Dave Doran gives us some thoughts on movements in general and the fundamentalist movement in particular.
In general, I think he is right. For a movement to exist, you have to be moving somewhere.
Given this understanding of movement, it is also correct to say that there is no longer a new-evangelical movement. But it isn’t correct to say there are no new-evangelicals or no new-evangelicalism. The philosophy is alive and well and expressed by many evangelicals repeatedly. It won’t do to say that new-evangelicalism is dead simply because the movement has ceased.
Among fundamentalists, there does seem to be a movement to push fundamentalism into some kind of alliance with evangelicals. We have been calling this movement the ‘young fundamentalists’. Some of us have been resisting this movement. Speaking for myself, my resistance to this movement is largely due to the fact that I don’t think the YFs truly understand either fundamentalism or evangelicalism and the entrenched divisions between them.
I think men are putting a spin on fundamentalism to allow men to get together with evangelicals. They are also trashing fundamentalism so that it doesn’t look any better than evangelicalism.
I agree. We get the same consistent message, all this bit about being “self-critical”, the legalism angle, the relativism when it comes to every aspect of worldliness. It all serves to erode a fairly clear position and open the possibilities of broader alliances.
There is nothing wrong with thinking about how to apply the Scriptures in new cultural contexts, but most of these questions aren’t that hard.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
I should add that I agree with Doran on the article. I was mainly talking about Don’s last paragraph. I should have considered that my two sentences would be interpreted as rejecting Doran’s idea. Anybody who has read me knows that I am not a fundamentalist movement-wise, but idea-wise. The idea of fundamentalism is scriptural. What it looks like isn’t always, but I am very defensive of fundamentalism because of the idea. I believe the idea is what gets attacked by evangelicals.