Cultural Irrelevance of Fundamentalism & Dispensationalism

By Dave Haigler[1] – December 2004

 

Around 1900 there was a prominent social movement in America called the "social gospel."  Walter Rauschenbusch was the leading writer and spokesman for the movement.[2] 

 

The Social Gospel was a liberal theological movement that said essentially that you can do the good works of Jesus without any kind of mystical or spiritual renewal related to Him.  That you should be involved in feeding the poor, social justice, etc., but there need not be any kind of spiritual undergirding of that.

 

I should say that prior to that time, the churches and not civil government agencies were the safety net in society.  It was not until around the 1920s that government social action began expanding.

 

The "conservative" churches reacted to the Social Gospel by saying -- no, the only important thing is spiritual renewal, and that social justice was not important.  That reaction by 1920 or so became known as "fundamentalism."  That term was derived from the notion that there are only a few fundamentally-important things in Christianity, and those fundamentals all related to spiritual renewal; i.e., getting people "born again" and saving them from hell.

 

Fundamentalism caught on like wildfire in America and it resulted in wholesale abandonment of cultural impact by the "conservative" churches.  I put "conservative" in quotes because it was essentially a fight between the "liberal" churches, ones who took the Bible less seriously, ironically, vs. the "conservative" churches, the ones who took the Bible very seriously, supposedly.

 

I say "ironically" and "supposedly" because the social causes that the "liberals" espoused were quite "literally" right there in the Bible; and the notion that only a few "fundamentals" are really important is itself not Biblically founded.  That is, the cultural-impact imperatives, which the “fundamentalist” movement ignored, were quite expressly mandated in Scripture.[3]

 

So Fundamentalism grew up with a reputation for literal reliance on the Bible, although it ironically threw the baby of cultural relevance out with the bathwater of rejecting the notion that spiritual renewal was not all that important.

 

American Christendom for the most part literally abandoned culture from about 1920 on, until Roe v. Wade became a wakeup call in 1973.  I say "for the most part" because I don't think the Roman Catholic church for the most part bought into Fundamentalism, and I don't think major strains of Presbyterianism did either.

 

There were of course exceptions to the exceptions I'm discussing.  E.g., J. Gresham Machen and Carl McIntyre were prominent presbyterians during the period 1920-50 who were considered Fundamentalists, according to Wikipedia.[4] 

 

But leading Presbyterians like Francis Schaeffer by the 60s and 70s patiently tried to explain why they were not classic Fundamentalists during a wave of sentiment in which "fundamentalist" was synonymous with "believing the Bible."  Schaeffer’s core message of impacting the culture with the implications of Christianity was the antithesis of historic Fundamentalism’s abandonment of culture, but by that time the term had come to mean something like “wholesome Christianity” by its adherents.[5]

 

My own spiritual pilgrimage intersected with this faithful strain of Presbyterians who believed the Bible without joining the wave of Fundamentalism.  I was brought up Lutheran, but the faith did not take with me.  However, in the Air Force in western Massachusetts I met a group of men who really believed in Christ and were very loving friends and they brought me to faith in Christ in April 1969 right before I transferred to Texas.  They were charismatics.  However, I found a "Bible Church" in San Antonio, which did not believe in the charismatic movement, so I had some tension there.  After we move to Dallas, I discovered this Presbyterian strain that had resisted Fundamentalism but still believed the Bible.  I was an elder and/or adult Sunday school teacher for 9-10 years in two such Presbyterian churches, until I became charismatic in 1987 and thus persona non grata in these "conservative" presbyterian churches.  But enough of my story.

 

Francis Schaeffer wrote lots of books, one of which was a very seminal one for renewed Christian involvement in redeeming culture, titled How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture.[6]  I remember books by Schaeffer on Christianity impacting culture were available when I visited his retreat in Huemoz, Switzerland, in June 1969.  Schaeffer died c. 1985.  So his latter years straddle Roe v. Wade and the Reagan revolution.

 

Fundamentalism has come to mean strict adherence to a list of religious rules, but historically in the U.S., it represents abandonment of cultural relevance by religion.

 

Fundamentalism is thus part I of why Christians do stupid things in politics.  They abandoned culture from c. 1920 through 1973, and thus were 53 years behind in the area of cultural relevance when they became concerned about abortion being legalized here.

 

Dispensationalism is part II.  The relevant point of this theological view is that it explains why much of Christendom has a defeatist attitude in whatever they do.  That is -- we're gonna be raptured out of here anyway, so what the hey?  I suppose strict Dispensationalists wouldn't say, "What the hell?"  Hell is only the place where those who don't believe in Jesus go, and should not be joked about or used as an expletive.  From this defeatist eschatology comes the attitude that we Christians need only do our little thing for Jesus like shouting on a street corner whether anybody is listening or not, and get beat and crawl back in our hole and wait for the joyous reunion with Jesus, after which all hell breaks loose on earth with the "Great Tribulation."

 

Historically, Dispensationalism ran parallel with Fundamentalism in this country.[7]  Although Dispensationalism's earliest roots are found in England c. 1830, its explosion in this country came with the publication of a disreputable Kansas/Nebraska lawyer[8] named C. I. Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible c. 1909.  This is the Bible the Fundamentalists thumped all those years.  Dispensational scholars revised Scofield's work in 1967 to remove some of the more embarrassing errors.[9]  Dallas Seminary grew up and became prominent in the 1950s promoting this rapture theory and looking forward to 1988 when 40 years would have elapsed since the return of Israel to the "promised land" in 1948.  Since the rapture did not occur then, Dispensationalism has fallen into disrepute in academic circles, only to be resurrected by Tim LeHay's Left Behind series.[10]

 

The defeatist attitude explains why rhetoriticians like Rev. John Hagee can rail against homosexuality and abortion, demand we support Israel and give no thought to how his railings would lead to disaster in the Middle East.  Disaster means nothing to him but the fulfillment of God's plan for the ages.

 

By contrast with Dispensationalism, there are three other respectable end-times views that have been around for 2000 years -- Historical Premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism.  I hold to the latter, Postmillennialism, which is optimistic, holds that Christians should be culturally relevant and that God is about redeeming culture and making life better on this earth as well as promising heaven in the end.  It also says that the "Great Tribulation" was the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., not some future event that will force Israel to believe in Jesus or punish it for not doing so.   Postmillennialism also stands against Dispensationalism's view that only Jews and not Christians are the chosen people of God. 

 

Since God's plan for the ages is going to win, not lose, Christians should not be about doing stupid things in politics or anywhere, according to Postmillennialism.

 


[1] Dave Haigler is an attorney, mediator & arbitrator in Abilene, Texas, who serves as Taylor County Democratic Chair.  He and his wife Becky, a Spanish teacher at Cooper High School, are life-group leaders at Beltway Park Baptist Church.  His email address is dave@haigler.info. 

 

[3] “Christians must abandon the theology of irrelevance and rethink their view of Christianity as it applies to their world.”  Mark Rushdoony, “The Christian and the Cultural Wars,” Chalcedon Foundation, August 2004, cited at: http://www.chalcedon.edu/featured/8-04rushdoonym.php

 

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Christianity#Brief_History_of_Christian_fundamentalism_.28.22five_fundamentals.22.29

 

[5] E.g., the phrase “wholesome fundamental gospel preaching in the reformed tradition” was applied to men like Schaeffer.  http://www.cbcfargo.com/links.html. 

[6] Crossway Books (September 1, 1983), ISBN: 0891072926, hardback originally published in 1976.

 

[7] For a 2002 positive review of the overlap of these two theological trends, see “The Historical Development of Dispensational Theology Within Biblical Fundamentalism, at http://www.fundamentalbiblechurch.org/Foundation/fbchistdevel.htm

 

[8] Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921) was born in Lenawee County, Michigan, reared in Wilson County, Tennessee, and privately educated. Having experienced a spiritual conversion at 36, he was ordained to the congregational ministry in 1882, and served as pastor of the First Church, Dallas, Texas (1882-1895), and again (1902-1907); and of the Moody Church, Northfield, Massachusetts (1895-1902).  For a charitable biography, see http://www.raptureme.com/resource/scofield/scofield.html.