Tag: Advancing the Church

Dave Doran on Why the Label “Fundamentalist” Doesn’t Work Anymore

~ Bob Hayton ~ 9 Comments

Dave Doran has posted some reflections on where we are after the Advancing the Church conference, with respect to fundamentalism and conservative evangelicals (or at least where he is coming from). Of course separation and fellowship are the twin concerns for today’s fundamentalists: just how much fellowship can we permit with conservative evangelicals who don’t proudly wear the label “Fundamentalist”? Now that Kevin Bauder has clarified his current stance and hesitations over extending full fellowship to someone like Mark Dever, perhaps Doran sees the need to clarify some statements of his own. In any case, the last few posts on Doran’s blog have been meaty and traced the development of his thinking on these questions over the last 20 years or more.

In yesterday’s post, Doran discussed fences, shibboleths, fundamentalism, non-fundamentalist separatists, and more. His conclusion is worth posting here in full, but I encourage you to read his whole post (or better yet scroll down from here and read the last several “reflections” posts). I’m glad Doran continues to explain his take on things as the questions he’s exploring need to be hammered out by fundamentalists, and have needed to be for several years (or more).

…I am not advocating extending Christian fellowship to those who have denied the faith. I am not advocating toleration of those who do it. Just the opposite, in fact. I am advocating that these very specific questions be the ones that govern our decision making. Those questions are the baseline for fellowship and cooperation. A lot more matters to me than these, but anything other than the right answers here prevents it. The circle of people that can answer these questions satisfactorily is not limited to self-professing fundamentalists. IOW, there are separatists who don’t claim to be fundamentalists. My fellowship is limited to those self-professing fundamentalists who are genuine separatists and also other genuine separatists even if they don’t call themselves fundamentalists.

That last sentence prompts the real question of the hour””will the self-professing fundamentalists build a fence that excludes people who won’t limit their fellowship to only those who claim the label of fundamentalism? Is that label so tied to the essence of the biblical position that to not wear it means you fall on the wrong side of the fence? If so, is that a fence that can be defended biblically and practically?

I agree almost entirely here. I still consider myself a fundamentalist in many respects, but I’m not in a church which considers itself part of the fundamentalist movement. Yet the concern for doctrinal purity and biblical living is equal to or more than what I have found in many fundamentalist churches. I’m interested to hear your take on this, too. Do you agree or disagree with Doran? I’m all ears.

Fundamentalists & Evangelicals Together? — The Advancing the Church Conference Evaluated

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

I haven’t listened to the audio from Calvary Baptist Seminary’s Advancing the Church conference yet, as it wasn’t available until yesterday or so. I started listening to the panel sessions, and plan to listen to most of the messages. I have been reading several reactions to the conference, however, and I wanted to make my readers aware of the conference and the discussion it has generated.

The conference featured fundamentalist leaders Dr. Dave Doran (pastor of Inter-City Baptist Church and president of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, both in Allen Park, MI), Dr. Kevin Bauder (president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, MN), Dr. Tim Jordan (pastor of of Calvary Baptist Church in Lansdale, PA) and Dr. Sam Harbin (president of Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary in Lansdale, PA). The guest of note, and the keynote speaker, however, was Dr. Mark Dever (pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC and president of 9 Marks Ministries). Mark Dever, is a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention and is not a fundamentalist (in the sense of the fundamentalist movement common in independent Baptist churches). Mark Dever is a leader among the conservative evangelicals, and his ministry focuses on equipping local churches and promoting historic Baptist church polity.

So at ATC, we had Fundamentalists and Evangelicals Together! Well, at least one evangelical, together. I don’t know if the acronym FET will work as well as the one which marks another contemporary Church phenomenon (ECT)**. And furthermore, I am not sure what we have here is any kind of official convergence bringing opposing factions closer to a mutual agreement. But I, for one, am encouraged by the participation of Mark Dever in the ATC conference, and the fellowship that was shared publicly and in private between the fundamentalist leaders mentioned and Mark Dever.

To help understand what happened at ATC, the following news reports will help.

Baptist Bulletin has three articles reporting on the conference:

Brian McCrorie and a few others, contributed several summaries of the panel sessions and individual sessions on the Sharper Iron Event Blog. Click here for all the Event Blog posts, and click here for Brian’s concluding thoughts about his experience at ATC.

Dr. Kevin Bauder gave his reflections, which amounts to a very long blog post detailing his own personal conclusions, presently, about Fundamentalists working together with Evangelicals. For those wondering if Kevin is ready to eject from fundamentalism, this should answer your question with a resounding NO. Personally, I think Kevin Bauder is defining separation to broadly and ready to apply it to quickly — but that’s my general take on most of fundamentalism in general. If you’re interested you can see a bit of an exchange between yours truly and Dr. Bauder in the comments under that long post. I think Dr. Bauder clarifies himself but I still disagree.

Here is the link to where you can freely download the conference audio. Warning the file sizes are quite big.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this. I’m interested to hear if anyone attended this conference or has listened to some of the audio/followed the blog conversation thus far. Are we looking at an eventual collusion between conservative evangelicals like Mark Dever and fundamentalists? Personally, I think both groups could be improved through such a scenario.

**I should note, that I am not in favor of the goals of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.