Our flight to Portland was cancelled today, so I took time to catch up on interesting reading. I read an essay entitled The origins of fundamentalism: toward a historical perspective by Ernest Sandeen (1968). In reading I realized a few important things:
1) I am NOT a fundamentalist.
2) Theological fads are only as influential as the people who support them.
3) I am terrified of writing. (This blog should help)
So what is fundamentalism? And how did it start?
Lyman Stewart, a chief stock holder in the Union Oil Company of Los Angeles devoted his life to bolstering the Christian faith through the printed word. Both he and his brother published a series of twelve pamphlets entitled "The Fundamentals." They printed and distributed over 175,000 copies of these pamphlets in the U.S. The essays they contained came as a reaction to Modernism, a theology of putting scriptures into their historical context and only living by the standards which seem to still hold true today.
Two groups reacted very strongly to this mentality by falling back on biblical innerancy. These groups, the dispensationalists and the Princeton Theologians, united to prove the bible's innerancy. They asserted 3 main points:
1) Verbal inspiration of the Bible
2) The inerrancy or every reference, statistic, and quotation in the Bible
3) 1&2 hold true for the "original autographs" of the Bible.
These three main points became the tenets of fundamentalism.
The "five points" of fundamentalism come from the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1910. This group never intended for their five points to become the benchmarks of fundamentalism. The five points Christianity has now adopted as its "fundamentals" are:
1) the inerrancy of scripture
2) the virgin birth
3) a substitutionary atonement (Jesus died to forgive all of our sins)
4) Jesus' physical resurrection
5) Christ's miracle-working power
Despite the youthfulness of dispensationalism and the Princeton theology, fundamentalism became the twentieth century theology most closely resembling nineteenth century theology. Fundamentalists focused on returning to the practices of the early New Testament churches, just as their fathers had.
Who were the dispensationalists? Sandeen did an excellent job explaining their beliefs:
"Dispensationalism refers primarily to the division of history into periods of time, dispensations, seven of which are usually named. The Scofield Reference Bible, the most influential dispenser of dispensationalism in America, named them Innocence (the Garden of Eden), Conscience (Adam to Noah), Human Government (Noah to Abraham), Promise (Abraham to Moses), Law (Moses to Christ), Grace (Christ through the present to the judgement of the world), and the Kingdom or Millenium. Proponents argued that God judged man not on an absolute and unchanging standard but according to ground rules especially devised for each dispensation. For example, under the dispensation of Grace, men are required to repent and turn in faith to Christ, while under that of Law they were commanded to obey the law."
Overall, an interesting essay with a lot of pedantics. I am not a fundamentalist because I have a much looser hold on the inerrancy of the scriptures, and a lot of rebellion against the absolute authority of the scriptures. The scriptures have about as much authority in my life as my father does right now. I have no lack of respect for everything they say, but I really like reserving the ability to pull rank and choose to set some parts aside for the time being.
I don't even know if I want to pray that that changes. I currently live like a fundamentalist, but I don't want to be one, if that makes any sense.
