Ich ben ein Fundamentalist [Part 1]

Last Sunday evening I visited a local Baptist church which holds itself out proudly as a "fundamental Baptist" church. That piqued my interest, of course, as my Fundamentalist Baptist creditials are probably as fine or better than those of anyone I know. I am familiar with Fundamentalism in the Baptist ranks, for I was ( and am, rightly defined) one. But judging from what I heard and observed during my visit to this "fundamentalist" church in the year 2005, I would sadly have to conclude that the modernism that fundamentalism sought to repulse at its inception has won the day, so much so that what I heard from a self-proclaimed fundamentalist pulpit was nothing less than that supposed enemy itself - modernism. Let me explain.

I was introduced to fundamental Baptists when I was first converted by God. The man used of God to preach the Gospel to me was a member of a dyed-in-the-wool Fundamental Baptist church in Big Spring, Texas. We were "independent, fundamental, premillenial, Dispensational, missionary, Bible-believing, soulwinning, separated" Baptists. Because I had no early training in religion and/or Baptist fundamentalism, I did not know but that the beliefs of the people of my new church were essentially those that all Baptists held. Later I would learn that all that calls itself fundamentalist Baptist is not necessarily fundamentalist - or Baptist.

Initial Indoctrination into all things fundamental Baptist

The first thing that I was instructed in was the practice of the altar call, which by the time I was converted to Christ had become nothing less than a quasi ordinance of the fundamental Baptists. It seemed that responding to the altar call was elevated as the sine quo non of Christian conversion, and compared to it baptism was of little importance. The fact was that I had come to trust Christ in the privacy of my own home and not in the presence of anyone but myself and God. Only afterwards, with my now dear Christian friend that had first preached the Gospel to me did I make that confession public. He faithfully took me to a conference with the pastor and the head deacon of the church to instruct me as to what I should do now that I had professed Christ as Savior. I was told that the "way Baptists do things" is for me to wait for the altar call at the end of next Sunday's sermon, at which time I was to come forward and "make my profession of faith." I was struck a little by the language, for even as a new convert, I knew that I had already done so. If they had added the word "public" I might have understood. I recall asking them why this was necessary [I was never one for public show of anything]. They repeated the instruction that "that is the way Baptists do things." I obeyed explicitly and responded to the "invitation" which the pastor of the church felt duty-bound to employ every time he spoke. There was much rejoicing over my profession, but somehow I would later reflect on the whole thing a bit and wonder if there was not a planful attempt to make it appear that it was the powerful preaching of the pastor that brought me down the aisle, as they put it.

Chiliastic indoctrination

After I was baptized [something of an afterthought, really, as the altar call seemed much more important to the congregation] I was immediately introduced to premillenial dispensationalism. I was told that the only Bible that had relevance was the Scofield Reference Bible and so I obtained a rather fine one of leather with my name embossed in gold on the front. Even now, I considered myself a full-blown fundamental Baptist. I was almost perfect in attendance and attended to every word that the teachers and the preachers said. I absorbed everything I heard and unfortunately took it in without critical analysis, which later I would learn was a serious mistake, if not fatal. I learned my Scofield reference Bible so well that I could recall exact pages and notes, even if I did not do so well with the Biblical text, as it seemed at the time secondary to the study notes. In but a few weeks I had learned the entire gamut of premillenial dispensationalism, what with its rapture [mentioned in nearly every sermon, as I recall, as the great hope of the church], the seven year tribulation [which, thankfully, we would not endure, since we would be raptured out. We would not want to be involved with anything like the saints in Hebrews 11, would we?], the marriage of the Lamb, the judgment seat of Christ and the Great White Throne judgment, the battle of Armageddon, the 1,000 year millenial reign of Christ in the reconstructed Jerusalem temple, with its restored sacrificial system and all. At this time, I was also exposed to the complex "charts" or "maps" of premillenial dispensationalism, although I would learn later that their measly local charts would pale into insignificant when compared to what I would encounter from the "professional" Dispensationalist professors when I went off to Bible Baptist Seminary in Arlington, Texas, and came to know men from Dallas Theological Seminary, the center of the Dispensational world, as it were, in 1966. Only John Hagee with his auditorium-sized projected charts could match or top those earlier Dispensational divines.

Erecting fundamentalist icons

As I was quickly and thoroughly indoctrinated into premillenial dispensationalism and Baptist fundamentalism [they're the same, are they not?], certain men were introduced and burned into my mind as the heroes of faith. First and foremost was Dr. J. Frank Norris, who by the time I had been converted had gone home to his reward. He was painted to me as a holy man, a modern day Elijah. Story after story was emblazened in my brain about this man and what could only be described as his "exploits," for his life involved wild and crazy behavior, even his killing of a man in his downtown Ft. Worth church office! He was known in Ft. Worth as an anti-booze zealot, ready to name local luminaries as drunkards and reprobates, which he did often from the pulpit, excoriating local politicians and others in authority.

I also heard other names [William Bell Riley, G. Greshem Machen, Billy Sunday, and others], but in the minds of Texas Baptist Fundamentalists, J. Frank Norris was the Fundamentalist par excellence. Every young Texas Fundamentalist preacher boy that went off to seminary [the one founded by J. Frank Norris, of course!] hoped to be the one who would inherit the mantle of him who was considered the Elijah of the Fundamentalist movement not only in Texas, but across the nation. At the same time that Norris climbed to fame in Fort Worth, Texas, as pastor of First Baptist Church there, with thousands in attendance, he also pastored, simultaneously, Temple Baptist Church in Detroit, MI, where Dr. G.B. Vick was co-pastor. That's right; J. Frank Norris was the first "jet-setter" pastor, flying from one church to the other in the same day, and all before there were jets at all! He was pastor of two of the largest congregations in the nation at a time when mega churches were extremely rare. To hear Texas Baptist Fundamentalists tell it, Dr. Norris had an almost unworldly aura that was to be revered and not challenged. For a time, I fell into that very train of thought - until I met his son, Dr. George Norris, at seminary. More on that later.

The Dark Side(s) of Fundamentalism

I was never, as I recall it today, comfortable with my fundamental Baptist indoctrination. Though I was somewhat religiously naive, I was not dumb, and soon began to cautiously question much of what I had learned. There was a definite strain of anti-intellectualism that was proudly (arrogantly?) professed publicly. Genuine scholarship was not encouraged, indeed, the proof of your fundamentalist credentials was that you implicitly trusted in what your leaders told you without questioning. Judging from my recent visit to a fundamental Baptist church, those poisonous traits are still alive and well in Baptist fundamentalism.

Biblical evangelism, or disguised humanism?

If there is anything that I will today credit as positive in my fundamentalist years, it is two primary focuses: evangelism and their focus on the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. But even those things that could be termed positive turned out to be somewhat sullied by the ignorance and anti-intellectual bent of the fundamentalists. Evangelism, touted to be the very purpose of the faith, turned out to be but the ploy of Arminian and semi-Pelagian doctrines, popularized by Charles Finney in the middle 1800s. The fundamentalists had imbibed the theology and the methods of Finney so thoroughly that the two things were sometimes hard to distinguish. Finney had popularized a variety of "new measures" of evangelism which were naturally born out of his Pelagian theology. Why any Baptist would wish to follow such Pelagian theology is quite beyond me, but it was most surely the testimony of history that it was so. Indeed, the "new methods" which Finney pioneered became the bread and butter of Baptist (and other brands of) fundamentalism across America, the "altar call," the evil spawn of his "mourner's bench" being the most obvious and most ubiquitous.

Coming next: The Great Downgrade to Arminian humanism: the disasterous 20th century for Fundamental Baptists