Fundamentalist? If the shoe fits....AND IT DOES!

Fundamentalist has such a negative connotation in the minds of so many Christians.  Fundamentalists are considered narrow-minded, intolerant, ignorant, backward, isolated, etc. - and the list goes on.

So why in the world would I embrace such a deplorable term? (I have to admit, the word “deplorable” has such a nice ring to it after the 2016 US Presidential Elections.  Note: I AM one of those “Deplorables”)

So back to the term Fundamentalist.  The bottom line is that the word “Evangelical” has lost so much of its historical meaning.  When that term came into popularity around the middle of the 20th Century, it was a term of conservatism.  It was term to differentiate Christians from a section of the Church (the Fundamentalists) who were seen (rightly or wrongly) as those who were more focused on rules and what you did NOT do (we don’t drink, we don’t dance, we don’t go to movies, we don’t…) as a Christian.  So men like C. Carl Henry and Billy Graham championed a new identity – an Evangelical.  This was a term that described a person who held to all the “Fundamentals” (doctrinally) of the Fundamentalists and yet didn’t have the same level of combativeness over and against the culture.  (I find it extremely ironic that many Christians took a massive stance against movies and entertainment at a time when 90% of the films and plays being produced were edifying, innocent, wholesome and uplifting.  And yet, today Christians have no problem whatsoever with so much of an entertainment industry from which 90% of what is produced is immoral, dishonorable, and disparaging of family values and people of faith).

So why am I turning on the term “Evangelical”?  Because it has lost so much of what it initially stood for.  Today, we have people “professing” to be Evangelicals who no longer believe in a host of historic Christian doctrines.  There are some so-called Evangelicals who  no longer believe the Bible to be the inerrant (in ANY sense of the word).  There are others who say they believe in Universalism, that Jesus is not the only way to God (i.e. everyone will be saved).  There are others who have abandoned the historic teaching of the doctrine of Hell.  There are others who believe that someone can be a practicing homosexual and that God affirms that lifestyle.  I can list other doctrines/practices too – but these will suffice to make my point.  NONE of these positions were to be found in the Evangelicalism of the middle of the last century.  So essentially the term Evangelical simply no longer means what it used to mean.  For years, I would add the term “Conservative” as an adjective to communicate the type of Evangelical I was, but due to the watering down of the term/concept, I am opting to resurrect the term Fundamentalist once again.

I admit it is provocative.  It still has so many of the negative connotations.  But the fact is, I truly am a Fundamentalist in so many senses of the term. I believe in all the historic fundamentals of the Christian faith and by and large, I stand over and against a godless, secular culture and the entertainment industry and educational institutions that have effectively perverted several generations of Christians.  This past year exposed that probably more than ever in the United States, where you had millions of professing Christians who found a way to support a Hillary Clinton and yet she stood for almost everything Christians have historically stood against.  There simply was and is no way a Christian could support her or the positions of the party she represented/represents.  Those that did had either slid into apostasy, or were deceived in the most extreme manner.  

So there we go – Fundamentalist/Fundamentalism.  I have tried on the term/concept and it fits great.  It feels good and most importantly it is a true description of who I am and what I believe.