When Jerry Falwell died a few weeks ago, I made some comments about fundamentalism (read Christian Fundamentalism) while recording The Sitter Downers that were rather general in nature, and that were perhaps not explained as fully as I would have liked. Today I read an interesting take on the idea of fundamentalism as a title on the New Perspective Counseling website. The post entitled, Fundamentalism: A Term To Reclaim, defends Christian Fundamentalism as a title to be worn with pride, and given the context of the post, I would agree. However I think a deeper look at the situation will reveal something more about Christian Fundamentalism.

I certainly don’t have a problem with the “fundamentals of the faith”…I believe in those fundamentals as well, 1. the inerrancy of the Bible, 2. the Virgin birth of Jesus Christ, 3. the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, 4. atonement by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, and 5. the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but to define “Fundamentalist Christians” as those that believe in the “fundamentals of the faith” is simplistic at best.

Fundamentalism may have started this way, but it quickly grew into something more by adding more and more “fundamentals” to the list, and by requiring, if not formally then pragmatically, that all “true” believers follow their specific brand of systematic theology. Those that refuse to accept the entire package of fundamentalism are not only heretics, but are either statically positioned further away from God than those that have been fortunate enough to interpret all of Scripture accurately, or worse yet, they are moving farther away from Christ every day until they come to know the full truth.

Basically, fundamentalism became defined by arrogance rather than humility, and mistrust rather than gracious love. For an example of this check out the doctrinal statement found on the Fundamental Evangelical Association’s website. You will note that their list of “fundamentals” has grown substantially. Another example of this “growing” of “the fundamentals” is the expansion (again if not formally, than at the very least pragmatically) of the immanent return of Christ, into the immanent return of Christ as properly understood under the auspices of dispensationalism.

Furthermore, fundamentalism continued the wave of anti-intellectualism started by The Second Great Awakenings (1800 - 1820) the revivals of Charles Finney (1824 - 1837) and the Layman’s Prayer Revivals (1856 - 1858) by emphasizing a personal experience of conversion over a deep understanding of the Christian faith, and an interpretation of Scripture that depended greatly on fundamentalist presuppositions and an expectation of the Spirit to spoon feed them the truth rather than a desire to approach the Scripture with humility, and do the hard work of interpretation with the Spirit coming along side to help and guide.

Rather than presenting fully developed arguments against David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and others, along with German Higher Criticism of Scripture and Darwinian Evolution, fundamentalist withdrew into its own protective cave and helped to create the secular/sacred devision that we have today. The goal of the fundamentalist movement was to protect against the onslaught of attacks that the 19th century presented to the Christian faith, unfortunately what they ended up doing was creating a system of “safety” beliefs much like the Pharisees did in order to ensure obedience to God. In so doing they lost much of the Spirit of Christ found in the New Testament. Indeed, there is much more to a late 20th/early 21st century Christian fundamentalist than simply believing in the “fundamentals of the faith” irregardless of terrorism and non-Christian groups.

Certainly this explanation does not define all Christian Fundamentalists. There are those that define themselves as such simply on the basis of believing in the five “fundamentals” of Christian faith (heck, I would define myself as a fundamentalist based on that definition), but for each one of these there are churches full of the more “developed” fundamentalist described above.

For more information on this topic read J. P. Moreland’s book, Love Your God With All Your Mind, you may also want to listen to the short audio clip of William Lane Craig posted here. You can read a few short excerpts from Moreland’s book here.