Fundamentals vs. Fundamentalists

Faithfulservant

Faithfulservant

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Ok so I wanted to talk about something because I think theres confusion about me and what I believe and it bothers me very much.

I believe in the Fundamentals of Christianity. I base my faith on all of these things and am certain of all of them for myself. (pulled from wiki)
  • Inerrancy of the Scriptures
  • The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14)
  • The doctrine of substitutionary atonement by God's grace and through human faith (Hebrews 9)
  • The bodily resurrection of Jesus (Matthew 28)
  • The authenticity of Christ's miracles (or, alternatively, his pre-millennial second coming)
I also hold to other beliefs that some fundamentalists criticize such as the rapture. But the only thing that matters is the means of Salvation.. that belief is the only thing that saves.. not whether you believe in the inerrancy of scripture or the virgin birth. Believing in these things does make it easier to have faith in God.

What I do not subscribe to is extremism in any way. I believe Gods character is of balance and harmony. Extremism is the opposite of that. I think like anything else.. it had good intentions.. to maintain the purity of Gods word but has been twisted and abused and contorted with mans imperfect stamp. Abuses such as abortion clinic bombings and the rise of tv evangalists hellfire and damnation preaching and yes spiritual abuse using the bible as weapon.

I believe in hell but I believe the message of Jesus Christ is whats important. God will work the rest of it out with the individual. I just do my part by sowing the seed with God reaping the harvest. I do not intentionally sow seeds of fear and condemnation.. I try to sow seeds of love and faith. If It ever goes the other way than I am sowing from the wrong place and shame on me.

I think a critical error is seperation. In Revelation it speaks of seperating the sheep from the goats not the catholics from the protestants or the baptists from the lutherans.. the bible speaks of each part of the body needing the other to function but never does it say that one is better than the other or has more “truth” whatever. I do not argue theosophy or doctrinal differences… goodness all we should be talking about is how much God loves us and pray that people get that … not about whether babys should be baptized or whether full immersion is better.

If the body of Christ came together and as one body prayed, and ministered through love to this world I believe that miraculous things would happen that we cannot even begin to imagine.

The only thing for me that I cannot and willnot budge on is Salvation. Jesus clearly stated that He is the only way and any other teaching I cannot stand by and let happen without saying something. Nothing else matters in the face of that.

Love does make the world go round. Fear and hate distorts it.

I consider myself an Apologist -non-denominational Christian. This basically means that I consider myself a defender of the Faith using the Word of God and that I do not like denominational labels.

Its kind of lame Im posting a thread about myself but what Im hoping will happen will be less stereo-typing because that really sucks.. and maybe open some dialogue of the positive sort.. J

I have to say that I get caught up in the heat of the moment like everyone else and do not represent like I want to. But thats the human part of me and I do not bedrgudge other people their humanity.

 
Hi Faithful,

Thank you for your post and I also hope it opens up a good conversation. :)

You listed the fundamentals you believe, but you also seem to say that one does not have to believe all those listed to be saved. Is that correct?

You also say: But the only thing that matters is the means of Salvation.. that belief is the only thing that saves..

Specifically which particular belief do you think is required for salvation?

luna
 
Dogbrain said:
"Non-denominational" is still a denomination.
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It isn't if it isn't organised and has no common ideology. Is atheism a "religion?" Only if people align themselves to the idea socially and politically. Anarchism isn't a religion or denomination if people don't align themselves to it socially and politically. You don't have a denomination if people are just minding their own business.

I could consider fundamentalist Christianity as a distinct denomination, especially if it's based on the Five Fundamentals. But even if it isn't based on the Five Fundamentals, if its adherents believe they have power and authority over you, if they're supremacist, or if they chant many of the slogans and rhetoric common to most or all followers of the Five Fundamentals, then you're dealing with fundamentalist Christianity.

Forget about Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, JWs, etc. These could all be factions within fundamentalist Christianity if their adherents believe that the others are heretics. It's ok if they just disagree and are happy that others are following a different journey and belong to a different fellowship, but if they are going to vilify and demonise each other for technical differences, that's when they become fundamentalist.

There could well be over two hundred denominations in Christianity based on the conventional definition of "denomination." But heck, forget it! If they are so opposed to each other and can't consider having their respective ideologies corrupted by mixing them with each other, I might as well throw them all in the same basket and call it "fundamentalist Christianity" because to me the only important aspect that they all share is their inability to reconcile their technical differences. That's what I make of their differences in beliefs. They are just technical differences.

The rest of us are outside this "denomination of technical differences." Whether or not we are part of a distinct denomination depends on whether we are organised as one bunch or not.

For now, we could assume that the rest of us are just "denominations of one."

lunamoth said:
You listed the fundamentals you believe, but you also seem to say that one does not have to believe all those listed to be saved. Is that correct?
Click to expand...

It sounds like the fundamentals aren't so fundamental after all.:)
 
I think that one has to have more of a historical perspective to understand Christian Fundamentalism esp here in the United States. I always think it is interesting that fundamentalist always say that I believe in the fundamentals of the Bible but I am not a "fundamentalist." For me, there are distinctions between Evangelicals and Fundamentalist and again history speaks to the rise of both movements within American Christianity.

What is an "evangelical" Christian? They are members of the National Association of Evangelicals for one.

​
"Evangelical" comes from the Greek word for "gospel," and is often distinguished from "fundamentalist" — a term that originally meant Christians who believed in five major fundamentals of the faith, but which eventually came to be associated with ultraconservatives who were against scholarly studies, against new translations, against anything new, and generally against anyone who wasn’t a fundamentalist. Some of the more opinionated fundamentalists gave conservative Christianity a bad name, and in the 1950s moderate conservatives began to group themselves under the "evangelical" label to give themselves some verbal distance from their right-wing cousins.

Alister McGrath, an evangelical Anglican, offered six major distinctives of evangelical Christianity: 1) The supreme authority of Scripture, 2) Jesus Christ as incarnate God, 3) the Holy Spirit, 4) personal conversion, 5) evangelism, and 6) the importance of the Christian community (Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity, InterVarsity Press, 1995, pp. 55-56).


"Fundamentalism. A movement organized in the early twentieth century to defend orthodox Protestant Christianity against the challenges of theological liberalism, higher criticism of the Bible, evolution and other modernisms judged to be harmful to traditional faith…. During the 1950s Norman Furniss and Ray Ginger defined fundamentalism primarily in terms of its pervasive anti-intellectualism, as seen in its opposition to evolution and other kinds of modern thought" (T.P. Weber, in Reid, pp. 461-462).​
"After the controversies of the 1920s, many fundamentalists withdrew from major American denominations and formed their own networks of organizations." There is an organization called the Independent Fundamental Churches of America for more reading see: IFCA International » IFCA History

Most of the Bible Churches are associated with the IFCA.

If one want to do some research, you can google Inerrancy vs Infallibility in order to understand the age old debate about the Bible that has been going on within Christianity.

I have known many people who call themselves Evangelicals or Fundamentalist and of the two; fundamentalist tend to withdraw from worldly contaminations and they give Satan quite a bit of power. I have been accused of being "deceived by Satan" on many occasion by my former Fundamentalist friends. Most of my "friends" from both groups dropped me like a hot potato when I joined the Presbyterian Church in America...one of the more "liberal" denominations. Their love was very conditional upon me being a bible believing, born again Christian; but to stray from that path meant danger and to continue in fellowship with me would bring them in contact with Satan's power.

You know FaithfulServant, I have heard the expression, love the sinner but hate the sin and for the life of me, I just don't get it. I have nothing against you personally and I respect your right to believe whatever you want but I have a hard time believing that "love" has anything to do with it.

You said in one of your posts:
"I know in my heart that this is my ministry.. this forum with all these wonderfully lost people that need to know the tender loving compassion of a God that knows our individual pain and experienced all of it, Himself."
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I don't know if you understand how insulting and condescending it is for people to be your "projects." This hubris is a bitter pill to swallow..knowing that you believe that without your savior, we are "lost?" You don't want to know us and love us for who we are but for who you want us to become. I have seen this evangelism tactic used so much within conservative Christian circles that it makes me want to SCREAM!! Befriend the lost only because they need to see the love of Jesus. The goal is conversion because otherwise what a waste of time to be nice to those heathens. I even heard a Pastor say, if you are nice to the lost, they will see what you have (Jesus) and want him too. Sigh..
​
 
The only thing for me that I cannot and willnot budge on is Salvation. Jesus clearly stated that He is the only way and any other teaching I cannot stand by and let happen without saying something. Nothing else matters in the face of that.
Click to expand...
FS,

Well then, I would say that makes you a fundamentalist. You did say to Avi or BB in a recent post, something to the effect that "your beliefs are not okay with me."

It's unrealistic for you to think you can say that to a Jew or a Hindu or a Theosophist and NOT have them take the same attitude towards you. And so I have to tell you that your belief that I am "not okay" is very much "not-okay" with me! It doesn't matter how tactfully or lovingly you think you're saying it, or even if you bite your tongue and refrain from saying it. It's the fact that you believe as you do that means there can never be a level playing field between you and people of other religions. That makes any attempt at dialogue an exercise in futility.

Sooner or later you're going to have to understand that it isn't how you say things that makes you a fundamentalist or not. It's what you are saying!

--Linda
 
I don't know if you understand how insulting and condescending it is for people to be your "projects." This hubris is a bitter pill to swallow..knowing that you believe that without your savior, we are "lost?" You don't want to know us and love us for who we are but for who you want us to become. I have seen this evangelism tactic used so much within conservative Christian circles that it makes me want to SCREAM!! Befriend the lost only because they need to see the love of Jesus. The goal is conversion because otherwise what a waste of time to be nice to those heathens. I even heard a Pastor say, if you are nice to the lost, they will see what you have (Jesus) and want him too. Sigh..
Click to expand...

Janz,

Very well said...not just that part but the rest of your post too. I learned a lot from it...thanks!

--Linda
 
fs said:
I believe in the Fundamentals of Christianity. I base my faith on all of these things and am certain of all of them for myself. (pulled from wiki)
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  • Namaste Faithful,
  • Did you read the wiki innerancy page you linked to? And is your certainty expressed above an indicatition that you agree with what is written on that page?
  • Note, no quicksand here, just a question, as I just can't see you as supporting the discussion on that page...
 
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