Some say we must take a stand against the dictatorship of the Big Personality?<\/strong><\/h5>\nI can\u2019t believe that anyone is trying to construe pastor Danny Sweatt as a big, overbearing personality who is trying to control fundamentalism and get it to bend to his will. What demands did he make in his message? If people would really listen to his sermon once again, leaving aside the bit about Calvinism, they would hear him say mostly the same things the younger guys have been saying: We can\u2019t be overbearing, we\u2019ve got to be open and accessible, etc. etc.<\/p>\n
There is a large personality, a national figure, making demands in this fight, though, isn\u2019t there? Who would that be?<\/p>\n
I can see our slogan for 2009 coming out this way: \u201cWe\u2019ve taken a stand against Big Personalities because Kevin Bauder said so.\u201d<\/p>\n
How ironic is that?<\/p>\n
~~~<\/p>\n
I have been rather sarcastic here. Some won\u2019t like it. (2009: the year we took a stand against sarcasm.)<\/p>\n
The reason for my sarcasm is that we are in very risky territory here and I think we are in this territory for NO GOOD REASON.<\/p>\n
Some do have an agenda in this. Some want to make changes in fundamentalism. They are using this controversy for their own purposes, I believe, and are willing to stir up emotions over various issues to pursue those ends. I am just urging people to stop and think.<\/p>\n
Some might say, \u201cThings are quieting down, why stir the pot any longer?\u201d The issues remain with us, though the rhetoric may be temporarily ratcheted down. Now that things are a bit quieter, perhaps we can think things over and take serious stock of the perils that face us.<\/p>\n
I believe there are good and sufficient reasons for men of God to unite around the fundamentals in separation from modernism, compromised evangelicalism, and worldliness. I believe that a reasonably unified group of fundamentalist believers can accomplish some worthy things collectively that we would be hard pressed to accomplish individually. I believe such a useful fellowship exists in the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International. It is not a unanimous group, but a coalition of men who hold to a certain core philosophy and creed that is vital for orthodox Christianity.<\/p>\n
And\u2026 I believe there is NO sufficient reason to divide that coalition.<\/em><\/strong> I believe it would be shocking to cause division over any of the issues named so far.<\/p>\nMore on \u2018what next\u2019 in a later post.<\/p>\n
May God grant wisdom to us all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The latest controversy in the ranks of fundamentalism certainly has many of us riled up. Although things have quieted down a bit now, there are still rumblings in various venues of the fundamentalist blogosphere that indicate the pot is still simmering with plenty of hard feelings and resentment to go around. Many are still agitating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[37,71],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-ly","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1337,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions\/1337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}