Pensees: Fundamentalism’s Indian Run

Fundamentalism’s Indian Run

*I wrote this article a number of months ago and did not post it, but the relevance of it compels me to post it today with only the last lines making any direct allusion to the recent discussion. Also, by way of another caveat, “leaders” for me include pastoral and institutional leaders within the movement on every level. No particular person is being targeted. If the shoe fits, wear it. If you don’t think it applies, don’t pretend to be personally attacked.

Fundamentalism’s Indian Run

The fat guy is huffing and puffing and trying to get to the front of the line.

Fundamentalist leaders are involved in an Indian Run in which they are finding it difficult to keep apace. An Indian Run is a common exercise that many coaches use for team warm-ups. The team runs in single file for a mile or so and the person at the end of the line sprints to overtake the front of the line. Once he has overtaken the front he slows to a more comfortable pace while the next last person begins his own pursuit of the front. If the run is a couple miles long the line can sometimes stretch to almost a half mile in length making the sprint an impossibility for the team member who is in the poorest shape. When his legs simply refuse to go any faster he fades into the line wherever he can and the run continues.

I realize that most of my readers are unfamiliar with the segment of Fundamentalism that has been caught in the vortex of institutionalism for the last fifty years and you may find it bizarre that it makes news that a university is now allowing their women to wear pants off campus, if not utterly silly that there was ever even such a prohibition. Bear with me. This is news for some people.

College presidents are announcing to the world with alarming moxie that they finds themselves to have more in common with “conservative evangelicals” than with many fundamentalists, music is really not a matter of separation for them, and women should be able to wear what they want! I have overheard more than one conversation among pastors where the brazen skullduggery of these young pastors who intimidate the leaders of fundamentalism with their blogs is being discussed with gloom as if apostasy had overcome.

But times have changed so fast. Since blogging. When Jason Janz opened up SharperIron it not only became a pool of ignorance as its most critical enemies rightly insisted, but it became the death of ignorance as its friends have also rightly insisted. Or, more precisely, it began the inevitable erosion of power that whole segments of fundamentalism enjoyed before regular people could be heard.

A few years back when Rick Holland was invited to speak at the one-and-done God Focused Conference, much of the FBFI types were scandalized. Some of the more articulate leaders wrote long private letters as to why they would never associate with a conference in which one of the speakers came from John MacArthur’s church because, among other things, they used music unacceptable to the fundamentalist ear. In what appeared to be a purely constituency-driven political move the supposed “high road” was taken and those young pastors who tried to reason with them were dismissed as disruptive boat-rockers who were barely significant enough to be the faintest blips on the fundamentalism’s radar, particularly that of the institutions.

Fast forward a few years and some of those same people went or participated in a leadership conference where one of the speakers had similar baggage as Holland did and hardly a peep was heard. Too boot, now many of those rabble-rousers who had the moxie to call a spade a spade only three years ago suddenly have a commodity that the desperate institutions need: people. And their people are not just in their own growing churches, but in other churches and institutions throughout the movement by virtue of internet access. Now the fat guy is practically bawling as he wheezes and pants in a sluggish thing fat guys call running to get to the front of the line where he can determine the pace again.

The responses are varied: Either they are coming out with “news-worthy” proofs of their open-mindedness by saying from the platform things that most of their people have been saying for twenty years thereby giving the impression that they have been leading the way all along. “It’s not unbiblical to for women to wear pants, so we are going to let girls wear them at youth activities,” they announce with all the bravado of a man trying to teach people something that they’ll be shocked by. The only thing is that most of their people in the pew knew the obvious for years.

Or — another way — they dig out old tapes of the giants and try browbeating people back into reverence for the leaders of times past. (I know of two such messages in the past year where pastors of the churches kept evoking the memory of the long-dead pastor for emotional effect.) Some leaders are doing an amalgamation of both styles and thoroughly confusing their audience.

Others are tying to send a coded message to everyone that they are not the same as they have always been yet they have not changed. This is an effort to appease both constituencies, old and young, and it is the classic “This-is-not-your-father’s-Oldsmobile” approach.

Huh?

The Oldsmobile slogan is now famous for its flop. Some think that the slogan itself may have been a contributing factor of Oldsmobile’s quick demise. This flawed marketing is being adopted by many leaders who are determined to maintain everything that they have always known and yet move ahead with arms linked into a “new image fundamentalism” (to borrow from the Stroub/Bauder taxonomy) without repudiating anything of the old. They know they have to simultaneously present themselves as “new image” while also presenting themselves as “not changed.” Part of this is because the locus of power and money is still old-schoolism, but the energy and life is in the “new image.” (Missionaries, particularly, feel this crunch. They are heart and soul with the “new image,” but they are supported by the old guard.)

Leaders are getting behind close doors and as I said in a previous post are like boys working up the nerve to go skinny-dipping in a cold lake. “When are we going to jump? . . .One, two, three, ju…! … Hey! I thought you were going to jump with me?”

“I thought YOU were going to jump.”

One gets the impression that they are impressed with themselves for being so intrepid. But true independent thinking is rare. What makes John MacArthur special to so many right now? He’s not closing his eyes to the mistakes of his friends and he’s calling them on the carpet. That’s why John MacArthur is a leader in the truest sense.

In this sagging segment of fundamentalism, however, one is hard put to find an actual leader. The flagships of the movement are old churches and old institutions. Most of the leadership is in the control of men who have inherited ministries and haven’t the faintest clue of what it means to actually build a ministry with, um, leadership. In the main they are all fine men, but none of them really know what it means to blaze a trail. They are maintainers and not builders. The builders were before them. You’ll find very few ministries that are actually blazing new trails under their guidance. They’re trepidatious and weak and actually do not know how to manage criticism unless they can take it as a group because leadership was handed to them on a silver platter in the form of an inherited position and not on the merit of their own thought and consequent influence.

They have power because Doc gave it to them.

Now even they are beginning to realize that we live in a different world than the tightly controlled environments over which earlier leaders could pontificate without the irksome obligation of thoughtfulness.

There are exceptions, of course. Thank God. I think – and here I go naming names again – that Dave Doran is an example that, in my mind, inherited a large ministry and expanded its influence and reach, particularly in the area of world missions. I just see it that way. And God knows I’m not kissing up to Dave. He knows that too.(I catch as much flak for naming people positively as I do for naming them negatively!) My point is that many ministries are in decline and weakening under their present leadership even though there are some exceptions.

But over all, there are no W.B. Rileys (ironically, a stay-inner, but I speak of his dash and daring). There are no men with massive intelligence and the kind of courage that true leaders need in times like these. Most of the leaders that we know of, particularly in the FBFI circles, operate as a committee, doling out honorary doctorates from one institution to the leaders of the buddy institution in a silly sham of credibility building. The net result is a bland sameness in the colleges and churches that gives the impression of denominationalism and defensive preservationism.

Aaak!

The preservationism is about categories. Anachronistic categories: fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism. But new leaders will eventually put those artificial categories to rest. There are leaders that will be raised up with God-blessed theology who will have both the intelligence and the charisma to do bring true evangelicals/fundamentalists together. The leaders from the fundamentalist tradition will have roots deeply imbedded in the FBFI soil and friendships and training within and under the influence of the best from both traditions. They will know how to articulate the best values of our fundamentalist heritage and they’ll have the unique ability to identify with the hundreds of young men that are getting good bible training in the institutions but coming away without any interest in the artificial division of men into anachronistic categories.

MacArthur, Dever, Piper, Mahaney, and the like will soon fade off the scene and God will probably raise up new men with a strong affinity for the idea of fundamentalism without the baggage of connections and weighty loyalties to fundamentalist power-brokers who will be able to coalesce leaders on both sides of the fundamentalist/conservative evangelical cultural divide with a theologically united fundamentalism and a separatistic evangelicalism. The institutions will fall in line or radicalize to the right like PCC did a number of years ago, thereby attempting to seal off to themselves a remnant of the straggling constituencies. Others will radicalize leftward. But the ones who try to keep status quo will surely die because there won’t be enough people in status quo. In other words, I’m predicting that the “new image” fundamentalism will not only win the day, but it will win some of the institutions as well.

I have no clue who those leaders will be. I absolutely know that I won’t be one of them! I’m probably already too old, definitely not smart enough, and not politically gentle enough. I know that some of the wrong people want to be the leaders and that scares me, but who will actually step up with God’s anointing, I have no clue. But I can tell you one thing: leaders today better quit playing keep-away with their turf and start envisioning a better reason to segregate gospel believers into categories of people we really-really-really-like-but-don’t-separate-as-much-as-we-think-they-should (conservative evangelicals) so we’ll not preach on the same platform with them and everybody-that-takes-the-name-of-fundamentalism-even-when-they-say-incredibly-moronic-things (fundamentalists) so we’ll do our group-hug best to stay in fellowship with them.

That kind of stuff has got to stop because the reasons are getting hollow when their fellowships have all the courage in the world to rationalize why NOT to have a Mark Dever on the platform at their meetings, but don’t have any rational explanation as to why in the world a Dan Sweatt is speaking on their public platform saying what he said except that “we’re both fundamentalists.”

They may get back in the front of the line for now, but the next time all they’ll do is huff and puff.