Fundamentalism

Four Historical Stages of Fundamentalism

Mark Farnham, Assistant Professor of Theology and New Testament at Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary (Lansdale, PA), joins us for a series of podcasts on Fundamentalism. In this first interview, he goes over the four historical stages of Fundamentalism.

Jason Janz

by Kevin T. Bauder

^{Note: The following resolutions were passed at the recent Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International National Conference, held June 12-14.}

Is the Grass Greener?

“It’s nice of you to come, but we are not coming to your church. Your music is awful.” That’s what she told him. She was on morphine, lying in a hospital bed after abdominal surgery. He said some kind words that would not be remembered and left his card on her bedside stand. In a couple of hours, this card would be confirmation of a conversation she hoped had not actually taken place.

Reporters are not given to apologizing. They are the sort of people who can stick a microphone in the face of a mother as she is being notified of her child’s death. They like controversy, they delight in conflict, and they love any event that will make a story. For reporters to apologize is the rarest of events, usually reserved for occasions when they are caught plagiarizing or blatantly lying. This fact underlines the significance of the reporter I heard the other day.

A few hours ago, I carefully listened to an MP3 in which Joe Zichterman, former Bible professor at Northland Baptist Bible College (Dunbar, WI), discusses his reasons for joining the Church-Growth Movement (CGM) in general and Willow Creek Community Church (So

Forty years ago, sociologists triumphantly crowed that in a very short time the last vestiges of religion would be found only in small pockets of disaffected people pining for the glory days of yore. Religious adherence in a society, so they thought, decreased in direct proportion to a society’s modernization. Secularization, the process whereby religion and its influences are gradually pushed to the margins of society, was a relentless force that could not be resisted.

Most conservative churches are struggling in the area of evangelism. The leaders will readily admit it. Most pastors are discouraged by the fact that we seem to be doing a pretty lousy job of spreading the Gospel message to the lost. I believe that conversion is God’s job, but evangelism is our job. And it seems we’re pretty anemic at doing our job.

I am by nature an angry person. Most people who know me well would deny that. In fact, my friend Jason Janz often tells people, “Brian’s a lover.” That statement is true now, but it is true only by the grace of God working in my life. Anger, incidentally, serves me well when it comes to the protection of the Gospel or to the defense of those I love. I can harness that energy and express it under control, hopefully for the glory of God.