A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 4: Transition and Apology

The next two parts in this apologetic series (a defense of the continuing viability of fundamentalism in the face of an increasingly conservative evangelicalism) reflect a slight shift in emphasis--a shift away from historical fundamentalist concerns that I see as in jeopardy of being lost, and a shift to more contemporary threats to orthodoxy to which conservative evangelicalism as a whole seems rather ambivalent.

Some will no doubt cry foul at this point because I have ceased defending historic fundamentalism and have, to some readers at least, begun grasping wildly at my own pet non-essentials in an effort to preserve my particular slice of fundamentalist identity. I'm prone to self-deception, so maybe such naysaying is accurate. I'm not sure, though, that this is the case. The "fundamentals" around which the movement coalesced both in its first life (the fight against modernist liberalism) and its second life (the fight against the new evangelicalism) do not represent a comprehensive list. One looks in vain, for instance, for the fundamental doctrine of the justification by faith or the doctrine of the Trinity as major emphases in the two lives of fundamentalism. Why? Because these doctrines were not under peculiar attack in the day, and so were not defended as rigorously as other doctrines. The fundamentalist waged war on the fields where error was camping and defended the citadels that were under attack. But this does not mean that fundamentalism is obliged to remain static and refrain from battling elsewhere (as some seem to suggest).

The theological landscape is changing, and so must the polemic. Modernist liberalism is a crippled old man, dying as much from self-inflicted wounds as by any inflicted by its foes. And a new favorite pastime in evangelicalism today seems to be the renunciation and abandonment of the New Evangelicalism for dead. But the fact that fundamentalism's traditional enemies lie dead or dying does not demand that fundamentalism lie down and die with them (again, as some seem to suggest). What has arisen to dethrone modernism is not fundamentalism, but post-modernism. And what has arisen to dethrone new evangelicalism is not not fundamentalism, either.

It is an unfortunate reality that fundamentalism has often been defined by what it stands against rather than what it stands for, thus leaving the impression that once its enemies fall, it no longer has a raison d'être. But in fact there is something we stand for and thus a perpetual raison d'être. So as new threats emerge to threaten orthodoxy, even in incipient form, we as fundamentalists must adapt our arguments to meet them.

I am convinced that at least two doctrines deemed non-essential by the conservative evangelical majority are more essential than at first meets the eye, viz., cessationism and young earth creationism, which will be the topics of my next two posts. Ambivalence to these blind spots, in my mind, does not serve Christian unity, but rather functions to erode biblical authority. And that is something fundamentalism most definitely stands for.

MAS