Evangelical Pastors and the Desire for Academic Respectability

Glen Scorgie is a Professor of Theology at Bethel Seminary in San Diego. He has lectured extensively in Asia including China. He has an interesting post entitled, "As Theology Totters in the West." He begins:

The People’s Republic of China has enthusiastically embraced Western science and technology, and modernity’s materialistic worldview. Pictured above is the imposing business faculty of China’s Renmin (the People’s) University. Here this leading Communist university trains a new generation of Chinese business leaders, offering MBA degrees in global economics along capitalist lines. What you won’t find at the university, however, is a faculty of Christian theology. China is still disdainful of religion, and a robust program in theology would only encourage it. But how different it is in the West, right? Well actually, not so much. Christian theology is in serious decline in the West, even in evangelical seminaries and other institutions of higher learning. Pretty soon it may be on life support here as well.

He says that Western schools have been heavily impacted by pragmatism. As in China now, people in the West are interested in education that will produce an income. He says:

at one time the term “divinity school” conveyed in an intentional way an institution’s commitment to specializing in the study and transmission of the legacy of special revelation. The closely cognate term “seminary” has a more professional and vocational focus—an institution for the training and formation of clergy. St. Mary’s College, where I studied at St. Andrews, has been known since 1411 as the divinity school within the larger university, and I am pretty sure it would be loathe to change its name to seminary, for the reason mentioned above. I suspect that at the seminary where I teach (and where we dropped the adjective “theological” a while ago) we now have a predominantly professional vision of our institutional mission, and in light of that it is debatable whether divinity is still as strong a collective focus. The name we have adopted and the way we operate would suggest that we really are what we call ourselves, a seminary—a professional school in which it is no longer justifiable to regard the study of divinity (the specially revealed things of God) as our primary focus.

He says that North American administrators are driven by the market and they have to provide what their constitutency want. He writes:

With new, ever shorter and more pragmatic curricula being considered, for marketing and recruitment reasons, by accredited seminaries throughout North America, it remains to be seen what the future of theology or divinity will be. The growing consensus among number-crunching administrators is that an introductory (and quasi-catechetical) survey of doctrine will remain important to the preparation of ministers, but beyond such a minimalist baseline anything deeper is strictly optional. Already theological libraries lie largely idle as seminary students are rarely expected to probe deeper than the contents of their survey course textbooks.

I find his analysis interesting. One phenomena that I watched develop in the 80's was the introduction of a new professional degree called a "Doctor of Ministry." The D.Min. degree could usually be completed in summer modules and the classes were mainly related to church management and administration. Little or no theology required. When I was teaching at International Baptist College in the 1980's, we began a D.Min. program. I was somewhat leery of the degree mainly because I perceived it as a "watering down" of what historically has been required for doctoral degrees. However, there was a big demand for the new degree and there were a number of potential students desiring to get a Dr. in front of their name and administrators willing to do what it takes to get more revenue. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with additional professional education for a minister, certainly education is always good. But it seems to me that ministers and especially fundamentalist evangelical ministers are very eager to call themselves "Dr." Many of them have honorary degrees; many of them have degrees from diploma mills; and the D.Min. would become a means to get a "real" doctorate without the academic rigor historically required for such a degree. I have often thought that this desire to be called "Dr." was due to an inferiority complex (i.e., intellectual inferiority).

Am I a Fundamentalist Atheist?

Some people have termed me a "fundamentalist atheist." When I first heard the term a couple of years ago, I thought it a clear oxymoron. As one said:

"Atheist fundamentalism" is essentially meaningless as a label because atheism is not a religion (no more than baldness is a hair color). A fundamentalist is somebody who adheres strictly to the fundamental tenets of a religion, philosophy or any other prescribed thought or dogma - and will have no room for change or deviation from these ideas and practices, such as Biblical literalism and creationism. Atheism, by the definition accepted by most atheists, has no positive beliefs intrinsic to it. It is only defined as a lack of belief in any of the many gods found in holy books throughout the world. There is no set of people who can be considered "more atheist" than the mainstream or moderate belief and hence there is no distinction between a "fundamentalist" and any other kind of atheist.

The term seems to have originated in 2007 and was popularized by the subtitle of Alister McGrath's response to Richard Dawkins published that year: The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine. McGrath compares Dawkins to a religious fundamentalist. He writes:

Dawkins simply offers the atheist equivalent of slick hellfire preaching, substituting turbocharged rhetoric and highly selective manipulation of facts for careful, evidence-based thinking. . . . Dawkins preaches to his god-hating choirs, who are clearly expected to relish his rhetorical salvoes and raise their hands high in adulation. Those who think biological evolution can be reconciled with religion are dishonest! Amen! They belong to the "Neville Chamberlain school" of evolutionists! They are appeasers! Amen! Real scientists reject belief in God! Halleujah! The God that Jews believed in back in Old Testament times is a psychotic child abuser! Amen! You tell them brother (pp. 11-12)!

McGrath continues: The total dogmatic conviction of correctness which pervades some sections of Western atheism today . . . immediately aligns it with a religious fundamentalism that refuses to allow its ideas to be examined or challenged (p. 14).  For McGrath, apparently, one is a "fundamentalist atheist" if one holds to his non-belief in god(s) with such dogmatism that he refuses to consider any evidence to the contrary.

An evangelical Christian (albeit a left-wing evangelical), Pete Enns, sees a similarity between Christian fundamentalists and Atheist fundamentalists, he states:

I've read enough of the New Atheists to see a pattern in their thinking about the Bible, and it is disturbingly similar to what you see in the Southern Baptist Convention or Bob Jones University. Conservative Christians and New Atheists share naïve views of what the Bible "ought" to be, namely the notion that if the Bible is really the "Word of God," it will provide accurate historical and scientific information.

Conservative Christians are very clear about this assumption, and it is just under the surface for New Atheists. This shared assumption is taken in polar opposite conclusions.

New Atheists point out that Genesis is wholly out of sync with scientific reality. This is true, but they assume that this sort of thing is sufficient grounds to declare the Bible a stupid book, Christianity a stupid religion, and Christians stupid people. "See how sloppy the Bible is with basic facts known to every middle schooler? And you call this the 'Word of God!' Get over it."

Lack of elementary scientific credibility renders the Bible suspect. Oddly enough, conservative Christians hold the same assumption. If the Bible is not historically, even scientifically, accurate, then God is a "liar" and there is no reason to trust him. The Word of God cannot make such huge factual errors. Based on this assumption, the scientific evidence is either ignored, marginalized, selectively appealed to, or re-interpreted to ease the tension.

New Atheists and conservative Christians have all sorts of reasons to be at odds, and their shared naïveté about the Bible is certainly one of them. Both have false expectation of what the Bible ought to deliver, and this sets them on a collision course. Both sides have some homework to do ("Does God Talk to Us Through Fiction? Unpacking a Non-Literal Interpretation of the Bible").

So, for Enns, "fundamentalism" has to do with how one approaches the Bible. If one expects it to be inerrant and show obvious internal markers that it is of divine origin, then one is a fundamentalist. The difference between Christian fundamentalists and Atheist fundamentalists is that they come to different conclusion regarding whether the Bible shows such evidence of divine origin. He claims that they both are naive in how they approach the Bible. He and his left-wing evangelical brethren believe that the Bible reflects the mindset of the times and the culture in which it was written and may contain some errors and still be the Word of God.

According to this definition, I would acknowledge being a "fundamentalist Atheist." I think that if the Bible is really the divine Word of God, it ought to reflect a different mindset than the times and culture in which it was written. It should be markedly different than other books written during the time. If it reflects the same kinds of ideas as found in the writings of other civilizations at the time, I see no reason to think the Bible is special. For example, Enns admits that the Genesis creation story is not much different than the other creation stories told in other cultures at the time. He writes:

Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, archaeologists unearthed other creations stories from the ancient Mesopotamian world, the same environment that produced the Bible. These discoveries have helped us understand a lot about how creation stories worked in the ancient world.

Ancient peoples did not investigate how things came to be; they assumed that there was a "beginning" when the gods formed the earth, people, animals, trees, etc., as you see them now. You can hardly blame them for making this assumption. The "how" question of creation was settled. They were interested in the "who" question: which of the gods is responsible for all of this? Each society had its own answer to this question, which they told in story form. The biblical story cannot claim a scientific higher ground. It, too, works with ancient themes and categories to tell Israel's distinct story.

So for people like Enns, the fact that the Bible reflects a cosmology which we all know is erroneous is okay. One shouldn't expect the Bible to teach anything different than what the peoples of that time believed. But if that is the case, then why should I think there is anything special about the Bible? Why should I think that it is the Word of God? In addition, how can I know what parts of it are true and accurate and what parts are not? Harold Lindsell, many years ago spoke of the problem faced by those who believe the Bible contains error, he said they have to find a "canon within the canon" (The Battle for the Bible). Moises Silva, in a Presidential address to the Evangelical Theological Society (which makes belief in inerrancy a requirement for membership) states:

The doctrine of Biblical infallibility is not a piece of abstract theorizing but an immensely practical conviction. For if the Scriptures are characterized by errors such as are found in any other book, then it is up to my less-than-reliable mind and moral judgment to determine what in the Bible is truth or error. And thus the notion of the Bible as a reliable disclosure of the divine will loses any distinctive meaning (“Can Two Walk Together Unless They Be Agreed?”: Evangelical Theology And Biblical Scholarship, 1998).

I agree with Silva, Lindsell, and the historic Evangelical position that divine inspiration demands inerrancy. If the Bible is God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16) which all evangelicals believe, then its origin is God and if God cannot err, then the Bible cannot err. B. B. Warfield of Princeton laid this argument out clearly over 100 years ago in The Inspiration And Authority Of The Bible . One's understanding of what it means and how it should be interpreted might err but the text itself cannot err. Left-wing evangelicals such as Enns would say that the problem in Genesis that it is be interpreted wrongly by fundamentalists. It should be interpreted as the kind of literature that it is, i.e., creation myth and then one can properly understand what the message from God is in the text. To me, there is no reason to believe that the text is from God if its format and its teaching are essentially the same as other creation myths of the time. Why should I believe this one is a message from God but the others are not? So, I guess I am a fundamentalist after all. I expect much more from a divine book than liberal and left-wing Evangelical Christians do.

The Bible Keeps Women Down

Al Mohler, the President of the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the world, has an interesting article on his website entitled: "Hard to Believe? Biblical Authority and Evangelical Feminism." Mohler makes reference to an article in the 2010 edition of Sojourner's magazine by Anne Eggebroten entitled: "The Persistence of Patriarchy." It seems that Eggebroten, who teaches Religion at California State University (Northridge) paid a visit recently to Mohler's good buddy's church, John MacArthur's Grace Community Church in Southern California. MacArthur, of course, is one of the best known leaders of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. His church is a "mega-church;" he has authored numerous books, and has his own school (The Master's College and Seminary). Molher calls MacArthur "one of the most respected and influential preachers of our times, with perhaps the most widely-disseminated ministry of exposition in the history of the Christian church."

So, what did Eggebroten find in her visit to MacArthur's little empire? “God is male, all the pastors, deacons, and elders are male, and women are taught to live in submission to men.” She should have expected as much because she had already visited the church's website. There, I had listened to Anna Sanders lecture women on how to live in submission to their husbands. “We need to beat down our desire to be right and have our own way,” she had said, citing John Piper, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and Martha Peace—all authors published in the last decade. “It’s his way, his rights, his expectations, and his plans. … Be a helper.” Eggebroten ran into a woman with a degree from the school where she teaches. She asked the lady: “Is women’s submission to their husbands stressed in this church?” The answer, of course, was yes.

Molher calls Eggebroten on the carpet for being surprised at what she found. He says:

Anne Eggebroten’s article represents what I call a “National Geographic moment” — an example of someone discovering the obvious and thinking it exotic and strange. It is like a reporter returning from travel to far country to explain the strange tribe of people she found there — evangelical Christians believing what the Christian church has for 2,000 years believed the Bible to teach and require. So . . . what is so exotic?

I actually agree with Mohler. Why should anyone be surprised that a church that takes the Bible as literally the Word of God would put women down? The Bible clearly does that and so anyone who wishes to follow the Bible will also do that. Eggebroten says:

Here’s the question: Is God permanently committed to the kinds of social hierarchy that existed in the first and second millennium B.C.E. and continued until recently, when education and voting were opened to women? Or does the vision of Paul in Galatians 3:28—“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”—take precedence?

Mohler rightly calls her on "sloppy exegesis" here. He says:

In Galatians 3:28 Paul is clearly speaking of salvation — not of service in the church. Paul is declaring to believers the great good news that “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” [verse 26]. He concludes by affirming, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” [verse 29]. To read Galatians 3:28 the way Eggebroten reads the verse, you would have to believe that the Apostle Paul was in direct contradiction with himself, when he restricts the teaching office to men in letters such as 1 Timothy and Titus.

The reality is, as Mohler says, Paul is not contradicting the overall teaching of the Bible on women. It does actually reflect the "the kinds of social hierarchy that existed in the first and second millennium B.C.E. and continued until recently." Eggebroten would like to find a change in perspective on this subject from Paul but she is misguided. In addition to the passages that Mohler cites, Paul also told women to be silent in the church and learn from their husbands (I Cor. 14:34-35) as well as implying that women are more easily deceived than men and need to allow their husbands to make important decisions while they concentrate on motherhood (I Tim. 2:12-15). This was the role of women in ancient cultures (and today in fundamentalist churches) and so, one should not be surprised to find the Bible supporting it.

Mohler is correct when he says: Paul is not liberating the Church from the Bible. In the end, that is the real issue. There are Christians who would demand to be liberated from the Bible? Now that is what really should be shocking. That is why I think liberal Christianity also fails. It wants to try to reinterpret the Bible to agree with modern culture and it is simply not possible without tearing out huge sections of the Scripture. The Bible, reflecting the culture in which it was written, reduces women to an inferior position to men. If one believes the Bible is the Word of God, then one must follow this teaching.

An Anthropologist Describes Fundamentalism

Recently I have had some posts on Fundamentalism. I used to consider myself a fundamentalist Christian. In the circle in which I lived, it was considered a "badge of honor." It was equivalent to being a biblical Christian, one who remained true to the Bible in spite of the opposition from the world.

Today for most people the term "fundamentalist" is a pejorative term. It refers to anyone who is too extreme in their religion. Many times it carries the connotation of someone who will resort to violence in support of their religious beliefs, such as Islamic fundamentalists or even Christian fundamentalists who kill abortion doctors.

So, the term "fundamentalism" means different things to different people.

In his book Introducing Anthropology of Religion,  David Eller describes fundamentalism from an anthropological point of view:

Religious fundamentalism derives its name from the notion of "fundamentals," those things--beliefs, behaviors, organizational structures, and/or moral injunctions--that are felt by members to be most essential or central, the oldest, deepest, and truest aspects of it. (p. 276).

He sees three common elements in religious fundamentalism:

First, religious fundamentalism is for something, namely what it perceives to be the fundamental and crucial elements of its faith, which constitutes the worldview and "the truth" for practitioners. In the case of Christianity, these fundamentals typically focus on the Bible even as a literal and inerrant document and source of knowledge; a certainty that their path is the true path and therefore, the exclusion and sometimes condemnation of others (even other Christians) as corrupt and lost; a sharp distinction between religion and "the secular," the latter of which is inferior or actually evil; an eschatology in which the end-time is near and only they will survive into the new kingdom, that is, an apocalyptic view and a sense of being "chosen"; an uncompromising moral standard; and increasingly, a willingness to participate in politics to institutionalize all of the above, including a more or less conscious desire to dismantle the separation of church and state. . . .

Second, religious fundamentalist is against something. . . As Marsden proceeds to argue, fundamentalists "must not only believe their evangelical teachings, but they must be willing to fight for them against modernist theologies, secular humanism, and the like" (George Marsden, "Defining American Fundamentalism, p. 23). . . Fundamentalists see themselves as militants. . . They are, in their words and often enough in their works, at war with the world (pp. 277-78).

For some this means total separation from the world, such as the Amish, or other communal groups. For others it means separation from what they perceive to the be the evil pleasures of the world, such as gambling, dancing, drinking alcohol, certain types of music, certain types of apparel, and so on. For still others it takes on an activist form whereby the world is engaged and attempts are made to change the world. This could be through evangelism (either mass meetings or personal "soul-winning"), and/or through political means, such as attempts to "legislate morality,"  post the Ten Commandments, reinstate prayer in schools, teach "scientific" creationism, and so on. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition are examples of this type of fundamentalism. An even more extreme example is the Christian Reconstructionists, a Calvinist group (which would eschew the label Fundamentalist), whose stated goal is to enforce all of the OT laws including stoning homosexuals, adulterers, and so on.

Eller notes a third common thread of fundamentalism--it is enamored with the past. The past, when the fundamentals were formed and truly practiced, looms as a kind of golden age, an ideal and idealized way of life. Fundamentalisms thus emerge as one variation of the cultural nostalgias produced by the modern world--memories of a better, purer time (p. 279). Fundamentalism favors the past over the present. This is evidenced oftentimes in their choice of hymns over more modern worship music, in the use of the King James Bible over newer translations, and so on.

Here are some additional characteristics of a fundamentalist mentality:

• Intellectual and moral absolutism--"we alone have the truth."
• Obsession with who is and who is not a real "fundamentalist"
• The need to be "certain"--doesn't like ambiguity
• Submission to authority is a prime virtue--the written Scriptures as taught by the (male) leader
• Sense of being special--we are God's children, we have the truth and everyone else is lost
• Resistance to change--any change is seen as compromise which is almost always wrong

Probably the common thread through all of these is the suspicion of any modern ideas. Modernity, for fully understandable reasons, undermines all the old certainties; uncertainty is a condition that many people find very hard to bear; therefore, any movement (not only a religous one) that promises to provide or to renew certainty has a ready market (Peter Berger, The Desecularization of the World,  p. 7 cited by Eller,  p. 282). This is why conservative and authoritarian religions are growing. They provide a rock of certainty in a fast-changing world. They provide simple and divinely authoritative answers to the complexities of life. For certain people, this has a tremendous appeal.

As Eller concludes:

No religion is immune to fundamentalist tendencies, especially in a modern world of religous and cultural pluralism, rapid social change, and strong religious beliefs and sentiments. All fundamentalisms share a certain reactionary or defensive nature--even a certain militancy--although they also vary significantly not only between religions and between societies/states but also within religions. They are also, it is quite clear, no utterly unique to modern times but can be found in all times of change and threat--which are almost all times. They are ultimately one of the recurring forms of "revitalization movements" that arise in all societies (and not only in religious institutions) during moments of turmoil and (real or perceived) social decline. . . . The fact that these very circumstances are certain to continue and even intensify in the future suggests that fundamentalisms are likely to persist, and it also proves conclusively that "modernity" is not the death of religion but may rather give it new and energetic life" (p. 301).

So, one should not be surprised at the rise of fundamentalism in the 20th century. Since the last century brought the greatest amount of change to the world, it is only natural that there were a segment of society that resisted that change. As Eller points out, fundamentalism is a mentality and it is not unique to religions (although that is the most visible and potentially dangerous kind). As we move into the 21st century, one can only expect more rapid changes in society and therefore stronger resistance from fundamentalists.

Characteristics of Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity

Jeri Massi, whom I consider to be a friend and who has an excellent blog, has an interesting post on her site called: "A Sociologist Lives Among Christian Fundamentalists: His Conclusions." Jeri is a former fundamentalist Christian who has left that realm but is still a believer (I will allow her to define exactly what label best describes her current beliefs). The post is about a book by James Ault entitled: Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church . Ault is a sociologist who spent two years as part of a Fundamentalist Baptist Church in Massachusetts. His book is quite interesting. Jeri summarized some of Ault's findings in her post. She writes:

The Oral Tradition of Fundamentalism created a ready-made culture where one had not existed before, complete with its own history and its outlook of being at the center of a cosmic struggle. This cosmic struggle, by the way, is not the victorious struggle of Christ to overcome Satan and sin, but rather the struggle of Fundamentalism to restore the present culture to godliness.

The “wall of virtue” – a dress code and code of behavior that makes the Fundamentalist distinct from the rest of society. This springs up far more as a reaction against modern secularism than from any details in the sacred text, even if the sacred text is made to support the details of the wall of virtue.

Outrage – The perception that Fundamentalism is part of a cosmic struggle (the most important part) to return secular society and liberal religion back to God creates a sense of rightness in harangue, protest, confrontational behavior against those perceived to be “on the other side,” and in some instances of illegal and even violent behavior. The Fundamentalist mindset is that people who do not share the views of Fundamentalism are actually, knowingly rebelling against God fuels the fires of outrage. Several writers have noted that the culture of outrage against society, even though the outrage is usually law-abiding, nonetheless reflects the selective nature of the way Fundamentalists approach the Bible. . . .

Charismatic male leadership (the shaman) – . . . their culture is dominated by a few men who pass down the decrees that set the tone for the movement. This shaman approach does stratify Fundamentalism. A Bob Jones Fundamentalist is not identical to a Jerry Falwell Fundamentalist or a Jack Hyles Fundamentalist [or a John MacArthur Fundamentalist]. Baptist Fundamentalism, in fact, can be seen as many small empires, loosely confederated together by the sense of being the last (or most important) fighters in the cosmic struggle to set religion right again.

The different strata of Fundamentalists may not like each other, but they sense a certain strained unity as they confront far worse issues around them. But the shaman is the centerpiece of much of the identity, belief, and behaviors of Fundamentalism. Reading the Bible tends to serve what the shaman decrees rather than being a means to verify what the shaman has proclaimed. Therefore different shamans in Fundamentalism have made decrees that are entirely contrary to the Bible, but their followers refuse to believe this, or simply don’t know that their leaders are speaking in opposition to Scripture. . . .

Impending Cataclysm – The fuel that drives much of Fundamentalism is manifested in two heralded events: The Rapture/Tribulation and the Downfall of America. At different times, depending on external circumstances, the one will have supremacy over the other as the main tool for drawing large crowds, making audacious predictions of doom, and whipping up emotions. The advent of 2000 and the New Millennium brought on an incredible host of Rapture predictions in the late 1990’s, but as the day drew closer, many Fundamentalists fell back on the safer theory of the downfall of America. I mean, there’s nothing worse than waking up on January 2, 2000 with egg on your face and your foot in your mouth.

The tragedy of 9/11 bolstered Fundamentalism’s sagging credibility. Then again, if you predict cataclysm for 90 years straight, sooner or later you will be proved correct. But cataclysm in the Fundamentalist Oral Tradition represents divine judgment that sets earthly conditions right and returns people to a previous ideal state. This ideal state is entirely mythical: Religion will return to doctrinal purity where Christianity (the Fundamentalist version) is openly acknowledged by everybody to be the superior religion, and brown-skinned natives will be ready to receive it; America will return to a pre-modern culture that is drug-free, harmonious, and economically productive. Even Israel will re-form, become a religious nation again, and this time it will accept the Messiah, Jesus Christ, like it should have done the first time, and all will be set right. . . .

Outdated, isolated, and remote – Being out of date has never hindered Fundamentalism before because it could draw in people who felt alienated in modern culture. Fifty years ago, Fundamentalists were distinctively conservative but still able to participate in American society as a recognizable part of it. Fundamentalism offered a genuine remedy because it shared many assumptions and premises that many Americans recognized and even accepted. Fundamentalism, rather than forcing a lot of change onto its converts, simply persuaded them to re-prioritize their values and live in terms of things they already knew to be true. . . .

The internet has raised challenges to Fundamentalism that were not foreseen by the shamans of the Fundamentalist Oral tradition. The situation ethics, selective interpretations of the Bible, and scandals that are part of the very weave of Fundamentalism are now being challenged and debated openly, in forums where the shamans cannot exert control. But this is not one-sided. Fundamentalism relies upon hierarchy, and part of its membership just as vigorously opposes the new challenges because they threaten the fabric of Fundamentalism. The internet, rather than really reforming Fundamentalism, is polarizing it.

While Jeri would consider these characteristics to be only true of fundamentalist Christianity which she believes is a caricature of "true Christianity," I think they are basically true of historic Judaism and Christianity.

1. Oral Tradition--this of course is how religions, including Judaism and Christianity, were passed down from generation to generation until the traditions were written down. Paul himself says that the gospel was received by oral tradition (1 Cor. 15:3) and he tells Timothy to continue to pass it down (2 Tim. 2:2). Of course, Jeri would say that Paul was unique and that once the NT was completed, divine revelation ceased. I would argue that not all Christians agree that revelation has ceased. Many throughout history and today believe that God continues to speak to them.

2. Wall of Virtue--Many of the OT laws were designed to mark Israel off as separate and distinct from the world around them. Some of the practices that were forbidden them were not inherently immoral but they were prohibited because they were practiced by the Gentiles and God wanted his people to be distinct. He prefaced some commands with "Be ye holy, as I am holy" (Lev. 19:2; 1 Pet. 1:15-16). The word "holy" refers to being "set apart," or "separate" from everything that might defile. Over and over, Yahweh told the Israelites that they were to be different than the nations around them. They were a "special people," a "chosen people," and they were not bring shame upon the name of their God. The NT picks this up and transfers the notion to Christians.

3. Cosmic Struggle--I think the Bible clearly presents the notion of a "cosmic struggle" between good and evil. While Fundamentalists interpreted this primarily in terms of lifestyle issues (which the Bible does address), they are not totally off base to see the world in terms of "us" (the insiders, "God's people") vs. "them" (the outsiders, the children of the Devil) (John 3:36; 8:44).

4. Male leadership--this definitely is Bible-based. The leaders of Israel were male; priests had to be males; the disciples were male; elders or pastors have to be male. It seems that the Fundamentalists are just following the Bible here.

5. Impending Cataclysm--once again, I think this comes directly from the Bible. Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet in a long line of apocalyptic prophets (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, John the Baptist, etc.). He taught that the end of the age would happen before the first generation of his followers passed away (Matt. 24:34; see chapter 12 in The Christian Delusion). While Christians have reinterpreted Jesus' words as well as other prophecies to fit with the fact that its been 2000 years and the end has not come; the fact remains that Jesus taught he would return soon and the disciples, including Paul, believed he would in their lifetimes.

6. Outdated, isolated, and remote--I would apply this to all religions which cling to the superstitious ideas of ancient peoples. Science has shown time and time again that there are natural explanations for what people used to think required supernatural agents. There are still unexplained phenomena but I don't see any need to doubt that they too will be explained naturalistically eventually.

So, while Jeri Massi presents a stinging criticism of Fundamental Christianity, I think her criticisms apply equally to any form of Christianity that takes the Bible seriously.

From Fundamentalist Evangelical to Agnostic Atheist

I was a fundamentalist evangelical Christian for about 20 years. You can read some of my story here and listen to some of it here.

Today I am an agnostic atheist. I am atheist in the sense that I don't believe in any particular deity. I am agnostic in the sense that I don't claim to know or have certainty that no deity of any description exists. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not have belief in the existence of any deity, and agnostic because they do not claim to know that a deity does not exist.

Mark Elliott of the Bible and Interpretation website asked me to write my de-conversion story in 1500 words or less. It was posted on his site yesterday. Below is the post:

From Fundamentalist Evangelical to Agnostic Atheist
by Ken Pulliam

I was "born-again," as the Evangelicals term it, in 1978 at the age of 18. I repented of my sin and trusted Christ and Christ alone for salvation. My life changed dramatically and I enrolled in a Baptist college to study for the ministry. After graduating from Baptist University of America in 1981, I went to one of the most conservative Christian colleges in the nation, Bob Jones University. There I earned an M.A. (1982) and a Ph.D. (1986) in Theology. I wrote my dissertation on "Bernard Ramm's Changing Views of Scripture." At Bob Jones the emphasis was on the ancient languages and exegetical theology. It was presupposed that the Bible was the Word of God and thus inerrant. We studied Biblical criticism and contemporary theologies but only from the standpoint of determining how and why they deviated from the "truth." Protestant scholasticism rather than open-minded scholarship was promoted.

Upon graduation, I took a position as an instructor at International Baptist College in Tempe, Arizona. This was a small Bible college in the same fundamentalist evangelical tradition as Bob Jones. I taught Greek, Systematic Theology, Apologetics and English Bible classes. Sometime during my 8th year of teaching (1994), doubts that had been simmering under the surface came to the forefront. One of my concerns came from my teaching of Apologetics. I was convinced that the presuppositionalist school of apologetics (developed by Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Seminary) was right in its criticisms of the classical and evidentialist schools, which taught that Christianity could be demonstrated through rational proofs and historical evidences. As the presuppositionalists pointed out, historical "facts" have to be interpreted, they do not come with their interpretation built-in. One's presuppositions would determine how one would interpret the evidence. Thus, one would never come to the conclusion that Christianity is true unless one first presupposed the truth of the Bible. To do this, however, was simply begging the question. The real question was whose presuppositions are correct. It seemed to me that the non-supernatural interpretations of the evidences for Christianity were more consistent with our knowledge of the real world. As I began to look at the Bible and evangelical Christianity through the eyes of one not already committed to the truth of the Bible, the faith that I had held for nearly 20 years began to look intellectually indefensible.

In 1994, I remember preaching in a church in El Paso and during the course of my sermon the thought, like a bolt out of the blue, popped into my head: "you don't really believe this." The thought terrified me and almost disrupted my sermon. Later that night I went to my hotel room and prayed for God to help me overcome these doubts. I believed that they were Satanic in origin. I determined to study these issues, which were causing me doubts, until I could eliminate them from my thinking. One of the doubts that was plaguing me was the doctrine of the penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). I wondered how the punishment of an innocent person could be just. It seemed counter to man's moral intuitions and these intuitions I believed came to man as a result of being made in the image of God.

I read every book and article on PSA that I could find. I examined all of the classic works beginning with Anselm and continuing through the Reformers, the Puritans (especially John Owen), the Princeton theologians and contemporary defenders of PSA. I found that essentially there was no answer. While various attempts to justify the doctrine were put forward, most admitted that at the end of the day, it was a mystery. For example, A. A. Hodge wrote:

we confess that the divine administration, both as to the coming in of the curse through Adam, and as to the redemption from the curse through Christ, rests upon principles higher and grander than those embraced in the ordinary rules of human law. . . . But while the complete satisfaction which absolute justice finds in the vicarious sufferings of a substituted victim may transcend reason, it by no means conflicts with it. (1)

J. I . Packer argued that Reformed theologians have made a mistake in trying to explain or justify PSA using reason. He says that in an attempt to answer the objections of Socinians and other rationalists, they unwittingly gave up "home field advantage" and played on the Socinians' home turf of rationalism. He wrote:

The almost mesmeric effect of Socinus’ critique on Reformed scholastics in particular was on the whole unhappy. It forced them to develop rational strength in stating and connecting up the various parts of their position, which was good, but it also led them to fight back on the challenger’s own ground. . . . They made the word of the cross sound more like a conundrum than a confession of faith — more like a puzzle, we might say, than a gospel. What was happening? Just this: that in trying to beat Socinian rationalism at its own game, Reformed theologians were conceding the Socinian assumption that every aspect of God’s work of reconciliation will be exhaustively explicable in terms of a natural theology of divine government, drawn from the world of contemporary legal and political thought. Thus, in their zeal to show themselves rational, they became rationalistic. (2)

Packer says that at the end of the day, PSA is a mystery and all attempts to understand it or defend it rationally will fail.

If we bear in mind that all the knowledge we can have of the atonement is of a mystery about which we can only think and speak by means of models, and which remain a mystery when all is said and done, it will keep us from rationalistic pitfalls and thus help our progress considerably(3).

While I could accept the notion that PSA transcends reason, I could not accept the fact that it contradicts reason and our sense of justice. If it is self-evident that it is unjust to punish an innocent man, then how could the righteous and holy Judge of the Universe accept that punishment as the means by which his wrath against sin is propitiated? Could man's redemption be based on an unjust act? I could not resolve this problem. I realize that there are other theories of the atonement besides PSA but all of them base man's salvation on the death of an innocent man. I also firmly believe that the best and most competent exegesis of the biblical text yields the PSA. This is clearly demonstrated, I think, in the work of Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross.(4)

So, after struggling with this issue and others, my faith slowly evaporated. Sometime around the fall of 1996, I admitted to myself that I no longer believed. This was not an easy thing to do. It is very traumatic psychologically and emotionally to admit to one's self that one has devoted his life to an error. To acknowledge self-delusion is difficult. In addition, I had the practical concern of how to support my wife and family since all of my education and training were geared towards being an evangelical Christian minister. I had no marketable skills for the real world. It was, therefore, tempting to keep silent and continue on in my role but I could not do that. I could not live with myself knowing that I was living a lie and pretending to believe something that I honestly no longer did. I was in a real dilemma.(5) Fortunately in my case, I was approached by someone who wanted me to help him start a business. This person, although a family member, had no idea of the intellectual turmoil that I was experiencing. We started the business in January of 1997 and it was successful. I had a new career and I felt relieved. For the first time in a long time, I was able to sleep at night. In the nearly 14 years that has transpired since my loss of faith, I have had no regrets. Sometimes people will ask me if I have doubts today that maybe I made the wrong decision and I can honestly say that I don't. My life is good and I have found meaning and purpose apart from my former faith.

Notes:

1. The Atonement (Nabu Press, 2010), p. 200.

2. "What Did the Cross Achieve: The Logic of Penal Substitution," Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture, Delivered at Tyndale House, Cambridge, on July 17th, 1973, published by Tyndale House, 1974. Available on-line .

3. Ibid.

4. Tyndale Press, 1965.

5. I can definitely sympathize with those men in Daniel Dennett's study of unbelieving Pastors. See "Preachers who are not Believers," Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, March 15, 2010, available on line .

What is Evangelical Christianity?

I have entitled my blog, Why I De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity. There is considerable confusion today over exactly what constitutes Evangelical Christianity. So, I want to take the time to clearly define what I mean when I use the term Evangelical.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines evangelical as: emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual.

The English word originated around 1531, according to Merriam-Webster. This, of course, was the time of the Reformation. Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Chapel in 1517 and the Reformation was on. During Luther's lifetime, the churches which followed his teachings were known as Evangelical Churches. It wasn't until after his death that they came to be known as Lutheran Churches. Eventually, evangelical became more or less synonymous with Protestant.

Going back to the Merriam-Webster definition, note that there are essentially five components to it.

1. Salvation by Faith
2. Atoning Death of Christ
3. Personal Conversion
4. Authority of Scripture
5. Importance of preaching vis-a-vis ritual.

Each one of these beliefs were forged in opposition to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church of the 16th century. Salvation by faith alone (sola fide)apart from works was the great re-discovery of Martin Luther. In his study of Paul's Letter to the Romans and especially chapter 1 verse 17 (For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."), Luther became convinced that the teaching of the apostle had been lost in the Roman Catholic Church of his day. He felt that good works and rituals had been added to faith and thereby destroyed the pure grace of God in salvation. Thus, his emphais on salvation by faith alone.

This faith, however, must have the correct object. It can't be faith in the sacraments of the church or faith in one's good works but faith in the atoning death of Christ as the payment for one's sin. Luther and Calvin were very instrumental in developing what would later be called the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement.

When one came to rest his or her faith in the atoning work of Christ, one was converted. Later evangelicals would call this experience being born-again, being saved, or accepting Christ as one's personal savior.

Luther and the Reformers insisted that the ultimate authority for Christians was not the pope nor the church but the Bible itself (sola Scriptura). This has always been a hallmark of evangelical Christianity.

The URL for my blog is FormerFundy.blogspot.com. When I was a Christian, I considered myself a Fundamentalist and an Evangelical. What is the difference in the terms? The term fundamentalist orginated in the early part of the 20th century as evangelicals took a stand against Modernism or theological liberalism. They maintained that there were certain doctrines that were fundamental or essential to the Christian faith. While there was never complete unanimity on the fundamentals, they always included the verbal inspiration of the Bible, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection and the second coming of Christ. These doctrines were some of the specific ones being denied by the theological liberals of the day.

Until the late 1940's, the terms evangelical and fundamentalist were more or less synonymous. There might have been a slight difference in emphasis. Fundamentalist were known more for what they were against whereas Evangelicals were known more for what they were for. In 1948, Harold Ockenga called for a New Evangelicalism. One that would be more open to dialogue with liberals. He felt that evangelicals should infiltrate the liberal seminaries and denominations rather than separate from them. Some evangelicals embraced Ockenga's call and others rejected it. Those who rejected it preferred to be called Fundamentalists. Thus, separation from liberalism became the hallmark of the fundamentalists.

Today, both terms, evangelical and fundamental, have taken on different connotations. Fundamentalism has become a term of derision and is used to refer to just about any kind of religious fanatic, including abortion clinic bombers, Mormon polygamists, and Islamic terrorists, etc. Evangelicalism has become a catch-all term to refer to just about any Christian who is not a theological liberal, a cultist, or a Roman Catholic. There is a great diversity of beliefs within modern day evangelicals from self-help gurus like Joel Osteen to charismatic healers like Benny Hinn to religious right leaders like James Dobson.

So, in order to clarify, when I use the terms evangelical or fundamentalist, I am using them in the historical sense of the terms.

Why Do I Call Myself “FormerFundy”?

Some may wonder why I chose this nickname. Well, its because I was a Fundamentalist Christian for about 20 years. I was "saved" and baptized in an independent, Fundamental Baptist church, Galilean Baptist Church, in Norcross, GA. Later, I became a member of Forrest Hills Baptist Church in Decatur, GA, which was started by Curtis Hutson, a former editor of the Sword of the Lord magazine. The Sword was founded by John R. Rice, one of the leading fundamentalists of the 20th century.

I graduated from Baptist University of America in Decatur, GA in 1981. BUA was associated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship, which was started by followers of J. Frank Norris, a major fundamentalist leader in the early part of the 20th century. Then I went on to Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC, perhaps, the most well known fundamentalist Christian college in the world.

After earning an M.A. (1982) and a Ph.D. (1986) in Theology at BJU, I went to teach at International Baptist College in Tempe, AZ which was founded by James Singleton (also the Pastor of Tri-City Baptist Church). Singleton was a board member and active speaker in the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, a group that originally came out of the Northern Baptist Convention in the early 20th century. The term “Fundamentalist,” while a pejorative term for many people, was held as a badge of honor by the people with whom I associated.

Fundamentalists, like me and those I was connected with, considered themselves to be the heirs of true Biblical Christianity. The term “fundamentalist” was coined by Curtis Lee Laws, editor of the Northern Baptist paper The Watchman-Examiner, in 1920. He coined the word to describe those “who still cling to the great fundamentals and who mean to do battle royal” against theological liberalism. His article appeared in the context of the conflict between theological liberals and theological conservatives in the Northern Baptist Convention.

The term also gained popularity as a result of the publication of The Fundamentals, a series of 90 essays in 12 volumes published from 1910 to 1915 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA). The essays were originally financed by Lyman Stewart in 1909 to set out what they believed to be the fundamentals of Christian faith. These were to be sent free to ministers, missionaries, Sunday School superintendents and others active in Christian ministry.The volumes defended orthodox Protestant beliefs and attacked higher criticism, liberal theology, Catholicism (also called by them Romanism), socialism, modern philosophy, atheism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Millennial Dawn (an early term for a particular Christian movement which later mostly became the "Jehovah's Witnesses" denomination), Spiritualism, and evolutionism. . The authors included conservative theologians from many different Protestant denominations. They differed on a number of “minor doctrines” but were unified in their agreement on the “fundamental (essential) doctrines” of Christianity.

The fundamentalist movement has gone through some significant evolution from the 1920’s to the present day, but in the early part of the 20th century, virtually all theological conservatives were basically considered to be fundamentalists--at least by the popular culture. When I came into the movement in the late 1970’s, a number of divisions had taken place. Fundamentalists at that time were known for their insistence on separation from theological liberalism and “worldliness.” All of the churches that I attended at that time were pastored by men who had separated from the Southern Baptist Convention. Liberalism had infiltrated the SBC through the seminaries and most of the faculty in the convention schools no longer accepted the Bible as the inspired, inerrant, Word of God. This caused “a battle for the Bible” to take place within the convention (see Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence). Some stayed in and fought, e.g., W.A. Criswell, Paige Patterson, and Charles Stanley, while others left the convention, citing 2 Corinthians 6:17: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate," saith the Lord, "and touch not the unclean [thing]; and I will receive you.”

This new breed of fundamentalists believed it was compromise and actually sinful for people to remain in a liberal denomination and thereby support their liberalism. So, these fundamentalists (of which I was a part), not only condemned the liberals in the SBC but also condemned the conservatives who refused to leave the SBC. Those who refused to separate were considered “New Evangelicals” (a term of derision in my movement). One of the main focuses came to be who is REALLY a Fundamentalist? As if that term itself was somehow equivalent to all that was good and holy. Bob Jones University and the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, especially, became obsessed by identifying who was a real Fundamentalist and who was not. This obsession continues today among many in the group (for example, see postings on SharperIron).

When I use the term FormerFundy to describe myself, all I mean is that, at one time, I held certain doctrines to be fundamental or essential to the Christian faith. These fundamentals included: 1) The Bible is verbally and plenarily inspired by God; 2) Jesus Christ was the virgin born, sinless, Son of God who made a perfect, vicarious atonement on the cross to redeem man and was literally raised from the dead on the 3rd day; and 3) Man is saved by faith alone in the finished work of Christ. Anything short of these essentials was not true Christianity in my view.

I realize that in today’s world, the term “fundamentalist” has a host of other connotations, virtually all bad. It is used to refer to any type of religious extremist or obscurantist. I obviously am not using the name in that sense but in the more historical sense as I have described above.