Sham Unity is Not Worth Working For

A couple years back, while at a big leadership conference for church leaders, I was listening to a statistician discussing the state of the church in Canada. He explained that he believes Roman Catholics and Protestants need to come together if we’re going to find any success in turning Canadians back toward Christ. After all, he said, the more discussions he had with Catholics, mainline Protestants and Evangelicals, the more he found we had in common (which, basically amounted to “all of them pray and take their faith seriously”).

Sitting in this session, I was kind of annoyed, and more than a little depressed. I mean, seriously? This is the best advice that could be offered to church leaders wanting to impact their communities? Hook up your carts to the United Church and Mainline Presbyterianism (both of which are haemorrhaging members) and bury the hatchet with the Roman church?

Sadly, this is the same advice that’s been given to Evangelicals for decades—dating back to the 1940s and earlier. J.I. Packer addresses how we should respond to this sort of thinking well in his 1958 release, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God. He writes:   Continue at Aaron Armgstrong

The Biggest Lie About Law?

One of the commonest errors about law relative to Christian conduct is that God no longer uses fear or laws to promote Christian conduct.

I was born and raised in a fundamentalist milieu that was at times excessive in its proliferation of rules and regulations. I recognize quite freely that this tendency, while commencing as a well-intentioned pursuit of godliness, in many instances offered fertile soil for the wickedness of self-aggrandizing Pharisaism, fear-driven authoritariainism, and the diminution of the gospel of the grace of God.

Still, I was uncomfortable when I read recently that “rules and regulations…bring about a kind of religious moralism that is very far from genuine Christianity” and, further, that such rules de facto reflect a sort of fear that is incompatible with faith.

Why was I uncomfortable? Well, because the New Testament is filled with fear-motivated rules and regulations that function as legitimate self-disciplinary tools for the promotion of true Christian godliness. Note the following:

• “Great fear” induced the early church not to lie (Acts 5:5, 11 cf. 19:17ff).
• Paul exhorts us as believers to “purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of fear for God” (2 Cor 7:1).
• Paul tells slaves to “be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ” (Eph 6:5).
• Paul tells his readers, “As you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12).   Continue at Mark Snoeberger

Enlightenment Fundamentalist Slays 80

At least 76 people are dead after Anders Behring Breivik massacred campers on an island off the coast of Oslo, Norway.

Finally, the media has a face and a name for making its heretofor unjustified claim of moral equivalency between conservative Christianity and Islam.  Religion may be fine as long as it’s private, and you don’t really believe the key teachings of any one in particular.  In any case, those who think they need to act on their confessional convictions in daily life—much less encourage other people to embrace them—are on the path to terrorism.  Finally, we can reassure ourselves that Islam is not the problem; it’s “Christian fundamentalism.”

But for anyone interested in the facts of the case, the secularist narrative has lost its poster-boy.  In an on-line manifesto, Breivik makes it clear that he is not a “fundamentalist Christian.”  He prefaces one comment with, “If there is a God…” and says that science should always trump religion.  So in terms of religious convictions, he sounds more like Richard Dawkins than Jerry Falwell.  Yet, unlike Dawkins, Breivik pines for the “good ‘ol days” of Christendom, especially the crusades.  “Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe…” Keep Reading...

The Norway Bomber is a Christian Fundamentalist?

This from the comments on Jim’s blog:

"The difference between a (so-called) “Christian fundamentalist” terrorist and a Muslim fundamentalist terrorist is not really between them – they are fairly similar – but between the responses of the Christian and Muslim communities."

via The Norway Bomber is a Christian Fundamentalist: Anders Behring Breivik | Zwinglius Redivivus.

Now that’s a dilly!  There is far too much ignorance in that statement.  One need only search my blog here using the term “Fundamentalist” to learn what a Fundamentalist truly is.

From Get Religion:

"We learn that he’s a Protestant (of his own “free will”) who wishes that the Church of Norway would just convert back to Rome, he dislikes priests who wear jeans and support Palestinians, and that he thinks the modern church is dying. We know from other evidence that he is a Freemason."

Meanwhile, the deputy police chief announced that the shooter was a “Christian fundamentalist” but no one has reported either the evidence for the claim or how the police determined that. Whatever the case, he may be the only Freemason, Rome-leaning, Protestant fundamentalist in the world. Keep Reading...

 Image

See Also: Was Norway Terrorist Anders Behring Breivik a Christian?

Fellowship Redefined: David Cloud, Mark Dever and the Fundamentalist Notion of “Partnership”

David Cloud has out done himself. As king of the fundamentalist “dirt alert” squad, Cloud recently declared that the original fundamentalists were all wrong. They cared about the fundamentals of the faith, as something to rally around and unite over. They actually stood by the age-old maxim: “In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things charity.” Imagine that! Boy were they duped. There is no such thing as a non-essential, don’t you know. Rom. 14 and Matt. 23:23 not withstanding.

Cloud has an article entitled “In Essentials Unity”, where he quotes disapprovingly many wise comments from other fundamentalists, like Charles Keen and Clayton Reed, who are waking up to the fact that standing with a brother for the gospel doesn’t imply a wholesale endorsement of every single doctrinal position he may espouse. In fact we can appreciate the contributions of those who differ with us on less important points. Cloud however disagrees, saying, “I challenge anyone to show me where the Scripture encourages the believer to treat some doctrine as ‘non-essential’ or to ‘stand for the cardinal truths and downplay the peripherals’.” Read it all HERE