What I Love About Fundamentalists

I'm actually not kidding when I title this post "What I Love About Fundamentalists;" There are things that I believe we can all learn from them. When most of us hear the term "Fundamentalist Christian," our minds probably fill with images of rabid, hateful, "God hates you, you, and you, but loves me," fanatics. We think of the people who, if the even send their kids to school, are the ones who are up in arms when evolution is taught in science class, or when history class doesn't claim that the founding fathers of America were copying and pasting the Bible into the Constitution. We think of people who are narrow-minded and opinionated; people who hate the world, and feel that there is some sort of evil conspiracy abroad coming in the forms of post-modernism, secularism, and homosexuality. When it comes to the Bible, they believe that it practically dropped out of heaven, and offers hard and fast rules for absolutely every single area of human existence (the fundamentalist interpretation, however, is the only valid one; readings by evangelicals, catholics, or anyone else are seen as deficient). Those are definitely the caricatures of fundamentalists that we are all familiar with. Sadly, there is often a hint of truth to the caricature.

There is good news, however, and it is that those are, indeed, mostly caricatures. What fundamentalists are often portrayed as in the news and in the media, is often them at their worst, rather than their best. Rarely do we hear about the great works of love that fundamentalist Christians do in the name of Christ. Though they are painted as intolerant bigots, I have yet to meet a fundamentalist that does not truly care about people. For the most part, fundamentalist Christians love the Lord and are trying to live out the Christian life in the best way they know how.

It is true that Fundamentalists have (unintentionally) hurt many people, both Christian and otherwise. Many non-Christians have felt condemned by the well-meaning evangelistic attempts by Fundamentalists. Many Christians have felt judged, smothered, and burdened by guilt in Fundamentalist churches. The world really doesn't like them, and, sadly, many Christians like to poke fun at them and their "narrow, judgmental" ways. However, the fundamentalists are our Christian brothers and sisters. They are sinners just like us, and while they may have many shortcomings, they also have much that is good about them. For example, their love for God, the Bible, and living a life that looks different from the world is something that all Christians can learn from.

At the turn of the 19th century, the fundamentalists were the ones who safeguarded orthodox Christian belief from the dangers of "liberal protestantism." "Liberal," in this sense, does not mean caring about the rights of people or helping the poor, but the influx of a modernist ideology into the Christian faith. Fundamentalism sprang out of a time in church history where "modern man" was becoming too "scientific" to believe in things like the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Christ, the existence of miracles, the divinity of Jesus, etc. Clergymen were denying these essential doctrines and the fundamentalists were the ones who said that Christianity cannot function without these doctrines. (It is interesting to note that in the beginning of what became the fundamentalist movement, some of the theologians, such as B.B. Warfield, were not necessarily opposed to evolution as a mechanism of God's creative acts. The aversion to evolution, it seems, came later on.) Nevertheless, Fundamentalism in the United States helped to guard against the influxes from a theological method that would have deconstructed the Christian faith. They were the ones who refused to compromise the essentials (fundamentals, hence their namesake) of the Christian faith.

We can be thankful for the witness of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters. In the sense that they would rather be unpopular than compromise the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, we can learn from that. In the sense that they believe in the transformation of the heart by Christ, we can emulate that. As evangelicals, we cannot afford to alienate them or belittle them. While they may be too extreme at many points, we must be humble enough to remember that we don't have it all together, either, and that God is working in His people to conform them to the image of His Son.