The problem with message and comment boards is that they are absurdly reductionsitic. Do you have a point that many are attracted to fundamentalism so that they don’t have to hash out difficult elements of their faith? Yes, and amen. But I think you have entirely misunderstood my point (I won’t presume to speak for K).

My point was not “I want to be a fundy because I hate the big bad world.” It was more like, “Despite my desires, I find the fundy view to be more consistent with the scripture than seeker-sensitive or emergent models.”

Also, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I am a pastor’s kid, a sunday school teacher, employee of an extremely influential and well-regarded evangelical university, and am currently in seminary. Tomorrow, I have a meeting with a missions representative about my family’s goal of doing ministry overseas. I am at least literate in greek, hebrew, aramaic, latin, and french (and english, obviously). I have taught theology at the collegiate level (as an intern). So I think I’m going to have to reject your notion that I’m fleeing to fundamentalism because I’m ignorant, fearful, and/or less than intellectually rigorous.

You said, “…not narrow-minded fanatics.” I have no more desire to engage in the vituperations of the culture wars any more than the next guy (nor do I think they’re part and parcel to being a consistently biblical Christian), but you have to admit that there is a radical (if not fanatical) edge to verses like, “whoever does not hate his mother and father is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven,” “if thine eye offends thee, pluck it out,” and the like. The Lord calls us to a radical, excluvisitic service. Peter said in Acts, “This Christ whom you crucified was the Messiah” (my paraphrase). Some people will try and soften that and say that the culture was more confrontational back then, but tell, in what culture would it be acceptable to loudly announce to a large crowd that they killed God and were going to hell? That (true) statement will always have a “fanatical” bent to it, right?

Today, many “evangelical” pulpits do not even speak about sin, or the mortification of the flesh for fear of alienating a “seeker.” I cn’t tell you how many altar calls I’ve heard where sin and repentance were never mentioned. Well, I don’t want church to be unpleasant either, but the solution isn’t to not speak the truth.

Church is for the edification and equipping of the saints–not the comfort and convenience of the unsaved. Evangelism and missions are supposed to be the province of the individual believer, not the corporate body.
Jesus gave three commands to Peter after he restored him: Feed my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my sheep. Paul (and the writer of Hebrews) rebuke their audeinces for still needing spiritual milk.
Yet today, many in our pulpits are more interested in serving up a steady diet of spiritual milk and goat feed.
If pointing out much of evangelicalism falls far short of biblical precepts makes me a narrow-minded, cowardly, unthinking fundamentalist fanatic, then I guess that’s what I am. I’ll still take that label over the alternative.

Sorry for the screed, Catherine, but you’ve obviously hit a topic that’s very close to my heart.

If there’s any truth in what I said, then I pray it will help you. For the manifest errors in there, I apologize and trust you (with the aid of the Spirit) are wise enough to discern.
Lest you become a fundy!

–Daniel

I’m saying this as an outsider (though someone who still considers himself culturally evangelical\fundamentalist). And I realize that the situation in Britian is different than in the States, with no real fundamentalism, and an evangelicalism that has a much better track record than American evangelicalism (particularly in oppossing the slave trade and world poverty). But if you honestly think rejecting television, movies, dancing, cigarettes, alchohol, most books, most art, etc. is easy, try living it. I couldn’t watch any movie above PG before I was 18, and I can tell you it wasn’t easy. My parents pietism, whatever its faults, was incredibly pure and idealistic. The decadent corruptions of Reformed churches, in which the elect could do whatever they wanted without regard to how that affected their fellow human beings, was entirely lacking in my parents lives. I don’t mean to stereotype the Reformed church, but I think its long association with corrupt capitalists, such as the Heritage Foundation, had a devastating effect on American fundamentalism.

Lastly, I think that fundamentalism is not an anti-rational system, but a system based on a different form of rationality, namely Scottish Common Sense rationalism, from which it descends. While that rationalism may not be empircally verifiable in the same sense as Baconian science, biblical prooftexting does make perfect sense within the logic system to which it confines itself. Why should I privilege modern empiricists, when they look down their snotty-noses at poor working class fundamentalists like my grandmother, who never had the opportunity for even a high school education? Evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Marxists, etc. are more tolerant and “open-minded” than evangelicals for one simple reason: They can afford to be. In other words, they have economic and educational advantages that fundamentalists do not possess. I refuse to condemn fundamentalists for their “close-mindedness” when the rest of contemporary society’s open-mindedness is only the result of class privilege.

The whole “be in the world, but not of it/we need to contextualize our message/let’s repaint our velvet elvis” twaddle has clearly swung the pendulum too far away from Christian distinctiveness.

PS Mr. Weaver, I’m sorry Reformed evangelicals have burned you, please don’t let their thorny ways choke out the good stalk.
PPS Your quotation of Paul in Romans has always fascinated me, too–especially when you consider that it comes on the heels of this, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

K (John Weaver)

Another problem with the dichotomy your acquaintance presents is that it limits Christianity to a Western (largely North American) Evangelical Protestant realm. There are incredibly rich Christian traditions that exist outside the two worlds he uses to stereotype the rest. Further it ignores the significant numbers of day-to-day Christians who live their faith quietly and passionately, making an important difference in their corners of the world.

I would hope that K finds Jesus without trying to filter him through the eyes of groups who either think they have a corner on Him or are convinced the search is more important than the destination.

Bill

For example,I believe in reincarnation because for me it helps make sense of the world. I’m quite willing to listen to reasoned arguments against it, but I’m not willing to drop my belief without thinking it through simply because it is not usually part of the Christian “package”. That would be intellectual dishonesty.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, surely there are only a few things we need to accept in order to be considered Christians (Boaz’ list is a good one, although I would argue that you can be a Christian without believing in the virgin birth), and the rest are up for discussion. Aren’t the differences between the fundamentalists and the fluffy liberals mostly about the extras?

Who could believe that a woman can become pregnant without either a man involved or exceedingly sophisticated medical techniques not present in antiquity? Christianity asserts that Jesus was born of a virgin.

Who could believe that someone could predict the future hundreds of years in advance unerringly? Or to make a blind man see simply by making mud and putting it on his eyes? Christianity asserts that Jesus did this and other miracles.

Who could believe that Jesus came to life again after being dead and got out of graveclothes wrapped with gummy aromatic spices a tomb that was sealed with a large stone, and with a Roman guard outside to prevent anyone from tampering with the tomb? Christianity asserts that the tomb was empty…and no critic contemporary to the event ever asserted otherwise.

So yes, Christianity on its face does make incredible claims. Further, we’re called to be the salt and the light of the world. But the world hates light and chooses darkness instead. Salt will retard decay on meat but hurts when put in wounds.

Should we be ashamed of any of these claims? Should we deny them? What claims, if any, does Christianity assert that Christians should deny, and why? (This is not a facetious question: if you honestly think that there are such claims, I want to know.)