What is a Christian fundamentalist? (And why I prefer another path)

Recently an Asphalt Jesus group wrote with a series of questions, one of which was: “What is your definition of fundamentalism?”  I’ll try to address the other questions in future posts, but here’s my take on what fundamentalism is.  Feel free to add a comment with your own definition!

My definition really isn’t mine at all, but was articulated in the early 1900s, partly as a result of something called the Niagara Bible Conference which sought to define the beliefs thought to be non-negotiable or “fundamental” to Christian faith (which led to the term “fundamentalism”).  These beliefs were distilled into a “top five” of sorts. Ironically these five principles were first formally articulated within the Presbyterian Church soon which split into two very different denominations as a result of conflict over how “fundamental” these principles actually are:

(1)    The inerrancy of Scripture.
(2)    The virgin birth of Christ.
(3)    The belief in the atonement of sins through Christ’s death.
(4)    The bodily resurrection of Christ.
(5)    The historical reality of all of Christ’s miracles.

Of course, quite a number of people of more moderate faith would affirm some of the above beliefs.  In actuality, just two of the beliefs above serve as significant separators between fundamentalism and other forms of Christian belief: (1) belief in the literal inerrancy of Scripture and (2) belief that Christ saves (only) believers from eternal damnation through atonement on the cross.

I want to make it perfectly clear here, though, that to distinguish between Christian fundamentalism and other forms of Christian faith such as Christian liberal or progressivism is not to distinguish in any way between who is a “good” Christian (or human being) and who is not.
You may recall that Jesus himself said that he came not to serve the “healthy” but the “sick” (Luke 7).  By definition, therefore, ALL who claim to follow Jesus should identify themselves with “the sick” regardless of how liberal or conservative their beliefs.  We all stand in “fundamental” need of God and have “fundamental” problems turning our will (and with it, our lives) over to God’s power and guidance.

Personally, while I find myself frequently at odds with fundamentalist Christian belief (and really, fundamentalist belief of any sort), I would trade the community of a hundred liberal/progressives who saw themselves as completely healthy and in little need for God in their lives for the community of ten fundamentalists who had truly understood themselves to rely on the grace, love and guidance of God.

The reason why, though, I find a more liberal/progressive faith system (and community) to a more fundamentalist/conservative one is because, having tried both systems, I have found that a more liberal/progressive faith helps ME accept and acknowledge the realization that I am sick and am in need of God in my life.  What does this look like concretely in my life?  It looks like this:

Regarding the salvation thing.

Because I have become convinced, through scripture, through Christians who have come before me, and through life experience, that I and all people are loved unconditionally, beyond our wildest imagination, I feel far freer than I did in my distant and brief “fundamentalist” phase to admit that I don’t have all of life’s answers wrapped up in a nice, neat package.  I feel no need to prove to God or others that I have perfect faith, or that my faith has “made me whole” (and therefore no longer in need of God?).

Being assured of God’s unconditional love has given me the freedom to take a more critical look at my life and realize just how strongly I must rely on a higher power to move beyond my shortcomings and truly live on a higher level.  It has also given me a sense of deep acceptance of others, shortcomings and all,  in ways that I did not have before.  If someone is driving me crazy, I firmly believe that when all is said and done (in this life or beyond), we will be united with each other in God’s grace and love.  This gives me a sense of patience with people that I personally would not have if I believed that God was just waiting to punish the person (forever!) for failure to agree with me (after all, my views and God’s are the same, right? Not!).

Regarding the scripture thing.

My belief that the scriptures are NOT inerrant radically increases my joy in studying the scriptures, and with it, my ability to learn from our ancient sisters and brothers of faith.  Since I do not feel compelled to blindly accept that which runs contrary to love of God, neighbor, and self in scripture, I can enter into a deeper, more honest relationship with the texts before me.  (Incidentally, sometimes that “love of self” principle includes love of the part of myself that has an intellect and therefore does not confuse story and parable with scientific fact.  And that “love of neighbor” part convinces me that an adulterer is not to be stoned to death as the scriptures advocate).  I have become convinced that taking the scriptures “seriously but not literally” enables me to better “hear” what the ancients were trying to tell us in the first place about their authentic experiences of God.  Those who wrote scripture weren’t literalists!  And they certainly did not think that what they were writing was inerrant (The only that claims to be the pure words of God is Revelation – the most historically controversial book of the whole Bible!).  When I stop looking for scientific fact and start listening for what the scriptures are trying (imperfectly) to tell us about love of and by God, and love of neighbor and self, the scriptures frequently point me to where I can find these loves potentially at work in my life that I haven’t noticed before.

I could go on and on, but will finish with this final point about what my liberal/progressive faith does for me: It fills me with bewilderment over why more liberal/progressive Christians frequently find it so hard to love their enemies, acknowledge their own shortcomings, devote themselves to seeking God’s guidance on a daily basis, and study the scriptures on a deeper level.  Life gets so darn good when we do these things consistently, and our theology is such an incredibly powerful support in doing so!

But just when I get worked up about how others fail in this regard, I start looking at myself again and realize how far ALL of us have yet to go down this path.  And, it’s also about the time I find yet another example of how perfectly God works through imperfect people like us.  I guess that’s why God loves grace so much.  God isn’t dependent upon our perfection to expand or deepen God’s Realm on earth or to take us into (wonderful) places we wouldn’t necessarily go ourselves!

Love who? Beyond what??

A number of questions have been sent in lately regarding the topic of being “loved beyond our wildest imagination” and its implications.  Some have wondered where that phrase comes from, which is not only part of the Phoenix Affirmations (#9) but is also repeated in the blessing given each week at Countryside Church.  Others have wondered about the implications of the phrase, particularly as it may apply to those who engage in abusive or otherwise destructive behavior toward others.  “What does this kind of love mean for the murderer, the rapist, etc.,” is one form of the question.  Or “What about Hitler – is he loved beyond his wildest imagination, too?”

I have to catch a plane to Scottsdale in a couple hours (our eldest daughter, Arianna, is graduating!), so I can only address the question of origins right now, which gets us into the notion of salvation along with it.  I’ll get to the question of implications for mean and nasty people later in the week.   Regarding the origin of “loved bey0nd our wildest imagination”:

Nearly a decade ago I was noticing that we in the more liberal/progressive end of the theological swimming pool do not talk much about salvation.  We use the word – occasionally – but we really don’t have much to say about it.  In fact, many people seem downright embarassed about the term thanks in no small part to the way it has been thrown around in circles where salvation mostly means salvation from everlasting torture in hell. Having rejected the essentially unbiblical (yet very popular) notion that God would torture people for eternity if they don’t please God in a certain way, and with it the notion that one would need to be “saved” from such a fate, liberals/progressives have largely let any notion of salvation fall by the wayside.

I found this situation unfortunate, and still do.  While hell as popularly conceived may be an unbiblical notion, salvation is certainly not.  Salvation is spoken of – and sung about – practically from cover to cover in the Bible, and has continued to be an important feature of Christian faith all the way up to the present era.  But what does salvation mean if it doesn’t mean salvation from eternal damnation?

This may seem like a purely academic issue to some, but the rubber really hits the road when we consider the implications of our concept of salvation (or lack thereof) in the real world.  For instance, if you aren’t being saved from hell, does it matter that one be a person of faith at all?  Most Christians would (hopefully) say “Yes.”  But does it matter in a way that’s significant? that makes a definitive qualitative difference in your life?  If so, how do you characterize this difference?  How does having Christian faith lead you to understandings and actions that you wouldn’t be thinking/acting on if you did not have faith in the God of Jesus?  If you can’t point to any significant difference that faith makes in your life, can you really claim that there is any compelling reason to have faith to begin with?  In fact, wouldn’t it be quite a bit more compelling to conclude that it is better not to have faith, since Christianity asks for such serious commitments from us, like tithing, and praying, and going to church, etc.?  Why would  any reasonable person do and give all these things if faith makes no discernible difference in people’s lives?

For fundamentalists, all this is talk is beside the point.  Faith saves them from hell and gets them into heaven.  What bigger difference is there than that?  And this belief is precisely why a person might be persuaded to introduce her or his neighbor to Jesus.  Ninety-nine percent of all the evangelism done by fundamentalist Christians – and they do a lot of evangelism compared to everyone else – is done precisely to “save” people from the fires of hell.  In other words, fundamentalists have a very clear notion of what salvation is, and this notion compels them not only to be people of faith themselves but to evangelize others.

Not so with liberal/progressives.  Salvation is a “squishy” term.  We’re really not sure what it means or implies, and therefore it almost goes without saying that we’re not going to try particularly hard to make new friends of Jesus. And we wonder why all the mainline denominations have decreased in members every year since the mid-sixties?!

A decade ago, I wasn’t content with this situation.  I looked out over the mainline Chrisitan landscape and saw a whole lot of folks for whom Christianity was mainly a cultural phoenomenon that simply was blessing whatever the dominant culture of the time decided was worthy of blessing.  I saw a faith whose message had essentially devolved into “Be good and don’t rock the boat too much.”  And I said to myself, “This is what Jesus died for??”  While I do not subscribe to the theology of substitutionary atonement (the concept that Jesus had to die in order to take on a punishment that God was going to give us, and thus save us from hell), I do very much believe that Jesus’ death was meaningful, and that he died for a lot more than simply for us to live a decent and orderly life.

So I determined to come up with a new definition of salvation (i.e., a statement about why the faith matters so much to me that I would, in fact, strive to introduce friends and neighbors to Jesus if they hadn’t been introduced already).  Or, short of a new definition, I simply wanted to find one that would resonate with theological ears tuned similarly to my own.  Thus, I launched into a six-week preaching series at Scottsdale Congregational Church called “Does Jesus Save?”  I had no definition of salvation going into the series, but I figured I’d have one by the end of it!  And, by gum, I actually did.  The definition has stuck with me ever since.

So what’s my definition of salvation?  Salvation is discovering that we are loved beyond our wildest imagination and determining to orient our lives according to this discovery. Period.

Please note that there are two halves to this statement.  Salvation is not simply discovering you are loved beyond what you can comprehend.  It also has to do with deciding to manifest this love in your everyday life.  Note that this second half is not “salvation by works.”  It imlies nothing about the successfulness of our attempt.  But it does acknowledge that salvation is more than just an intellectual phenomenon.  We may be “loved beyond our wildest imagination” whether we act on our discovery or not, but this discovery really can’t do any good for us until it also moves us to live and understand life differently than we did before the discovery.

Heaven, Hell, and Affirmation 9

Sunday’s sermon will be kind of fun.  Much of it will center around “Ralph and the Lake of Fire” – a one-person drama (played by me) about a man you dies suddenly and enters the afterlife, only it’s not the afterlife he expected … Fire and brimstone?  It plays a role, but not the one you expect, either!

The drama is based on a sermon written years ago by Bruce Van Blair.  I have revised and dramatized it a number of times.  Each time it creates quite a buzz and there are always people who say, “Darn!  I wish I’d been there for that one …”  I hope you can join us for the fun!

Both in worship and in Asphalt Jesus groups, we’re heading into Affirmation 9 for the next couple of weeks – my favorite of them all.  Affirmation 9 reads, “Christian love of self includes: basing our lives on the faith that in Christ all things are made new and that we, and all people, are loved beyond our wildest imagination – for eternity.”

It’s an affirmation that implies quite strongly that there is no hell as popularly conceived, and that salvation is for all people, not just those who jump through some sort of doctrinal hoops.  As further background to prepare yourself for worship or small groups, you will probably find it helpful to take a look at a brief reflection that was written years ago by my pastoral mentor, Bruce Van Blair called “Universal Salvation.”  Read it by clicking the link at the end of this paragraph, then post your comments and questions!

Universal_Salvation