Zeal For Truth

Several Emerging Church leaders were raised in Fundamentalist churches. This includes Brian McLaren, who has admitted that as a result of his experiences, he is harder on Fundamentalists than he is on other Christian groups. More generally, there is no doubt that a reaction against Fundamentalism has played a role in the development of the Emerging Church.

The Fundamentals
Originally, Fundamentalist referred to those in the early 20th century that sought to defend what they viewed as the fundamentals of the Christian faith against attack from Christian liberals and modernists. Precisely what the fundamentals were varied slightly, but they generally included most of the following: the inerrancy of scripture, the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the historical authenticity of miracles and the imminent return of Christ.

On these doctrines the Emerging Church ranges from people like Dan Kimball, who is in essential agreement with the list, only preferring words such as “infallible” and “authoritative” instead of “inerrant” and preferring to leave the specific timing of Christ’s return as an issue on which disagreement is acceptable (which would place him squarely with many conservative Evangelicals) to people like McLaren, who also doesn’t like using “inerrant” (seeing that as a term resulting more from modernistic philosophy than from scripture itself), rejects the idea that substitutionary atonement is the sole way of picturing atonement (more on this in a future article) and has been highly critical of premillenial dispensationalism. However, no Emerging Church leader has, to my knowledge, rejected the virgin birth, the deity and bodily resurrection of Christ or the authenticity of miracles.

But by rejecting Fundamentalism, I don’t mean what is commonly called theology, but the legalism, separatist tendencies, mean-spiritedness, and conservative political activism, that has too often typified it.

Legalism
One issue for concern is Fundamentalism’s (real and/or perceived) legalism. Absolute prohibitions against such things as drinking alcohol, smoking, and dancing have often marked Fundamentalism, but are soundly rejected by Emerging types. Not only are they seen as fostering a poor “rule-keeping” approach to Christianity, the rules themselves are non-Biblical or even at times anti-Biblical.

Separatist Tendency
Traditionally, Fundamentalists stressed separation from the world. This began to decline after the rise of Neo-Evangelicalism beginning in the 1950’s. It’s influence can still be seen in Fundamentalist and conservative Evangelical circles, by people who only listen to Christian music, insist on sending their kids to Christian schools or in home schooling them, only supporting Christian bookstores, etc. A rather hardline stance can be seen here [link plays music]. I think I’ve covered in other impulses why the Emerging Church rejects this view.

Mean-Spiritedness
From the despicable actions of extremists like Fred Phelps, to mainstream Fundamentalists, such as the recently deceased Jerry Falwell (who made statements saying groups such as “pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” helped the September 11th attacks happen and labeling the people of a gay church as “brute beats”), the public face of Fundamentalism has often come across as hateful. Homosexuals in particular appear to be a group that Fundamentalists have a problem, following the old adage of “hate the sin, love the sinner.”

Besides such mean-spiritedness, those in the Emerging church take issues with how Fundamentalists harp on certain sins, in effect making some of them to be qualitatively worse sins than others.

Conservative Political Activism
Starting in the 1970’s, Fundamentalists started to make a strong impact in American politics, marking a departure from their traditional separatism, under which politics were often ignored. With the rise of such groups as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, Fundamentalists, along with many Evangelicals, made a large impact on politics indeed. Fundamentalist have in fact become so entrenched in political causes, that many have come to see political, and not religious issues, as their defining characteristics.

Other Christian groups, including many in the Emerging Church, have worried that this political emphasis can lead to a synergistic religion, wherein love for God and country, as well as Christianity and conservative politics are blended. Some have called for Christians to have a “purple” politics, in which they are not united squarely with either conservative or liberal politics. It is a concern, though, that some in the Emerging Church, such as Brian McLaren, may be in danger of combining Christianity with liberal politics.

How Christians should act politically in a democracy is not an easy question, but I do think it would be a step forward if we could stop making assumptions about people’s spiritual life based on their politics, which unfortunately happens far to often.