One of my correspondents challenged me on this subject after the latest rough and tumble debate at SI. My correspondent said to me

You are not charitable with the CE’s IMHO.  You do hold them to a higher standard than our fellow Fundamentalists.

My correspondent cites some situations where fundamentalists shared platforms with dubious characters and one where a fundamentalist made a judgement in a church discipline situation that appears to have been at least unwise, if current available information is accurate. I have advocated a ‘wait and see’ position in the latter case. In the platform fellowship cases, I have not had a lot to say, although I have said some things.

My correspondent concludes:

Taking a wait and see is fine, but not when you are so hard on the CE’s.  You are not consistent in this area in my opinion.

Until we take out the beams in our eyes, we will not honor and glorify God!

I promised my correspondent a response here at oxgoad, so this is it.

The fact is that I am hard on Conservative Evangelicals. They aren’t conservative enough for me and they still have most of the errors of New Evangelicalism as part of their philosophy and modus operandi. They are very little different from the original New Evangelicals (although some differences can be discerned).

And the fact is that I tend to take a wait and see approach to the errors (real or alleged) of fundamentalists because on the important questions, fundamentalists get the answers right. I might add that I take a wait and see attitude toward fundamentalists of various sorts, including those I criticize most. Some of my other correspondents are ready to virtually tar and feather some of the more leftish fundamentalists. I am not ready to do that yet. These correspondents might think I am too soft.

Why the difference and what does it reveal?

[Read more…]

I’d like to comment on myself this time. In my post on ‘the vision thing’, I made this comment:

Another complicating factor in making these comparisons is that the ‘competing’ ministries are represented by ministries strongly identified with a popular individual on the conservative evangelical side as opposed to more institutional or group oriented ministries/organizations on the fundamentalist side.

Others have noticed this difference also. The Conservative Evangelical brand is largely led by ministries centered around prominent individuals. The Fundamentalist brand, these days, really has no star power in its leaders and it tends to find whatever leadership it has in collective efforts, rather than in individual ministries.

That is a generalization, of course. There are, I suppose, some exceptions to the rule, but I think the generalization holds.

For example, when you think Conservative Evangelical, you think of a list of names: Dever, Piper, Mahaney, Mohler, MacArthur, etc. Some of these men represent institutions and work closely with a number of other men, but there is a sense that they are the focal point of the brand.

On the other hand, when you think Fundamentalism, what comes to mind? Bob Jones University, the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, Maranatha, Detroit, Central, the Wilds, etc. Of course, individuals lead these ministries and fill up their staffs, but I would suggest that even fairly well informed observers would have to think a bit to get the individual leaders of ALL of these ministries. On the CE side, if we simply named 9Marks, Desiring God, Sovereign Grace, Southern Seminary, Grace to You… most observers – regular readers of this blog – would be able to put the names to those ministries without any effort.

Isn’t that a curious difference? It wasn’t always so in Fundamentalism. And that involves both an irony and a sign of generational change.

[Read more…]