1. Should Mark Minnick write of a fundamentalism with which he is not familiar?

2. If a fundamentalist should not proceed disavow shameful bits of the movement, then what he do with those shameful bits?

3. Should a fundamentalist commend bits of the movement that he believes are not worthy of the name?

2. If a fundamentalist should not proceed to disavow shameful bits of the movement, then what should he do with those shameful bits?

TQ:

1. I certainly would not advise Mark Minnick to write about anything with which he is not familiar.

2. A Fundamentalist should admit* them, confess them as his errors and stop making them.

3. A Fundamentalist should commend any bits of history that are praiseworthy, even outside his own movement, and he should condemn any bits of history that are shameful, even if found within his own movement.

ORQ:

See 2 above.


The strategy as I have outlined it above has two benefits, as I see it. First, it demonstrates the proper attitude toward sin and it sets an example to the world of repentance and amendment of life. Second, it helps establish a certain credibility amongst outsiders who are already quick to find—where it is advantageous to them—hypocrisy.

Who wants a pig telling him to wash his face?

_________
* tr.v. dis•a•vowed, dis•a•vow•ing, dis•a•vows
To disclaim knowledge of, responsibility for, or association with. q.v. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disavow

Thanks for your response. Allow a follow up question, please.

You say, "A Fundamentalist should admit* them, confess them as his errors and stop making them."

What if they aren't his errors? How can I, and why should I, as a fundamentalist, take responsibility for people who do not agree with me, and whose errors I do not share?

It seems to me that Dissidens' idea (#2) is not at all a new one. Scripture records multiple instances of men who took responsibility for and confessed the sins of their people (e.g., Neh. 1:6-7). Today these men are often referenced as quintessential examples of spiritual leadership.

The standard practice appears to be to keep quiet in fear of angering the current leadership in hopes of becoming the leadership later, and gaining influence to fix the problems then (i.e., fix fundamentalism from the inside).

Of course, by then one must continue the charade in order to keep the cherished position.

Follow Up:

Well of course if they aren’t his personal errors, he can’t apologize for them; no one can repent of a sin he hasn’t committed, even if he wanted to. But disavowal is slightly different. It seems to me that disavowal ought to come naturally to people who value separation. I have spoken often of “taking a walk down the hall”.

There is a way, even if one is not personally implicated in the act, of addressing the character of the movement and dispraising its bad behavior. This has a mitigating effect on the culture. Unacceptable ways of doing business get invalidated.

I have said many times that fundamentalism had a good number of reflective and irenic men in it, but it is also quite fair to say that those men never set the tone for this movement. The movement has a well-earned contempt, which is a real shame at this juncture in church history.

Even evangelicals are persuasively telling evangelicals that they can’t maintain truth anymore. Imagine how better our situation would be if two things occurred: 1) a modicum of Christian grace were married to a strong separatism, and 2) a vital liturgy had been retained. Who would be flirting with neo-evangelicalism now as it embraces feminism, sexual perversion, transparently shallow worship, open theology…?

I’m afraid that for too long a walk down the hall was a prelude to cleaning out one’s desk.

considering the question minnick answered ("what can we learn from the christian fundamentalists?"), and that he used less than 200 words, is it any surprise that he only focused on a single idea (primary separation)?

does his qualifier about the type of fundamentalism he is familiar with even affect his answer? in other words, are there any christians who claim the fundamentalist label but deny the validity of primary separation? i know there are enough groups that deny the validity of secondary separation, but minnick doesn't even get to that idea in this short answer.

That’s a fair point. Indeed I think quite a few comments missed the mark. In that respect the collection of opinions on the 9Marks site is quite revealing. For the most part both the fundamentalists and evangelicals misapprehend this movement.

And I fear it is too late to transcend the caricatures.

I think for the rest of us it is profitable to wonder if any rapprochement is possible given so incoherent a view of so central a movement. (Notice: I’m not saying there can’t be peace among the descendants, but we are not talking about any reconciliation between these ideologies.)

On that note, by mere coincidence, some of us will find ourselves in the midst of this new fundamentalistic evangelical confab at T4G.

In preparation, I downloaded their statement of affirmations and denials - a sort of statement of faith for this group: http://www.t4g.org/T4TG-statement.pdf

Oddly enough, the language appears to have the de-loopholedness of an attorney turned theologian. It has that Chalcedonian aura about it. But, many of its statements seem vacuous considering the fact that it does not describe what it speaks of as being clothed and in its right mind.

Just one example - in the last statement to live for the eschaton and not for the here and now. I suspect that, if they began to discuss what that would look like, T4G would become F4G ("F" for fragmented).

Strangely, we still seem to think that merely a clear articulation of theology in the theoretical realm will somehow save the Gospel. We seem to think that outside of this we can apply all sorts of pragmatics. On this score, there really was not much difference between Norris and Graham.

I have never agreed with you more than when I read the following (sorry, don't know how to do the blockquote):

. I certainly would not advise Mark Minnick to write about anything with which he is not familiar.

2. A Fundamentalist should admit* them, confess them as his errors and stop making them.

3. A Fundamentalist should commend any bits of history that are praiseworthy, even outside his own movement, and he should condemn any bits of history that are shameful, even if found within his own movement.

ORQ:

See 2 above.


The strategy as I have outlined it above has two benefits, as I see it. First, it demonstrates the proper attitude toward sin and it sets an example to the world of repentance and amendment of life. Second, it helps establish a certain credibility amongst outsiders who are already quick to find—where it is advantageous to them—hypocrisy.

Who wants a pig telling him to wash his face?

"How can I, and why should I, as a fundamentalist, take responsibility for people who do not agree with me, and whose errors I do not share?"

I don't see anyone asking for acceptance of responsibility. But I would settle for two things:

1. Repudiate error internal to fundamentalism (even that for which you're not responsible) with as much vim and vigor as you repudiate the errors of evangelicalism.

2. Grant the non-fundamentalists the same liberty to say, "But I'm not responsible for that," that you claim for yourself in relationship to fundamentalism.

I won't hold my breath.

i'm curious how dissidens would answer the question of what lessons broad evangelicalism should learn from fundamentalism is 250 words or less. how many words would he spend disavowing names before he picked out one or two important lessons that would fit in the remaining space?

1. Repudiate error internal to fundamentalism (even that for which you're not responsible) with as much vim and vigor as you repudiate the errors of evangelicalism.

2. Grant the non-fundamentalists the same liberty to say, "But I'm not responsible for that," that you claim for yourself in relationship to fundamentalism.

I have done both in my context, and have heard others, including Minnick, do the same.

How was it received? Did they repudiate the error or did you have to repudiate them for persisting in it?

Perhaps not directly applicable to this post, but at least running along side of it was this from a speech at the White House last Monday regarding Thomas Jefferson in honor of birth 265 years ago:

"These are not small flaws, nor are they the only ones. We are not wrong to insist on their being remembered, even today.

Still, I think it’s clear that the compulsion to criticize Jefferson has gone too far. Our era is possessed by a small-minded rage against the very idea that imperfect men can still be heroes. But we badly need such heroes. In fact, we can’t live without them.

Perhaps, in the past, we have been too prone to place our forebears on a pedestal. But it is far worse, to feel compelled always to cut the storied past down to the size of the tabloid present. Perhaps the time has come for that to change. Perhaps we are wise enough now, to know that imperfect heroes are the only kind there ever are, or can be.

So let it be for his ideas that we honor Jefferson, above all else. And for the cause of human freedom and human dignity that he so eloquently championed. His failings may weigh against the man, but not against the cause for which he labored so heroically."

HT: Powerline.

Uncultured One:

Yikes! That is one staggering comparison; J. Frank Norris and Thomas Jefferson. [Fascinating at several points, actually.]

Would you care to develop that point, Uncultured One?


My Questions:

With Unk, I’m curious to know how these repudiations by you and Minnick were received. While the claims may serve to excuse personal associations, they do not go very far in explaining the character of this movement.

Do you really think that personal statements made by minor players in this tragedy serve to explain anything at all? Let us recall how fundamentalists bloviate: can we read these sorts of repudiations in the Blu-Print, Faith for the Family, Calvary Contender, the annual resolutions of the OBF or FBF? A book by Pickering perhaps? Something from the pen of George Dollar? A sermon by Clearwaters?

Anything?

I am sorry of I gave the impression that Norris and Jefferson should be compared. I only intended to draw attention to the last line, but felt the other was needed for context. Here's the punchline: "His failings may weigh against the man, but not against the cause for which he labored so heroically." The speech giver's point is valid, I believe, even if it still must be qualified when shifting from the consideration of Jefferson to Norris.

And at this point I'll confess some ignorance about J. Frank Norris and grant that some my not believe he labored for anything heroically other than his own selfish agenda. But I am not sure this was ever all about Norris anyway.

Oh, no need to apologize; I think we can agree on your essential point, but I wasn’t sure how it applied to J. Frank.

There is a difference here I think is crucial.

One of the things that—to my way of thinking anyway—distinguishes me from both the hostile critics of and the pollyannish apologists for the movement is a willingness to draw a line between the movement and all its actors.

We can’t build a wall but we can draw a line.

I’m not being overly generous when I say that the movement had very good people in it. I think there were real heroes tucked away in the crevices (and many of those heroes were treated shamefully). I know some of them personally and I’ve also had intelligent discussions with knowledgeable people who were closer to the events by one and two generations. I have read the mail of a fair number of the good and the bad. There were some very good and likable men. There were also some less good and not entirely repulsive men as well.

Then there were the swaggering louts. I think it is only right to do justice, as you say, to flawed men. What I can’t do is excuse the louts for the direction the movement has taken and which it continues to defend. It’s too much like defending all the drivel of Fanny Crosby because she was a nice little blind lady.

We’re talking here not about blind ladies but about a culture. The difference between Crosby and Faber is significant, not just aesthetically and culturally but historically. We must begin by taking history seriously; all the rest is just frou-frou. Girls tinkling away on the piano and selling CDs.

I thought about this again yesterday while watching Frank Schaeffer on BookTV talking about his book Crazy for God. [It was a rebroadcast from last November.]

Here you have a real nutcase and the son of a nutcase—maybe the son of two nutcases. Now, decades after the fact, we can hear all about the contemptible nature of evangelical culture and the objectionable personalities of men like Pat Robertson. Yah, that’s timely!

Here you had two opportunists, Francis and Franky, who averted their gaze when it suited their ambitions. They were all about being activists for right-to-life. They had a voice, or at least in the political sense they had a window of opportunity to do the right thing. They did not.

We still have Roe v. Wade, Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, Ted Haggard and all the contemptible hucksters of American religion, and now in addition we have a whining, derelict mind who could not find a way to act when he was afforded the sort of opportunity all those nice little saints never got. And he is still misrepresenting the genius of American Christianity for the clods at Slate and The Nation.

It is this indifference to culture that is killing us. It is often suggested that we are being vindictive towards the dead. It’s not true; we are being truthful about the dead because we care about the past, and the past is important to us because it has made us who we are and has placed us at a very critical moment in the church.

I know we can’t go back and fix the Norrises, the Clearwaterses, the Wenigers, the Hands, the Shieldses. But if we believe in Providence we know that we were not placed here now to fix what happened there then.

We must find a reason to be good now. And that involves what I call that walk down the hall.

Points well made.

Sometimes I think you'll regret defaming Fanny Crosby when you meet her in glory, dissidens.

But then, there are days, when I doubt you two will ever cross paths.

That Faber's writings are superior to Crosby is inarguable.

That the church is poorer for its overuse of Crosby and its general disuse of Faber is also undeniable.

That many confuse sympathy with Crosby with approval of her work is also unfortunately true.

But I still don't see how that makes her work corrupt or venial, or her person worthy of contempt.

But if Dissidens gets to hold the keys to the poet's corner in heaven, Crosby will be certainly be out on the curb. Glorification be...well, the d-word.

And (IMO), the likelihood that he'll get to chat with his favorite "works-are-necessary-to-get-me-to-heaven" hymnwriter is low. Even though Faber observed that "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy," I don't know that the divine mercy covers a clear rejection of the gospel of salvation sola fide.

For Faber's sake, I hope it's wide enough for him to have entered in spite of what he believed.

And for our sake, we can of course learn and benefit from his skills despite doubts regarding his personal destiny.

Semper vendentes certainly does have a disturbing concept of Heaven, but I rather imagine he can’t help it. I suspect these personal preferences of his are the sad consequence of his nursing disturbing concepts of the life of the spirit.

But this raises an interesting point. Let us imagine a liturgy that does not focus on our own eternal benefit or on making Jesus the Genie of Our Salvation and Bringer of Victorian Comforts. Let us imagine a liturgy that concentrates our skill and imagination on glorifying Jesus for what he is. Let us suppose that all of what Faber has written will then be inadequate and all that Crosby has written will then be inadequate. Does that make them equivalent now?

The important questions are not who will be more popular in Heaven (as thought Heaven is some sort of old home week at BJ or Maranatha Baptist Bible College), but who now best focuses our affections on what is most admirable about God.

If we in fact do not know “that the divine mercy covers a clear rejection of the gospel of salvation sola fide”, then I would suggest that that is not a helpful way to judge his works. If we are surprised to see Faber in Heaven, whose fault will that be? Ours or St. Peter’s?

Likewise for Crosby.

The point is that our liturgy be right, not that it be most amenable to our current appetites.

I wonder when we can get started on that liturgy. And if we were to get started on that, whose model shall we more closely follow, Crosby’s or Faber’s?

As long as we are speculating about the unknowable, what if we are parroting a woman who has since repudiated her words?

Wouldn’t that be ironic?