It’s risky
saying anything good about Fundamentalists.
To paraphrase John Wesley on Arminians (those holding views ascribed to
Jacob Arminius): “To say ‘There is a
Fundamentalist’ has the same effect as saying, ‘There is a mad dog.’”
Yet, I’ve long
had a quiet respect for many of those old-time Fundamentalists. No, I don’t respect the self-aggrandizing J.
Frank Norris type of Fundamentalist but I do the Robertson McQuilkin type. They may have made mistakes in strategy but
they seem to have grasped the significance of the conflict in which they were
engaged.
That conflict
was, in brief, the clash between theological Liberalism and Christian
orthodoxy. In particular, this was
Christian orthodoxy with an Evangelical flavoring. While the seeds of theological Liberalism
were planted well before the nineteenth century, the plant came to full bloom during
that century and continued to flower into the twentieth. Several thought-movements contributed to Liberalism,
including the Enlightenment and Romanticism, but at heart it was a repudiation
of the supernatural. The Bible, though
inspiring, was not inspired. Miracles
couldn’t have happened.
H. Richard Niebuhr summarized the nineteenth
century incarnation of Liberalism: “A God
without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through
the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
The statement, while useful, is like all such summaries, lacking in
detail. Christ was without a cross in
the sense his death was not part of any atonement—he died as an example of
self-sacrificing love but not to provide salvation. And, Niebuhr might have rounded out the
summary by saying Christ was also “without an empty tomb.” Rejecting miracles, most Liberals also
rejected the resurrection, at least in any meaningful sense. Jesus might have “lived on” in the memories
of his disciples but he was not raised from the dead.
This, of
course, is the extreme form of Liberalism.
Individual Liberals might have retained certain elements of a more
orthodox Christianity but all jettisoned something crucial from the Faith,
something fundamental.
Evangelicals
had been opposing this erosion of orthodoxy since it began appearing in
seminaries and churches sometime around the mid-1800s. Then, in 1910, wealthy California businessmen
Lyman and Milton Stewart began financing the publication of “The
Fundamentals.” Appearing over the next
five years, this series of ninety essays, written by Evangelicals from a
variety of denominational traditions and from several countries, defended the
essential elements of the faith. The
Stewarts paid to send the essays to each pastor in America. A few years later, those who held the views
described in the series were dubbed “Fundamentalists.” While the term may have been coined as a
simple description, it soon became a pejorative. To be a “Fundamentalist” was to be ignorant,
a Neanderthal; though Fundamentalists were so anti-scientific, critics likely
thought, they probably hadn’t heard of Neanderthals.
You see, though
the Liberal Kingdom may have been “without judgment,” Liberals didn’t mind
judging. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the 1920s’
best-known Liberal pastor, assured his congregation that Fundamentalism existed
only in the “backwater” of Christian thinking.
Of himself he proudly declared: “They call me a heretic. Well, I am a
heretic if conventional orthodoxy is the standard. I should be ashamed to live
in this generation and not be a heretic.”
The
“conventional orthodoxy” was, of course, historic Christianity. This was the vision of Christianity
championed by the authors of The
Fundamentals. This was the
Christianity promoted by such backwater thinkers as G. Gresham Machen, a member
of Phi Beta Kappa who had degrees from Johns Hopkins, Princeton Seminary, and
Princeton University. Machen, who had
done post-graduate study in Germany where he sat under some of the most
virulent Liberals, rejected what Fosdick would so highly praise. Machen eschewed the term “Fundamentalism”
because he insisted what he and those like him taught was simply
Christianity. Liberalism, Machen argued,
was not Christianity at all; it was a new religion.
Fosdick’s
statement provides another insight into the Liberal mindset. When the New York pastor suggests, in effect,
he would be “ashamed to live in this generation” and hold ideas held by
countless Christians over the preceding centuries, he shows why Liberalism is
often called “Modernism.” Though he was
no Fundamentalist, C. S. Lewis clearly understood how the Liberals of his day
and earlier were guilty of “chronological snobbery.”
When
Fundamentalists stood for “the faith once delivered to the saints,” they were
standing against that mindset. They were
insisting there were certain core beliefs without which Christianity could not
be Christianity. These beliefs were
“fundamentals;” that is, they formed a “necessary base … of central
importance,” to use a dictionary definition of the term. If they were sometimes guilty of taking their
opposition to the modern too far (suggested in the clearly apocryphal argument
ascribed to a Fundamentalist, “If the King James Version was good enough for
Paul, it’s good enough for me”) they had also seen the danger in a frenzied
embrace of some new thing.
Over the
preceding 1900 years most Christians had held this position; abandon certain
beliefs and whatever you may call your belief system, it isn’t Christian. The creeds were an attempt to define those
beliefs clearly (honest, they were trying to be clear). Depart from what the creeds taught and you
were walking on dangerous ground.
Classic Christian thinkers said the church should be one, holy, catholic
(embracing believers everywhere), and apostolic. By apostolic they meant the church should
continue to teach what the Apostles had taught.
Near the end of his life, John told his fellow believers, “Beloved, do
not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God….”
How were they to test the teachings they were hearing? They were to measure them against “what they
had heard from the beginning,” test them against the Apostles’ teachings.
The
Fundamentalists understood how the Liberals’ teachings would end: Jesus was a
good man who said a lot of good things—nothing more. They probably never imagined a time would
come when some would question whether Jesus actually said all those good
things.
At the outset
of the so-called “Battle for the Bible” in Southern Baptist life, the
self-described “moderates” often argued, “Baptists are not a creedal
people.” I thought it was a foolish and
disingenuous argument. Of course,
Baptists are a creedal people; in part, because Baptists are a Christian people
but we also insist there are certain affirmations to which you must agree if
you are a Baptist. As far I know all
Baptists believe the only proper candidate for baptism is one who has made a
commitment to Jesus Christ; any Baptist pastor who insists newborns in his
congregation must be baptized to counter the effect of original sin has ceased
to be a Baptist. During the debate a lot
of moderates were tossing around the term “soul liberty” as if they were citing
a creed. Question the concept and they
could become pretty intense, hardly moderate at all.
The truth is,
most belief systems have certain “fundamentals” that are essential to those
systems. Even when those fundamentals are
drawn from the canons of biblical criticism, sociology, psychology, and
anthropology they are still fundamentals.
Fundamentalists reportedly forced faculty members who embraced Liberal
notions to resign from universities and seminaries, though it was Machen who
was forced to resign from Princeton. Yet,
is there anywhere a seminary belonging to any mainline denomination where a
professor who believes the Pentateuch is the product of editing taking place
over centuries and containing the works of several anonymous authors—none of
whom was Moses—teaches alongside a professor who believes the Pentateuch is
primarily the work of Moses? Is there a
New Testament department at a mainline school where a redaction critic teaches
alongside a professor who believes Mark wrote the gospel bearing his name,
perhaps basing the account on his recollection of Peter’s preaching? No, the Liberals
would not tolerate it.
In my life I
have attended three graduate schools.
Two were Evangelical; the third was the Religious Studies department of
a secular university. While I was at the
university, a respected church historian who taught at a Baptist school applied
for an opening in the department. During
the interviews he mentioned an interest it what we would today call spiritual
formation. That scholar’s chances of
joining the faculty ended when the New Testament professor declared, “I won’t
teach with that Pietist.” The faculty of
the Religious Studies department scoffed at Evangelicals, presented books like The Late Great Planet Earth as
representative Evangelical theology, and discounted Evangelical scholars
because they hadn’t gone to the right schools. Though they did not condone
error, the teachers at the Evangelical schools were more tolerant than those at
the university.
The Christian tradition has long
had room for what is called “adiaphora.”
It refers to things that are indifferent, not essential. Belief in the deity of Christ is essential to
Christian theology; whether Christians should use or abstain from alcohol is—my
teetotaler friends’ opinion notwithstanding—not essential. The beliefs embodied in the creeds mentioned
earlier tend to be essentials, though we might differ about the exact meaning
of certain phrases in those creeds. For
example, the clause from the Apostles’ Creed, “he descended into Hell,” is
interpreted differently by Lutheran and Reformed theologians. Others suggest the clause simply means Jesus
really died on the cross. Nothing
crucial rests on how the phrase is interpreted; historically, each group agreed:
“On the third day He rose again from the dead.”
If the
Fundamentalists seemed sometimes to make almost everything an essential, the Liberal
sometimes made it seem as if very little was essential. In the
end, I suspect convincing those Fundamentalists something was not essential
would be easier than convincing those Liberals something was essential. If you could show that the Scripture treated
the matter as indifferent, the Fundamentalist would probably agree; the Liberal
wouldn’t care much what the Scripture said—no matter how essential the
Scripture made the matter.
Perhaps you
noticed my title is in the past tense. I
don’t have as much respect for those who might call themselves Fundamentalists
today. Neither the callousness of the
late Jerry Falwell nor the smug arrogance of Pat Robertson is worthy of
respect. Such attitudes are detrimental
to the cause of Christianity; so, too, is the fearful fractiousness of some Fundamentalists. In truth, some Fundamentalists forget the
watching world judges Christians by their demeanor before they judge them by
their doctrine. But, since Machen’s hope
for an adjectiveless Christianity is no longer realistic, if it ever was after
the rise of Liberalism, I suppose I need some label. So, though journalists sometimes blur the
distinction between the terms, I prefer to be known as an Evangelical rather
than a Fundamentalist. “Evangelical” has
a grander history. More important, “Evangelical”
focuses on the great fundamental—the Evangel.
Still, as I
said, the Fundamentalists were right—fundamentally.
