6. A growing ecumenical spirit which viewed fundamentalism as too separatistic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Ben didn’t like this point too much in our discussion as I recall. As I understand what he was saying, he seemed to resist the attachment of the label ‘ecumenical’ to young fundamentalists (or to conservative evangelicals for that matter). First, if we simply say ‘a growing broad<\/i> spirit of openness’, we can get to the heart of this point. The evangelicals viewed fundamentalism as too separatistic. Can anyone deny that YFs criticise fundamentalists as being too separatistic? That is what this openness to MacArthur, Mohler, Dever, Piper, et al, is all about. In this area in particular, the YFs are most like the early evangelicals.<\/p>\n
One thing further on this point… Ecumenism is as ecumenism does. Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of ecumenical:<\/p>\n
1 : worldwide or general in extent, influence, or application
2 a : of, relating to, or representing the whole of a body of churches
b : promoting or tending toward worldwide Christian unity or cooperation<\/p>\n
Merriam-Webster, I. (1996, c1993). Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. (10th ed.). Springfield, Mass., U.S.A.: Merriam-Webster.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The tendency towards wider Christian unity or cooperation is an ecumenical tendency. It is certainly not what a separatist is doing. To the extent one criticises separation, to that extent he is tending towards wider cooperartion. Though the YFs may not be full blown ecumenicals, seeking to unite the entire professing church world-wide, I submit that neither are the evangelicals. But the direction is the same. I am not against Christian unity, but I am also not for unity with all Christians, including many whom I consider to be true believers. The YFs are trending in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n
~~~<\/p>\n
I suppose these answers are not specific enough, although they have been specific in some cases. Nevertheless, I do see a parallel between the attitude of the Young Fundamentalists and the evangelicals of the 50s and 60s. I left the older bunch by choice. It appears this younger crowd is joining them by choice.<\/p>\n
Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a recent on-line conversation [note, in a software upgrade, the conversation comments were lost] I brought up points made by Ernest Pickering in his book The Tragedy of Compromise. Here are the points: Pickering cites 6 factors that spurred the rise to NE in his book, The Tragedy of Compromise. They are: 1. A […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-6I","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416"}],"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=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}