{"id":1357,"date":"2009-06-16T22:11:43","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T06:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/06\/16\/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-fundamentalist\/"},"modified":"2009-06-16T22:11:43","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T06:11:43","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-fundamentalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/06\/16\/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-fundamentalist\/","title":{"rendered":"what does it mean to be a fundamentalist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of the discussion swirling about our fundie blogosphere lately contains talk of \u201cstaying in\u201d, \u201cgoing out\u201d, or other prepositional relationships to \u201cFundamentalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is unclear to me exactly how we are \u201cin, out, under, behind\u201d and so on with respect to a \u2018movement\u2019. We can be in an organization like the FBFI by paying our annual fee. You may or may not think it is worth it to be in the FBFI, but that is how it is done. You can be in the GARB by being a member or pastor of a GARB church. You can be in the OBF the same way.<\/p>\n

But how are you \u201cin\u201d Fundamentalism?<\/p>\n

It seems to me that this is the wrong way of looking at the question. The question really is, \u201cAre you a Fundamentalist?\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, it is a state of being question. To be a fundamentalist is to adopt a fundamentalist philosophy. I might argue later what I think that philosophy is. I think we have argued it before in many places, but for this post, I\u2019d like to argue instead something of what it means to be a fundamentalist as a pastor of a local, independent Baptist church.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First,<\/strong> I think it means that you will be committed to some form of discipline in the local church where you will attempt to keep the testimony of your local church free from the taint of sin and worldliness. This will include more conservative music than most churches in your town, and guiding your people to that kind of philosophy. That will include some concern about standards of dress and an insistence on modesty in dress and behaviour that may be absent from other churches. (Granted, one size will not fit all \u2013 one fundamentalist pastor may differ in degree on some of the niceties of application here.) This will include an insistence on Biblical preaching, holding a high view of inspiration and a high view of Biblical (especially New Testament) imperatives.<\/p>\n

Second,<\/strong> You will refuse cooperation with local evangelical churches in most cases. I say most, but in practice, that has meant \u201call\u201d for me. I suppose there might be some causes where you could support the effort of an evangelical church in some way (Crisis Pregnancy Centre???) but no opportunities of the kind have really presented themselves to me. Of course, I haven\u2019t been looking for them either.<\/p>\n

Third,<\/strong> You will be cautious in recommending or endorsing popular radio, TV, or Internet preachers. You will find their philosophy and practice questionable on several serious points and will generally want to steer your people away from their influence.<\/p>\n

Fourth,<\/strong> You will be generally exclusive in your support of Fundamentalist mission boards (although you may have inherited \u2018questionable\u2019 missionaries from previous pastors) and you will generally be exclusive in your support of Fundamentalist Bible colleges and Universities.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s my list, at first thinking.<\/p>\n

Would anyone care to add something else? What have I missed?<\/p>\n

Does anyone disagree with anything in my list?<\/p>\n

\"don_sig2\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of the discussion swirling about our fundie blogosphere lately contains talk of \u201cstaying in\u201d, \u201cgoing out\u201d, or other prepositional relationships to \u201cFundamentalism.\u201d It is unclear to me exactly how we are \u201cin, out, under, behind\u201d and so on with respect to a \u2018movement\u2019. We can be in an organization like the FBFI by […]<\/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":[37,71,44],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-lT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357"}],"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=1357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}