Evangelical vs. Fundamentalist (a response to Robin’s post)
Written by Daniel in Educational, Opinion at February 4, 2011
I have intended to create a blog post on this topic for a while now because I think we atheists tend to use these terms interchangeably, and they are not quite interchangeable. Many fundamentalists would not want to be called an evangelical, and vice versa. But the reality is that the terms fundamentalist, evangelical and mainline Christianity rest on a continuum, with many people and churches on blurry lines between these terms. My parents were self-identified fundamentalists throughout my childhood, and then switched to a more evangelical church when I was a teenager. This post is only my first-person observations of these groups. I am not familiar with “every jot and tittle” of every point of every denomination’s doctrine. Feel free to post angry comments about how I am wrong about what some sect believes. <sarcasm>
The big issues in this debate are the inerrancy of the bible and cultural conservatism. If you were to set the broad spectrum of Christianity on a right-to-left scale, “fundamentalists” would be on the far right and “mainline” churches (United Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterian USA, etc.) would be on the far left. Evangelicals sit on the middle ground between these two extremes.
This is really confusing, right? I mean, the Evangelical Lutherans have the word “evangelical” IN THEIR NAME, yet they are mainline. There are liberal Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Methodist groups that I would characterize as mainline, while there are conservative Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Methodist groups that would characterize themselves as “evangelical.” To further add to the confusion, there are many extremely conservative christian groups that do not characterize themselves as “Fundamentalists.” Certainly the Amish, Mennonites, extremely conservative Pentecostals, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses do not call themselves “fundamentalists,” but they have maximally conservative views of the literal inerrancy of the bible, creationism, conservative dress, and womens rights, etc.
The controversy between fundamentalism and modernity started around the post-civil war period. Some of American Christianity had been moving culturally left because much of the abolitionist movement was based on vaguely christian ideas. Many abolitionists looked to Moses as a role model because he freed a people in bondage. As you probably also know, the bible is pretty decidedly pro-slavery, including the new testament. See Colossians 3:22, et al. As the industrial and scientific revolutions marched on in the 19th century, churches took on charity are their main goal. The 1896 book “In His steps” (where we get “WWJD” from) distilled this “social gospel” idea of mainline churches. To a mainline theologian, the bible may or may not be all literally true, evolution may be the way god created the universe, or maybe he did it by hand 6,000 years ago—doesn’t matter. The mission of mainline churches is to feed the poor. You can see the lineage of this kind of thinking today. Every American town in which I have lived, large or small, has at least one homeless shelter or soup kitchen that is operated by a mainline church.
Around the same time, groups of German scholars began to dig into the bible as literature the way they had done to other ancient books and began to doubt what the church taught about the bible. Upon analyzing the the text carefully they came to the conclusion that the Pentateuch was slowly developed by 4 (or maybe 5?) main authors/editors (and lots of copying scribes) between 950-500 BCE, not Moses in the 13th Century BCE as Jewish and Christian religious authorities had always taught. (Besides the obvious fact that Moses was supernatural enough to record his own death and events after his death…) Along with this came better techniques in archeology that made the biblical account of history questionable. Why didn’t all the nations that traded with the great kingdom of Israel under Solomon record ANYTHING about such a kingdom? Why isn’t there any archeological evidence of Solomon’s Jerusalem, or the great temple? Why didn’t the Egyptians, who meticulously recorded every mundane detail of their lives, good and bad, ever mention a huge slave revolt resulting in every firstborn Egyptian dying?
Adding to all this, we have the the publication of “The origin of Species.” Modernity deeply shook many Christians, thus the “Fundamentalist-Modernist” controversy was born. This led to the 5 fundamental, non-negotiable, absolute doctrines of fundamentalists :
1)The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this.
2)The virgin birth of Christ.
3)The belief that Christ’s death was an atonement for sin.
4)The bodily resurrection of Christ.
5)The historical reality of Christ’s miracles.
In my experience many mainline churches have doctrinal statements that sounds like the above, but are tweaked a bit to sound more sane. For instance, they might say some thing like “the bible is inspired by God and inerrant for spiritual practice, but it’s a spiritual book and not a literal history/science book.” Many would also say that the miracles are allegorical stories to teach us about the faith. OK, so that covers the mainline churches, but what about the evangelicals?
Most modern evangelical churches accept the 5 fundamentals, but don’t take the name of “fundamentalist.” In my experience, the only churches that actually accept the tag of “fundamentalist” are independent baptist churches. I believe that this is in part due to the fact that the media started using the phrase “fundamentalist Islam” around the time of the Iranian revolution. Fundamentalist Christians, mostly baptists, kept their title of “fundamentalist.” Evangelicals decided to be more “seeker-sensitive” and fully accepted the mantle of “evangelical,” while at the same time sharing many conservative doctrinal beliefs with fundamentalists.
I think the best easy-and-fun way to understand the difference between to two is to compare these two parody websites. Stuff fundies like and Stuff christian culture likes. Both evangelicals and fundamentalists believe that the bible is all literally true. Both think “evangelism” (trying to talk people into your religion) is important. Some evangelicals will accept the fact of evolution because of some theological contortions where they contend that the Hebrew word “day” in Genesis 1 is a vague temporal term, and thus God actually made the universe over 14 billion years, but Moses used the temporal words he had access to in the 13th century BCE. I’m not sure how they answer historical-critical method (I suspect most people never hear of it). Many evangelical seminaries that train christian apologists just assume that the bible is literally true. They then reverse-engineer away any problems they have with authorship or the lack of archeological evidence for the bible. Fundamentalists simply ignore the historical-critical method and archeology, because the bible is axiomatically right, therefore scholars are wrong if they disagree with it, Q.E.D.
Evangelicals and fundamentalists are mostly the same in terms of the core religious beliefs (the 5 fundamentals), but fundamentalists are much more culturally conservative. Fundamentalists, but not evangelicals, emphasize the idea of “separation from the world” taken from Philippians 2:15, II Corinthians 6:17, James 4:4, I Peter 2:9 and Romans 12:2. The New Testament was written by Pre-Constantinian Christians that were being persecuted by the Roman Empire, so it makes sense that early Christians would view themselves as being a “peculiar people” that live in “an evil generation.” Modern American fundamentalists also see themselves as living in a post-christian and anti-christian world, with all the gay rights, legal abortion, evolution, sex outside of marriage as common, womens rights, and no prayer in schools, etc. The changes of the 1960′s shook them deeply. Therefore, what fundamentalism boils down to is cultural conservatism plus biblical literalism.
Fundamentalists have particular cultural teachings like men can’t have long hair, women should always wear skirts and dress very modestly, married women must be housewives and shouldn’t work outside the home, women should not have leadership roles in church, tattoos, tobacco and alcohol are forbidden, and much of “secular culture” is forbidden as well (including rock music, most movies and most TV shows). Many Fundamentalists also believe that the King James version of the bible is the only one given by God. Most evangelicals are more liberal on these topics. In my opinion, the concept of “separation from the world” is just a way for fundamentalists to distinguish themselves as a group, similar to the way the Amish and Mennonites distinguish themselves from “secular culture” with their dress and culture. Fundamentalists may be politically active, but I think that evangelicals are more likely to be into politics than fundamentalists. Fundamentalists take the rapture very seriously and think that Jesus will come back very soon. This is why they are more likely to knock on your door and ask if you have repented and are saved from your sins by Jesus’ blood, than to knock on your door to ask you to donate to the cause of Prop 8. Fundamentalists care about “culture war” issues a lot, but they express it through trying to get religious converts, not necessarily though political action. “Soul-winning” is a huge buzzword for the fundamentalist.
Let me know what you think about my “continuum” idea. I am also curious to hear from all the evangelicals/fundamentalists/mainline Christians. Did I properly stereotype your group? <gentle sarcasm> I can only speak from my experience. I have experienced my parents’ fundamentalist baptist church, a few of my friend’s evangelical churches, and my forays into mainline churches in search of some semblance of a humane, sensible Christianity. American religion is a fascinating, baffling, totally bat-poop-crazy thing to me, which is why I like learning about it.