Fundamentalists have a reputation for being culturally conservative. I'll let others quibble over whether cultural conservatism is a sine qua non of fundamentalism. It's a worthy discussion, but that's not my point today. What I want to discuss today is the meaning of cultural conservatism. In my experience, when the label "cultural conservatism" is raised, the specter that most often comes to hearers' minds is the absurdity of conserving a peculiar culture, usually American culture from somewhere between the Great Depression and the immediate aftermath of World War II. That this vision of cultural conservatism has thrived in fundamentalist circles is an unfortunate reality: you can still visit the 1940s in many fundamentalist churches today. And that is a tragedy.
This vision of cultural conservatism, however, is not the kind of cultural conservatism that fundamentalism has always practiced. George Marsden makes this point clearly in his Fundamentalism and American Culture and especially his Reforming Fundamentalism. In many cases, he observes, early fundamentalist culture was more folksy and populist than their modernist rivals because, as a grass-roots movement, the fundamentalists had lost much of their high-culture machinery to the modernists (after all, when they lost the church builiding, they also lost the pipe organ--which in some cases was worth more than the building!). Marsden further observes that the early new evangelicals were sometimes more straight-laced and staid than their fundamentalist brothers precisely because they were pursuing acceptance among modernists who had retained a rather "high" culture.
The early fundamentalists did, however, develop a certain reserve about culture based on robust concerns about depravity and true worldliness. Where the new evangelicals had adopted something of a non-critical "Christ of culture" mindset that pragmatically assumed neutrality in culture for the sake of re-engaging it, the fundamentalists began to be more critical of culture. The early fundamentalist response, however, was not (and still is not) monolithic. Some adopted a simplistic "Christ against culture" stance, dug their heels into 1947, and resisted all cultural advance from that point forward. But others adopted something of a "Christ and Culture in Paradox" stance that viewed culture with measured distance, anticipating and abhorring what was evil in culture, but clinging to what was good. Now there were (and still are) practical similarities between the cultures reflected in these two visions of fundamentalist culture, but not identity.
What concerns me about the "conservative evangelical" tent is a tendency to abandon both kinds of cultural conservatism and to embrace a sort of non-critical cultural ambivalence reminiscent of the new evangelical model. In their haste to jettison the simplistic and unhealthy cultural conservatism of "Christ against Culture" fundamentalism, there has also developed among conservative evangelicals a certain repugnance for the critical cultural conservatism of "Christ and Culture in Paradox" fundamentalism. And I fear that the result of this tendency is the loss of some of the practical antithesis that the Gospel anticipates.
It is for this reason that I continue rather stubbornly to plead for cultural conservatism in the church today.
MAS
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About Me
- Mark Snoeberger
- After growing up in the great state of Pennsylvania, I settled down in 1994 with my new bride, Heather, in Allen Park, Michigan, and have been here at Detroit Baptist Seminary ever since (with a bit of time away for doctoral work). Since 2007 I have been privileged to be a part of the systematic theology faculty here. I love teaching, researching and writing, hunting with my two boys, and enjoying any little bit of God's unadulterated creation I can find (which means I occasionally have to get out of Detroit). But all these things matter to me only because theology matters. For it is God himself who gives all men life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:25).
9 comments:
This is very helpful, Mark. Thanks! I would love to see this developed further.
Essentially, this is what Michael Riley and I both argued, from slightly different angles, in our Preserving the Truth talks.
Mark,
Really good points of clarification here. I'm inclined to say that I appreciate the fundamentalist instincts for conservatism, but I am at least disappointed (and sometimes grieved) by the culture that fundamentalism has often sought to conserve. Fundamentalism, for some of the reasons you cite here, has developed a rather short-sighted conservatism.
I'd also like to see this further developed. I'm not sure what you mean by "cultural conservatism" unless it's "a certain reserve about culture based on robust concerns about depravity and true worldliness." For once, not much to argue with there. Happy MLK's birthday!
Thanks for delving into the topic.
One more thing . . . and I think this comment would interact a little with your post.
When I visited Southern California, I went to six churches consecutively . . . 1) Grace Community, 2) Calvary Chapel, 3) Lancaster Baptist, 4) Saddleback, 5) Church on the Way, and 6) the Crystal Cathedral.
In my opinion, the best presentation for the externals of high culture musically was the Crystal Cathedral - the modernists. And it was interesting to see how each of the other church communities presented themselves as cultural conservatives.
Mark, can you give us an example of where conservative evangelicals are showing themselves more "culturally neutral" like the neo-evangelicals of yesterday?
Joel,
Perhaps the most visible example is the insistence by some on the neutrality of musical forms.
Most interesting. After reading Marsden years ago I was impressed by his detailed scholarship, but always disappointed that he was not inquisitive enough to really become acquainted with the fundamentalism that I had grown up in during the 40s & 50s. My dad was a Th.D. from Northern Seminary and pastor of the seminary church in Chicago. (By the way, he preached in a cut-away coat, and they did have an organ.) It was during his pastorate that the CBFMS was organized in his church as a fundamentalist effort. He testified in several of the historic court cases brought on by the Convention, and the conservatives/fundamentalists won every one. He was also a contemporary of Carl Henry at Northern and was personal friends with men who became leaders on both sides of the new evangelical divide.
As a young boy I knew personally many of the personalities on both sides of the fence -- as the fundamentalists referred to the developing divide between them and their friends who chose the path of "expansive" evangelicalism. I'm sorry, but I think much of the populist caricature of fundamentalism was/is a myth -- especially at the leadership level. Sure, there were always opportunists and demagogues to cite as examples of classless populism, but it did not represent the educated class of leaders like Robert Ketchum, W.B. Riley, J. Palmer Muntz, William Culbertson, and many, many others. Unfortunately many men today no nothing (or very little) of the real fundamentalism (both theologically and culturally) of the post war days, and all they know is the caricature.
Thank you. Great post.
Chad P.
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