Me with my lovely wife, Kathy:

Friday, November 4, 2011

A definition of Fundamentalism?

I am doing my reading in a Kindle reader on my computer, so I don't have page numbers, but what I'm writing about is toward the end of the book, Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology)
It is near the beginning of John Stackhouses response to Al Mohler's chapter--neither of these guys regards himself as a Fundamentalist, yet it appears to me that in essence Stackhouse is accusing Mohler of being one.  (Elsewhere in the book, Kevin Bauder, the Fundamentalist representative, tongue in cheek, tries to protect his friend, "Brother Al," from such a fate.)

Anyhow, it looks like Stackhouse's accusation makes a definition that sounds pretty good to me:


I respectfully suggest that his position is not “confessional” so much as it is “conservative,” and in exactly the way American fundamentalists understand “conservative”: conserving what they understand to be the basics of the Christian faith, regardless of when or by whom in church history they might have been formulated. As far as they are concerned, what they defend is simply what true Christians have always affirmed—and it comes right out of the Bible.  (emphasis mine)

Hansen, Collin; Naselli, Andrew David (2011-09-20). Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) (Kindle Locations 1795-1798). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

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