The Nasty New Taste of Funda-gelicalism.

In the world of candy, Reese’s is known as “two great tastes that taste great together.” In the church world, Funda-gelicalism is sort of the opposite—a toxic combination of two flavors of Christianity that not only taste terrible together, but that inevitably infect and sicken the ones who consume it. Watch out—this new flavor has become available at all church denominations, and may already be being served up at a church near you.

Here’s the recipe:

Part one: Evangelicalism. Before you panic, let me begin by saying this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Evangelicalism says you should be born again, or personally converted to faith in Christ; you should actively communicate the power of the cross and gospel of Jesus to those who haven’t heard it; and the Bible is God’s word. In American history, Evangelicalism has served as a middle ground between the right wing of Fundamentalism and the left wing of Liberal Christianity. Plus it generally identifies with the positive changes made during the reformation. Not bad.

This is the ideal that sounds Biblical and looks good in textbooks. But when you start to actually live in the Evangelical world, you may discover that these ideals have mutated into something much less noble.

Some examples:

• · Since you can’t really KNOW for sure if someone is really “born again”, you have to “judge” if they are, based on the evidence they show. This “evidence” varies from camp to camp—it might be speaking in tongues, verbally confessing Jesus as Savior, getting baptized, quitting a drug habit, signing up for a small group, or trading in your Buck Cherry T-shirt for a nice suit (or whatever other clothing is fashionable in your church). Whatever the case, you are now being judged as “in” or “out”, based on the behavior you display.

• · To a large degree, Evangelicalism has been defined by its preachers (Edwards, Finney, Moody, etc.), who in their passion to see people “born again” have used every method (“Methodist”, anyone?) under the sun to convince people to follow Jesus, like tent meetings, revivals, street preaching, music concerts, theatrical productions, scare tactics (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”), mass marketing, coffee houses, scare tactics (“Left Behind”), cool music, cool clothes, nice buildings, rockin’ sound systems, apologetics, missions trips, demonstrations of compassion (“look how much our church LOVES people”), scare tactics (“Obama is the Antichrist”), hip videos, etc. Whether slick, silly, or scary, all these methods are designed to compel people to “follow Jesus”…or, put more realistically, to make our church bigger. The fact is, churches are really businesses, and they need money for operations. So unfortunately, what’s called “preaching Christ” has in many cases morphed into good-old-fashioned American marketing and sales (i.e. manipulation).

Now let’s bring our second element into the recipe:

Part two: Fundamentalism. In a nutshell, fundamentalism takes the Bible and yells out the angry-sounding parts. It’s as much, or even more,about attitude as it is about doctrine. Fundamentalism is pissed off at the world, all other religions, all philosophies, and especially Christians who are not Fundamentalists. It was established in the early 20^th century in America with a document called The Fundamentals. It has attempted, with varying degrees of success and failure, to take over Christian denominations and American politics. In general, society doesn’t like fundamentalism, which is fine; because fundamentalism doesn’t like society either.

To fundamentalism, “love” is defined as scolding someone until they are bullied into doing the right thing—in this case, following Jesus. It’s much the same kind of “love” that you see coming from abusive, alcoholic dads and authority figures (so it's not surprising that many Fundamentalists were raised in alcoholic or abusive environments). It’s always about intimidation and fear, with the real goal being domination. Other people are not to be coddled, they are to be frightened into submission. Independent thinking is discouraged with lines like “If you’re too open minded your brains will fall out.” It is all about absolute, unquestioning submission to “God’s Word” (incidentally, so is Islam).

This is, in fact, not the God of the Bible at all; but Fundamentalism claims that it is. They have recast God as the ultimate violent abuser.

Now, none of this is new; in fact, for these very reasons, there was initially a split between Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. Basically, Evangelicals want the church to get bigger, and they realized that you generally don’t do that by scolding people. So the two groups parted ways, with the Fundamentalists continuing their rant against the world, and the Evangelicals taking a deep breath, dressing better, and getting on TV.

But as it turns out, Evangelicalism’s success in America started to create its own set of problems—mostly, that it became “cool.” All of a sudden, everybody was an Evangelical—presidents, Catholics, mainline Protestants, celebrities, football coaches (and teams!), musicians, authors, CEOs. Why? It started making money, big-time. And by following the money, it also followed the economic bubble that inflated into the 2000’s and popped somewhere around the end of 2007. Because the movement had so closely aligned with the American economy, it also sank with it.

Then something fascinating happened. The once-moderate Evangelicals took a hard turn to the right.

How did that happen? Well, the pastors had to explain to their churches why they were having trouble paying for the big building they just built. They turned against their immediate past, and explained it was because the church had gotten so commercialized (because of Rick Warren and Bill Hybels), and lost its heritage. So then, they started to look toward their “roots” to maintain credibility to their congregation, who had become pretty upset that their offerings had been splurged on multimedia equipment, more property, and splashy conferences for their pastors. The “worship teams” that had been built up to a grandiose Hillsongs-like status through the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, all of a sudden seemed ego-driven and Hollywood-like (i.e. “worldy”). People didn’t want to hear about “bigger” and “better” any more. They wanted to go back to their roots—their Fundamentalist roots, that is.

At the same time, a growing number of people were taking a different approach with their frustration—that is, upon discovering how much of their church was an institutional façade vs. how little of it was a functional expression of the Body of Christ, simply left. And when they left, they took their money with them, making budget and morale even more problematic. This effectively left the new Funda-gelicals in charge.

And so, many well-salaried pastors were fired and replaced with cheaper, more conservative counterparts. Worship teams were stripped back, turning off their sound systems and singing “I’m going back to the heart of worship”. “Humility, not stardom; more of You, less of me” became a popular theme in messages and music—acoustic guitars and ardent, guilt-driven artists became more popular. The piles of "Purpose-Driven" materials were quietly pushed to the bargain bin and dropped from the church library. Mark Driscoll magically appeared, just in time to scold the church for it's worldliness. Christian musicians became more angry, too—especially the ones who couldn’t make it in Nashville.

So in the vacuum left by weakened “pop” Evangelicalism, the Funda-gelicals stepped in, more than happy (well, as happy as they can be) to do so.

This latest breed would probably not want to be associated with something as extreme as Westboro Baptist Church, but I’ve noticed they actually use the same logic. When I saw the following video (foul language warning), I noticed that as ridiculous as these people are, their reasoning is exactly the same as many of the new Funda-gelicals, which is: “God said it; I believe it; that settles it; if you don’t agree, go to hell.” In a lot of ways, Westboro is just Fundamentalism being more honest about itself.

And of course, they hate Rob Bell (and anybody else who likes him). Even before Love Wins came out, they went for the kill on the blogosphere. And even after it turns out the book doesn’t say what they said it was going to say (that everyone is saved and that there’s no such thing as hell), they still want him silenced—and continue to take every opportunity to debunk and humiliate him.

As I said before, Fundamentalism is as much about the attitude of “slam-dunk” condescension as it is about doctrine. A lot of Fundamentalist doctrine is no different from Evangelical doctrine, honestly; the difference is the attitude. Evangelicalism at least tries to win people over by being friendly; Fundamentalism is rude, and doesn’t care if you believe or not—in fact, it expects you to not believe, thus sealing your doom even further.

So, let’s review…

I am not against Evangelicalism. On paper, it is a valid way to consider the Christian faith. But in the real world, Evangelicalism does unfortunately tend toward toward judgmentalism (because of the emphasis on observable behavior) and psychological manipulation (because of the need to “win” people over to Christ)—but all with a friendly face. Now that Evangelicalism has been getting the wind knocked out of it, through financial difficulties and a new fear of liberalism, it is struggling for stability. Where is it trying to find stability? In the arms of its abusive past, namely, Fundamentalism.

It might seem I'm painting with a broad brush here, but I'm not. Every individual, every local church, every denomination, has Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in varying amounts. Your results may vary. This is what I've seen, and all I’m saying is, watch out for this; it ain’t no Reese’s candy.