Featured What’s “Fundamental” to “Fundamentalism”?

Bob, fundamentalist churches have never been persecuted in the United States. My wife comes from Mennonite stock. You want to talk persecution?

Now, certainly fundamentalist chrches get push back. This is almost always due to the judgmental behavior of the fundamentalist church, not the directed persecution coming from other denominations.
God told the exiles in Babylon to pray for the peace of the city that it might go well with them. He didn't call them to fight Babylon and other Jews and be persecuted by fighting them.
The call for the believer is to seek God and strive earnestly for the faith...not against other men, but against the desires of the flesh waging in your own soul.
There is no persecution from fellow believers when you look to Jesus and live in step with Christ. There will be push back when you tell other Christians what to do, how to think, and how to worship.
My experience is that fundamentalist churches start the fight rather than extend grace.

 

Squire, you speak from what you know. I don't doubt that. I speak from what I know and I also have multiple decades of experience to draw from.

 

Oh, really? My grandfather was blackballed by the Texas SBC hierarchy when he opposed evolution being taught at Baylor, his alma mater, in the 1930s. He was told he would never preach in Texas again. Lee Roberson, the founder of the fundamentalist Tennessee Temple U., was kicked out of the county association in Chattanooga in 1955 simply for starting a non-approved, fundamentalist school. A professor friend who taught at a liberal SBC seminary told of fundamentalists being mocked from the chapel pulpit. Many other examples could be given--not physical persecution, but persecution nonetheless.

When Billy Graham broke from my grandfather, John R. Rice, in 1957 because Rice opposed Graham having liberals on his NY Crusade committee, Rice was viciously attacked by leading evangelicals, and many New Evangelicals separated from him (a case of the fundamentalist not being the separatist) and shunned him. I'm going to attach a letter from the Zondervan brothers as proof of this last statement (John R. Rice Papers at Southwestern BTS, Box 1).

P. S. Rice and Graham remained friends, though they never worked together again. Graham sent a huge flower wreath to Rice's funeral in 1980. Graham's team was sometimes pretty nasty, though, especially Billy's father-in-law.

 

Let's look at John's claims.
Note that in each instance, it was a fundamentalist complaining and calling someone liberal without first going through the fundamental theology of that person or group. I also note that starting a rogue Bible institute would be a cause for reprimand within a denomination.
I would like to see the theological issues that got persons labeled as "liberals." That way we could see if the theological fundamentals were being abandoned or whether it was social mores that got others labeled as liberals.
Continual pointing areas of disagreement and then demanding your way as the only way is going to be met with opposition. Is that persecution? No, it is not. Is it reprimand? Yes, it is.
In this area, unless there were theological fundamentals that were abandoned, the reprimand to fundamentalists would be in order. Why? Because the group is really being separatists. This is seen within the Mennonite community where there is now multiple variations of Mennonite from liberals who deny the deity of Christ, to conservatives who deny electricity and have their own small clans that will not associate with others. Then you have the Hutterites and Amish as separatist groups off from the Mennonites. It all results in a fracturing of fellowship, many times not over the fundamentals of the faith, but instead over petty preferences that are pushed so hard that it causes break up. One side then claims to be persecuted by the other and bitterness takes deep root.

 

Again you are showing your complete ignorance of the history. A "liberal" in those days was precisely someone who DID deny a fundamental of the faith, in particular the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the verbal inspiration of Scriptures, the Second Coming, salvation from sin by grace alone. This is not just fundamentalist opinion, it's theological history.

Have you never taken a theology course? The knowledge of what classical theological liberalism is, is basic to a knowledge of theology. SBC theologian in Millard Erickson in his systematic theology (Christian Theology, 3rd ed.) discusses it extensively. I suggest you educate yourself and avoid future embarrassment due to your ignorance.

One particular liberal on Graham's NY Crusade committee was
John Sutherland Bonnell, who had written an article for Look Magazine of March 23, 1954, in which he confirmed that he did not believe in the doctrines of the Trinity, virgin birth of Christ, bodily resurrection, literal Heaven or Hell, or verbal inspiration of the Bible.

I could list dozens of books that verify what I have written. Please, please educate yourself. What would it take to convince you? How about PhD dissertations? In my new biography of John R. Rice I cite the following dissertations, each of which would prove much or all of what I have written here:

Bates, David Keith Jr. “Moving Fundamentalism Toward the Mainstream: John R. Rice and the Reengagement of America’s Religious and Political Cultures.” PhD dissertation, Kansas State University, 2006.

Butler, Farley P. Jr. “Billy Graham and the End of Evangelical Unity.” PhD dissertation, University of Florida, 1976.

Finn, Nathan A. “The Development of Baptist Fundamentalism in the South.” PhD dissertation, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2007.

Lyon, Matthew Lee. “John R. Rice and Evangelism: An Essential Mark of Independent Baptist Fundamentalism.” The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, PhD dissertation, 2019.

Moore, Howard Edgar. “The Emergence of Moderate Fundamentalism: John R. Rice and the Sword of the Lord.” PhD dissertation, George Washington University, 1990.

 

No one can deny that Fundamentalists desire to keep the fundamentals of the faith is not a great thing, but can and do judge at times how they were in judgement against fellow Christians just due to how they view kjv, how they dressed and went to movies, were open to having some wine at dinner, and were not pre trib pre mil

 

Billy Grahams gospel is the gospel of scripture. He never wavered. Therefore he held the fundamentals of the faith.
Your judgment of him perfectly exemplifies my point that the fundamentalist movement has not been about fundamental theology, but has been about being a separatist movement bent on telling other believers how wrong and evil they are when those other groups do not kowtow to the social norms required by the fundamentalist movement. Your post is a perfect example of this.