to jail. Jail in Haiti. Jail in a Haiti that has been decimated by earthquakes.