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My recent post about evangelicals vs. fundamentalist seemed to strike a chord (or a nerve). It was written from the biased perspective of an evangelical. I may have been too harsh on my fundamentalist brothers and sisters or possibly we may have different definitions for the word "fundamentalist."
My point being, just as there are evangelical myths, I am sure there are fundamentalist myths. If any reader out there defines themselves as a fundamentalist, I would love to hear from you about myths about fundamentalist or the differences you see between yourself and evangelicals. If I receive enough input, I will work the best thoughts into a post to let all of us evangelicals know what it really means to be a fundamentalist.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
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I am quite sure that different people mean different things when they use the word "fundamentalist". These days it's mostly used as a pejorative term, as in "Islamist fundamentalist" or, "red-necked, ignoramus, creationist, certainty-loving fundamentalist" or, "self-centred, traditionalist fundamentalist".
Originally, however, "fundamentalist" was a term applied to a specific group of committed Christians who were trying to uphold the fundamental principles of Christianity. That might give people a clue as to why the meaning of the word has changed until it has become an insult. If not see John 15:18, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you." (RSV)
I grew up within the evangelical Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church in Australia which is seriously on the nose with the rest of the Anglican church here, particularly since they're so rich and the only diocese that appears to be growing. That is only to say that I know what evangelicalism is. I do consider myself to be an evangelical but I also consider myself to be a fundamentalist evangelical and I make that distinction because I know from long experience that a lot of evangelicals are not fundamentalists in the original sense of the word.
These evangelicals do not trust God. They do not uphold the word of God as inerrant and reliable except in some nuanced "spiritual/metaphorical" sense. No wonder so many of them have an existentialist understanding of the meaning of "faith" as something that you have to screw up from within yourself, as an act of will, despite the evidence, rather than something whose object is God, because of the evidence.
All of which is to say that it's past time to coin another term to describe those who uphold the fundamentals of Christianity so that when we have a conversation on the matter it will not be made worthless by semantic confusion. Soon enough we might have to find another word for "evangelical" given that its meaning seems to have become so clouded that you feel it's necessary to write a series on myths about evangelicals.
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