Mainline, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Radical?

Status
Not open for further replies.
arapahoepark

arapahoepark

Puritan Board Professor
What are your thoughts on these types of Christians.

I may have misunderstood this issue and so mine ideas maybe a little faulty.

I would consider myself a fundamentalist. What I mean by fundamentalist is someone who is unwavering in their convictions of the Christian faith no matter what.
I separate this from radical. Most non-Christians or people who really don't live like Christians, or ignorant and naive ones would say fundamentalists are radicals. I say radicals are people who do things contrary to the Bible in order to accomplish something that MAY be Biblical, but not always and seem more totalitarian. So in other words perhaps the ends don't justify the means but radicals like suicide bombers or Fred Phelps believe the means are justifiable. So radicals are usually fundamentalist, but not all fundamentalists are radicals, not even close. So there can be some overlap.

An evangelical anymore seems to be a loose term with Pete Enns, Rob Bell and Brian McLaren considering themselves part of this group in some bizarre way or at least they used to. I used to identify with this until all these people come out of the wood works and gave themselves this label. I would consider it to be someone who is serious about the faith and is open about it and tries to interact with the culture and can be unwavering. I think there is some overlap between fundies and evangelicals. But anymore I do not see them as the same.

As for mainline, I really have no clue.

What are your thoughts?
 
Mainline denotes (at least historically) the seven denominations also known as the "Seven Sisters of the Mainline." These include: ABCUSA, DoC, ELCA, EPUSA, UMC, PCUSA, and UCC. Most of these groups have a range of views from radical liberal/feminist/unitarian to pretty conservative.

Evangelical (originally neo-evangelical) was coined after WWII to denote an effort to create a robust orthodoxy without the too often characteristic anger and legalism of fundamentalism. The reductionistic core of beliefs (the five fundamentals or Bebbington's four marks of evangelicalism) left ecclesiology largely untouched and made discipline practically impossible. The evangelical experiment included the founding of Fuller Theological Seminary, Christianity Today, and a host of parachurch ministries (e.g., Inter Varsity, Campus Crusade). Within a very short period of time (a twinkling of the eye historically) places like Fuller changed their doctrinal statement to remove inerrancy. Now evangelical incorporates all manner of views among those who claim to believe: there is a God, Jesus is divine, the Bible is special, and conversion is important.

Personally, depending on the context of the conversation and the semantic field, I AM a life long evangelical, have LEFT the evangelical movement because it is a failure, and CONTINUE to see myself in league with evangelicals of good will in a variety of church traditions and denominations.

A full bodied confessionalism is not a magic bullet. However, I do NOT see how one can maintain doctrinal integrity without some kind of confessional subscription to a document that covers more than a handful of doctrines.
 
Because we're dealing with labels that (1) change over time, sometimes rapidly and (2) carry different connotations to different people, this question may end up with people talking past each other if we aren't careful.

I, for example, happily think of myself as "evangelical" because I mostly associate that term with being a non-liberal. To me, it means Bible-believing and concerned for Christian obedience without the wierd Fundy stuff. In my mind, all faithful Reformed people are also necessarily evangelical (though not all evangelicals are Reformed, certainly). I would guess that most of us who are children of the 60s and 70s think somewhat that way about "evangelical."

But when I've said that here before, others have attacked me because, in their minds, "evangelical" is associated with Arminianism, Dispensationalism and loose structures to church and personal life. In their minds, you can't be truly Reformed and also evangelical.

So... it's probably helpful, now and then, to talk about how we use these terms so that we better understand each other. It's seldom helpful, though, to attack others because they don't use the term the same way you contend it "ought" to be used. Just sayin' so in advance...
 
Fundamentalism initially meant a militant defense of the faith. The Baptist leader Curtis Lee Laws spoke of doing "Battle royal for the fundamentals." That was in the 1920's. Today in many cases, right or wrong, fundamentalism is considered synonymous with legalism and a lack of theological reflection and scholarship.

I think that the New Evangelical/Fundamentalist split of the 50's was a disaster for both sides. The New Evangelicals ended up moving left, with a good many eventually denying inerrancy. The fundamentalists began defining themselves by their relation to other evangelicals with doctrines like secondary separation (separating from brethren who aren't separated from liberals) and often failed to engage the wider culture. The perceived lack of engagement with the wider culture was one reason for the development of the New Evangelicalism to begin with. (See Carl F.H. Henry's "Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism.") So while the fundys ostensibly stand for the fundamentals of the faith, ironically it has largely been the conservative evangelicals (as well as the Reformed, many of whom they would relegate to the new evangelical category) who have written the works actually defending the faith since about the 1950's.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of new evangelicalism was the turn of the Southern Baptist Convention from a leftward (liberal) direction to one more approximating their theological roots. Their detractors decry them as fundamentalists. But with regard to cultural engagement, a lot of the moves made by the leaders at Southern Seminary, for example, are straight out of the New Evangelical playbook with regard to cooperation and co-belligerance with non-evangelicals in certain endeavors.

John MacArthur is an example of a conservative evangelical who would be closer to fundamentalism than most. But even he does not practice secondary separation and he rejected separatist fundamentalism as a movement 40+ years ago. While he would emphatically reject the ecumenism with Roman Catholics and liberals in evangelistic endeavors practiced by the likes of Billy Graham since the 50's, If I recall correctly a few years ago MacArthur actually spoke at a venue associated with Billy Graham, something which no self-respecting fundy would ever do. That controversy generally speaking was the reason for the formal split with the two sides in the 50's.
 
Last edited:
Pilgrim said:
Perhaps the greatest triumph of new evangelicalism was the turn of the Southern Baptist Convention from a leftward (liberal) direction to one more approximating their theological roots. Their detractors decry them as fundamentalists. But a lot of the moves made by the leaders at Southern Seminary, for example, are straight out of the New Evangelical playbook with regard to cooperation and co-belligerance with non-evangelicals in certain endeavors.

.
Click to expand...
Another triumph was the victory of the conservatives under J. A. O. Preuss II in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Unlike the conservative victory in the SBC, this was a victory of those who believed adherence to the confessional standards was important,

---------- Post added at 10:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 PM ----------

I always refer to the mainline as sideline. The mainstream American Baptist, Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches are very self important but are increasingly shells of their former selves. Their are conservative evangelicals in these old line, sideline denominations. Their numbers are decreasing rapidly.
A distinction needs to be made between new evangelicals and conservative evangelicals.
 
The word's Fundamentalist and Evangelical all depend on who's defining it. Fundamentalist can mean either 1) those who believe in the Fundamentals 2) those who are legalistic, KJV only, etc. etc. The same is true with the word Evangelical but I wouldn't go into how people interpret it, I consider myself a True Evangelical.
 
Interestingly, fundamentalism came out of a protestant effort to answer the modernists in the early 1900s and had Presbyterians in the center of the effort. However, the resulting Niagara Creed affirmed many of the tenets of a premillennial-dispensational perspective and was widely embraced by baptists and independent churches. This is one reason why people claiming the "old-time religion" fall into the dispensational camp even though it is quite young by protestant standards.

Sadly, the term "evangelical" has been robbed of most of its meaning. Up until the 1980s or so, I'd have said it stood for those with a robust view the Great Commission. But when the term was included in the name for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I think the term switched to an idea of outreach for all with no call to personal holiness.

Groups like the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals are trying to retain the original meaning of the word and link it to a standard of orthodox teaching.
 
yeutter said:
Pilgrim said:
Perhaps the greatest triumph of new evangelicalism was the turn of the Southern Baptist Convention from a leftward (liberal) direction to one more approximating their theological roots. Their detractors decry them as fundamentalists. But a lot of the moves made by the leaders at Southern Seminary, for example, are straight out of the New Evangelical playbook with regard to cooperation and co-belligerance with non-evangelicals in certain endeavors.

.
Click to expand...
Another triumph was the victory of the conservatives under J. A. O. Preuss II in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Unlike the conservative victory in the SBC, this was a victory of those who believed adherence to the confessional standards was important,
Click to expand...

Definitely true with regard to the LCMS. But I didn't include them because a lot of them wouldn't consider themselves to be evangelicals and I don't think that a leader like Carl F.H. Henry had the kind of direct influence there as he did with the Southern Baptists. I don't know that they had got quite as bad as the SBC or LCMS (others could fill us in) but the ARP has taken a "rightward" turn in recent years. A while back I happened upon a blog that was chronicling events at Erskine. As with the above two cases, here you see the same kind of objections almost verbatim from the old guard who think everybody should just play nice.
 
Interesting discussion. As a Reformed Paedobaptistic Calvinist, I have been called Liberal by my peers. It's almost like if you go too far conservative, you come out on the other side and become liberal maybe?/?
 
So I see it is historical in nature. I just always connected them to how dedicated one person is to their faith.

@constantlyreforming it seems that they think you are decidedly mainline and therefore liberal in their minds (it seems that we've established that quite a few of the traditional mainline denominations are going liberal).
 
the liberalness from what I gather is associated with viewing election and predestination in a biblical mindframe rather than in a worldly mindframe. THey associate reformed theology with extreme liberalism. Maybe they are confused with the terms....
 
As a former dispensationalist I know they somehow they did get that idea: Reformed is Liberal. They follow Tim Lahaye's idea that the seven churches in revelation are representatives of the so called seven church ages. Sardis who was the dead church was the reformed church in their mind since they didn't reform enough for them.
 
Constantlyreforming said:
the liberalness from what I gather is associated with viewing election and predestination in a biblical mindframe rather than in a worldly mindframe. THey associate reformed theology with extreme liberalism. Maybe they are confused with the terms....
Click to expand...

Have you asked these people why they think that? It is true that the majority of "Protestant" paedobaptist churches and denominations in the USA are genuinely liberal, especially at the top level. Do they just assume that you're affiliated with the PCUSA or whatever? Your sig indicates nondenominational. But PCUSA is the only kind of Presbyterian many people know. RCA and CRC are the only kind of "Reformed" church that many people know, with the formerly conservative CRC getting more liberal all the time.
 
Pilgrim said:
Constantlyreforming said:
the liberalness from what I gather is associated with viewing election and predestination in a biblical mindframe rather than in a worldly mindframe. THey associate reformed theology with extreme liberalism. Maybe they are confused with the terms....
Click to expand...

Have you asked these people why they think that? It is true that the majority of "Protestant" paedobaptist churches and denominations in the USA are genuinely liberal, especially at the top level. Do they just assume that you're affiliated with the PCUSA or whatever? Your sig indicates nondenominational. But PCUSA is the only kind of Presbyterian many people know. RCA and CRC are the only kind of "Reformed" church that many people know, with the formerly conservative CRC getting more liberal all the time.
Click to expand...


I attended a PCUSA a while ago, but left when convicted of reformed theology and other doctrinal distinctives. I do now attend a non-denominational church plant.
 
Constantlyreforming said:
Interesting discussion. As a Reformed Paedobaptistic Calvinist, I have been called Liberal by my peers. It's almost like if you go too far conservative, you come out on the other side and become liberal maybe?/?
Click to expand...

I'd guess that's just because some have been taught that (1) any non-dispensationalist reads the Bible as an allegory and is therefore liberal and (2) anyone who supports baptizing babies doesn't care about personal faith and is therefore liberal. They just don't know better. Getting to know you should help them understand.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top