March 5, 2005

Dead Right by Phil Johnson (revised).pdf

I admit that when I read the title, I was at once intrigued and wary. Phil Johnson is in a “doesn’t really fit anywhere” kind of ministry - the fundamentalist movement thinks he and the rest of the folks at Grace Community Church have gone off the deep end into New Evangelicalism, while a vast number of New Evangelicals are glaring at Grace and her staff because MacArthur and Johnson are constantly slamming broader New Evangelicalism by pointing out its many flaws and inconsistencies. It’s really something else - even as I was reading the article, Johnson was taking below-the-belt swats at both the Fundamentalist movement and the flagship puliblication of the New Evangelical movement in the same breath:

Now, I recognize the modern limitations of the word fundamentalism. In the late 1970s, when Islamic ayatollahs took political control in Iran, the word fundamentalism was hijacked by the secular media and turned into a synonym for all the worst kinds of violent religious fanaticism. I suppose it was no great loss, because by then, the term fundamentalism was already pretty badly corrupted by self-styled fundamentalists in America - mostly Baptist ayatollahs - who had already moved far away from the spiritual principles and even the clear doctrinal position of their historic fundamentalist ancestors. So the term was beginning to lose its usefulness anyway.

Likewise, the word evangelicalism has come to mean something quite different from what the word ever meant historically. Thanks to a little help from Christianity Today magazine, the evangelical movement has become so broad and inclusive that the word evangelical is now as useless as the word fundamentalist.

I’m sure the folks in the New Evangelical sphere are thinking to themselves, “With friends like him, who needs enemies?” He is, of course, right in every detail in those two paragraphs. But I must say that, despite his disclaimer at the beginning of his lecture that he was going to have to be very general (”I do recognize that the fundamentalist movement is a large and varied movement. There is not just one fundamentalist movement, but there are many - maybe thousands - of smaller groups within fundamentalism, and most of them don’t get along with each other. So fundamentalism isn’t the sort of monolithic movement that you can critique fairly. I’m going to try to be fair, but I will admit up front that I am painting with a broad brush.”), he ends up being quite specific. One thing he does that is good is distinguish between fundamentalism (the militant belief and defense of those doctrines that are absolutely essential to the Gospel) and the fundamentalist movement. I will use those distinctions in my survey for neatness’ sake. And because it’s probably a good distinction to make.

I was uncomfortable reading because I’m guilty of some of the things he points out. But overall I came away very confident in my beliefs, because the fundamentalism he describes flourish 30 years ago and is now, if not dead, then at least marginalized.

He admits being saved and introduced to the fundamentalist movement’s mindset in the 1970s, which is probably the worst time in history to be introduced to the fundamentalist movement. But he seems to think that the whole of the fundamentalist movement, whatever the differences in those couple thousand factions are, is still in the Jack Hyles and John R. Rice mentality, when that simply isn’t the case. I’m not sure if things are better or worse - after all, the things that those men made unjust issues out of are probably foreign to the ears of the average church person. At least back then Christians could give a working definition of the doctrines they believed in.

That was thirty years ago, but even then, the fundamentalist movement was dominated by personality cults, easy-believism, man-centered doctrine, an unbiblical pragmatism in their methodology, a carnal kind of superficiality in their worship, petty bickering at the highest levels of leadership, deliberate anti-intellectualism even in their so-called institutions of higher learning, and moral rot almost everywhere you looked in the movement….

I speak as someone who loves historic fundamentalist principals, but who hates what the American fundamentalist movement became in the second half of the twentieth century. I have no sentimental, sectarian, or party attachment to the movement. In fact, it seems to me that any movement that could lionize Jack Hyles and produce hundreds of Hyles clones while deliberately exaggerating petty disagreements in order to portray almost every conservative evangelical outside the fundamentalist movement as a dangerous heretic really needs to die. And it would be my hope that whatever takes its place would be less superficial, more sober-minded, more doctrinally sound, and more faithful to Scripture than the party that always dutifully agreed with John R. Rice when he insisted that he was a great scholar.

Frankly, I don’t think this is what characterizes the bulk of the fundamentalist movement in America today. I think he’s talking about a fringe group which splits its base between southeast Wisconsin and south-central North Carolina…not to name names. I think the fundamentalist movement’s problems lie in its people, not necessarily just its leaders (or lack thereof, which he brings out later in the essay). Its problems are:

1. Its people don’t think - they just accept whatever their pastor/professor tells them to believe (cf. Acts 17:10-11).
2. Its leaders (or those who would claim leadership) accept their god-like status as local parish priest and don’t encourage their people to think for themselves.
3. The adherants to the movement believe that true Christians will join the Fundamentalist Movement (and by extension, those that don’t join are not true Christians), making it nearly a cult.

Granted, this is not true of every person who identifies himself with the Fundamentalist movement. Hence the title - those of whom this is not true are the Center of the movement; the Hyles/Rice/SotL crowd are the Dead Right, the Right that deserves marginalization. Those in the center of this movement - not “liberal” enough to identify themselves with New Evangelicalism or even the IFCA (a quasi-Fundamentalist organization that is something of a cross between conservative New Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism) yet not militant enough to line up under people like Hyles or Rice - are alive and well, thank you.

In the end, I found his challenge to those thinkers in the Fundamentalist movement to practice what they preach and do a little separating close to right on - “Those men in the fundamentalist movement who truly love Christ and love his word ought to practice what they preach and separate from their disobedient brethren. Cut the ties with heretics who claim a seventeenth-century English translation of the Bible is inspired and inerrant. Break fellowship with your fellow fundamentalists who refuse to practice biblical church discipline but like to destroy good men’s lives and ministries by spreading rumors and innuendo. Come out from among those who ignore the Word of God and don’t care about good theology, and whose preaching consists of pulpit-pounding histrionics with no biblical substance. Renounce those who like to regulate people’s lives with manmade rules, binding heavy burdens on people’s backs like the Pharisees did. ‘Come out from among them, and be ye separate.’ Practice real biblical separation and stop just pretending to be separatists.” I say “close to right on” because it’s easier said than done.

He raises some good points, but he makes much of marginal Fundamentalism in that the Fundamentalism he preaches against is more or less out the door already. But it’s still no reason not to read the essay. Who knows - maybe God will bring something slightly (or not at all) related to his points to your mind and press you to change those things. Read with discernment, but read with an open mind.

[Listening to: Symphonie No. 41 KV 551 D-Dur / In D (Jupiter) - Allegro Vivace - Leonard Bernstein - Wiener Philharmoniker - Symphonien No. 35 Haffner & No. 41 Jupiter (11:59)]