Several years ago I was explaining to a friend why I’d never been invited to preach in an acquaintance’s church, and never would be. “It’s because I’m not a fundamentalist,” I said. And it was true.
In that church a “fundamentalist” was one who believed not just in the “fundamentals” of the faith, but also in a cultural context that meant flat-top haircuts for men, koolots for women (if you don’t know what those are, just rest in the ignorance), exclusive southern gospel quartet psalmnody, and a dispensationalist, separatist, KJV-only identity. I am, for sure, not that.
The next week, though, I was registering as an observer for a liberal Baptist gathering, where I’d planned to write about the goings-on. Inclusive as they were, they tried to sign me up as a delegate. I tried to explain to the nice person at the registration table that I actually didn’t want to be a delegate because I wasn’t protesting the hegemonic patriarchal whatevers they were there to stand against. “You don’t want me signed up,” I said. “I’m a fundamentalist.” And it was true.
In their context, a “fundamentalist” meant anyone who believes the Scriptures were inerrant, the tomb was empty, and there is such a place as hell.
It seems to me the question of “evangelical” is similarly amorphous and contextual. I don’t mind saying that I’m an evangelical, and it’s true, but it’s mostly a tag for other Christians to know what kind of Christian I am, not a self-identity.
I’m a catholic (small “c”) Christian. I’m a Protestant Christian. I’m a Baptist Christian. I’m an evangelical Christian. I’m a four-point Calvinist, complementarian, high-view-of-the-sacraments, ecumenism of the trenches kind of Christian. And the definitions can get a whole lot more specific depending on how much context the situation requires.
If I need to know whether or not we can work together on a church plant or an evangelism strategy, the definition of “evangelical” matters to me. The rest of the time, the ambiguousness of the term doesn’t bother me any more than the fact that both Kuyper and Moltmann are “Protestants” (whatever that means).
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October 19th, 2009 | 9:57 am | #1
Well put, Russell. The term “evangelical” became nearly vacuous when in the 1970s people like Clark Pinnock tried to say you could be evangelical and deny inerrancy. It became utterly vacuous at a meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society about five or six years ago (in Colorado Springs) when the ETS membership couldn’t bring itself to vote that Open Theism is inherently inconsistent with the ETS doctrinal basis, “The Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is the Word of God written and is THEREFORE [emphasis added] inerrant in the autographs.” If, as Open Theism says, God is capable of (unintentional) error, then of course the “therefore” collapses. Harold Lindsell urged in the 1970s in BATTLE FOR THE BIBLE and his follow-up to it that inerrantists should just stop calling ourselves evangelicals and call ourselves fundamentalists instead–since “fundamentalist” has such negative overtones that only those who really embraced the fundamentals of the faith would be willing to embrace it. The vast majority of “evangelicals” at the time rejected that advice. We probably made a mistake.
Anyway, call me a Bible-believing, Trinitarian, old-school Presbyterian five-point Calvinist who believes Scripture rules every aspect of life, and you’ll have me pegged.
October 19th, 2009 | 10:31 am | #2
[...] out his brief post here. Posted in Uncategorized [...]
October 19th, 2009 | 10:48 am | #3
I’m gadflying on this topic, Dr. Moore, so please pardon me for asking you what I’ve asked Joe and Jared in this serious of posts already. I have to ask you in a different way, however, because you have already identified my root concern: “evangelical” means something extraordinarily vague, or perhaps something which is inclusive to the place where the cricles of the venn diagram don’t fit on one piece of paper anymore.
Your example here about the way “Fundamentalist” gets used is a good clarifier, but let me press you on that a little: for the “Fundamentalist”, he uses that word in place of “Christian” to veil or mitigate his disdain for other people who are inside orthodoxy but not of his same thread-count of zebra-striping; in some ways he uses the word “Fundamentalist” as a substitute for “orthodox” (and, in my opinion, exposes his lack of historical credibility).
So in the spirit of J. Gresham Machen (among others), shouldn’t we just make the clear disctinction between what is actually “Christian” and what is “not Christian” theologically and ecclesiologically (which is still a pretty broad field all in all) and stop hiding behind a veil like “Evangelical” which really doesn’t clarify anything?
October 19th, 2009 | 10:49 am | #4
“serious of posts”. As if I was capable of such a thing.
October 19th, 2009 | 11:16 am | #5
All labels seem to me to fall prey to that sort of ambiguousness–even the label “Christian” can mean almost anything to the average America.
October 19th, 2009 | 11:49 am | #6
Barry –
I think that is a GREAT point — and the question then has to be, “exactly why is that true?”
Does anyone really not know what it means to be a “republican” in the USA in this time and place? How about an “environmentalist”?
While those are broad categories, they exclude enough so that you know who is and isn’t one. We as the disciples of Christ ought to be <i.at least as able as a republican or an environmentalist to define what we mean when we say we are “Christian”.
That we can’t speaks to our faults and not the faults of those we are trying to reach with our message.
October 19th, 2009 | 3:27 pm | #7
Would all evangelicals agree with this article I wrote last week?
The Insanity of Unbelief
by Dan Delzell
Who could ever create a story as wild as the one in the Bible? What mastermind could put together 66 books by more than 40 authors and have it written over a period of 1500 years? Incredibly, all of these authors point to the same two ultimate destinations: first, an everlasting paradise offered as a free gift to those who believe; and second, a place of eternal torment for those who reject the gift.
What could this many authors possibly gain by coming up with such an extraordinary story on their own and then presenting it as truth? It certainly didn’t make their lives any easier. Why would some of these same authors allow themselves to be tortured to death rather than recant their message? These clues provide healing from spiritual insanity for anyone who is open-minded. Are you open-minded or close-minded about Christ?
Who would ever make up a story that a God of love sent His only Son to suffer torture at the hands of men? How loving is that unless God really did love the world so much that He sent His Son to die for our sins just as the Bible states? Why out of thousands of religions in the world does only one religion offer forgiveness of sins as a free gift? Why does this one religion just so happen to be the only religion that has each of these 40 authors over 1500 years describing the same reality? How did they all get their writings to fit together so well and with so much consistency?
Were each one of these authors insane, except for their remarkable ability to agree with one another about heaven and hell and the Messiah? If they were not insane, then why would all the authors over many centuries contribute to such a conspiracy of deceit about a mythical God and a far-fetched narrative of redemption? Do you have enough faith and enough evidence to truly believe that it has all just been a worldwide hoax? Are you sane enough to see how it takes more faith based on less evidence to reject Christ than it takes to accept Him as your Lord and Savior?
How insane is it for you to live 80 years upon this earth for yourself just hoping that the Bible is wrong about Jesus and about heaven and hell? How crazy is it for you to risk spending one year in agony, yet alone forever and ever in unimaginable torment? Who would ever lie and make up such a place? In a postmodern age where people are brainwashed to believe that nothing is absolute, are you absolutely, 100% sure that Christianity is a lie and that Jesus was a fraud?
If you don’t believe in absolutes, then you are not really positive that Christianity is wrong, are you? Please read this next sentence slowly and carefully: Are you really willing to risk spending billions upon billions of years in hell rather than repent of your sin and accept a free gift from a loving God who has given us a written revelation of eternity? What if you really were insane on this issue? You wouldn’t know that you were insane, would you? Are you willing to admit that it is possible that you are insane about Christianity and about your need for salvation?
How can you be absolutely sure that Christianity is wrong and that you are right? You! Not the 40 authors over 1500 years, but you! What makes you the right one? “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)
To quote a well-known motivational speaker from the 1990’s, I plead with you to “Stop the Insanity” before it is too late. Do you realize why God has allowed you to read this article right now at this very moment in your life? If you are unwilling to be healed of your spiritual insanity, then you won’t have a clue about what you have just read. That rejection of God’s good news for you would provide you with proof of the insanity of unbelief. Are you too insane to recognize your own insanity, or is there a glimmer of spiritual sanity in your soul today?
October 19th, 2009 | 3:46 pm | #8
“All labels seem to me to fall prey to that sort of ambiguousness–even the label “Christian” can mean almost anything to the average America.”
I agree. I’m not sure we can come up with any label that is so descriptive we agree with everyone who adopts it.
Frank, would you therefore say that we shouldn’t use any labels at all?
October 19th, 2009 | 4:18 pm | #9
Roger — great question.
The one-liner answer is, “no way,” which I think is inherent in the question I asked back to Barry: what causes our labels to go the way they go?
In one sense, “evangelical” was adopted as a counterpoint to something else because Christianity was divided — and it was surely intended to point out the weaknesses of its opponents who were bent on anathematizing them. In one sense, “evangelical” was a term intended to be juxtaposed with the corrupted term “catholic” (nb – watch what Dr. Beckwith does with that statement) to mean a method by which they were being faithful to the faith and work of the Apostles. Their opponents were intent on demanding a “catholic” faith which is the one uniformly practiced everywhere (by edict, if necessary); these men were instead seeking to establish an “evangelical” church which was true to the evangel first which could and should reform against the demands of the evangel.
And to that end, “evangelical” as a label was a means to an end as it was again at the beginning of the 20th century. But sadly, it simply does not mean that anymore. When what James Dobson, Chuck Colson, John MacArthur and Rod Paisley all do can be broadly called “evangelical”, the word simply has no meaning — it’s a sociological term meant to establish a water balloon to catch all the ideological demographics issuing from the same historical spigot.
Labels are useful; I would argue they are wholly-necessary to think about any subject. But one has to know what one means by these things for the real thinking to get itself underway — and “evangelical” is a term that is frankly useless.
Hope that helps.
October 19th, 2009 | 4:56 pm | #10
[...] me to pick out one common thread among the various posts today on this topic: Dr. Moore isn’t much interested in whether he’s actually an evangelical or not, pointing…. Frank Turk grants that some people need the label for sociological purposes, but doesn’t [...]
October 19th, 2009 | 6:26 pm | #11
Interesting this should come up when it did. I just finished attending a conference where the purpose was to call for and define Gospel-Driven Separation.
I think it has already been said, the labels need to go. I am a fundamentalist, in the sense that I believe in separating from those who deny the gospel. I however do not hold to any of the requirements of “flat-top haircuts for men, koolots for women (if you don’t know what those are, just rest in the ignorance), exclusive southern gospel quartet psalmnody,…KJV-only.” (I edited out dispensational and separatist because I do hold those two.)
Let’s start asking individual churches what they believe, instead of running around with a label-maker.
October 19th, 2009 | 9:01 pm | #12
[...] Russell D. Moore – Is It Wrong that I Don’t Care if I’m an Evangelical? [...]
October 20th, 2009 | 8:54 am | #13
Jon–I’m a bit unclear what you are saying here. Are you suggesting that those who not “dispensational” cannot be (1) “fundamentalists” or (2) “evangelicals”?
We might broaden to this questoin to embrace a more generic eschatology. If you are not premill, can you still be either a “fundamentalist” or an “evangelical.”
Not that I really care all that much. My take on these things is: “you tell me what a fundy is, and I’ll tell you if I am one.” Or, “you tell me what an evangelical is, and I’ll tell you if I am one. So, if you tell me that the term “fundamentalist” excludes an amil or post mil eschatology, I’d be happy to tell you I am not a fundy. And if you tell me that you can’t be an “evangelical” unless you are a premil, I’d happily tell that I’m not an evangelical.
Or, to touch on subjects that were once really hot theological issues (are they still?) if you tell me that I can’t drink beer and smoke cigars and still be a “evangelical” or a “fundamentalist” then I’m not either of those things.
Which, come to think of it, seems to be Russell Moore’s general approach.
Finally, what, for goodness sakes does “Gospel driven separation” mean? Do we all make stakes for Lost Cove, TN?
October 20th, 2009 | 8:34 pm | #14
Dr. Moore, I’m confused. For what reason did you choose not to be part of this gathering of liberal Baptists? Political, or theological?
Do you think of yourself as a fundamentalist in those circumstances because you don’t think it’s right to protest “hegemony” or “patriarchy” or because you believe in the orthodox tenets of Christianity?
October 22nd, 2009 | 11:16 am | #15
Nick,
I know which sect he is referring to. And trust me, THEY would not want HIM as a delegate. He was showing mercy to them.
October 26th, 2009 | 3:04 am | #16
[...] this an oxymoron? Dr. Russell Moore explains the way in which theological labels may be unhelpfully elastic and, at other times, quite [...]
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