Question for the Weslyan's

[Proeliator]

On another set of forums, we are having a talk about fundamentalists. A Weslyan youth pastor made some comments that I was wondering if they are any kind of official Weslyan stance, or just his personal opinion.

The trap of Fundementalism is mistaking your ideas for God's.

Anywho, that's the diffrence between evangelicals and fundys. Those who are willing to do anything for the sake od SPREADING the gospel, and those who are willing do do anything to "defend" the gospel.

You might want to review the meaning of fundamentalist. I heard an amazing lecture from Dr. Bud Bence about the History of the Wesleyan denomination, and as he described it (and as I've heard other scholars discuss fundementalism), fundamentalism arose as a reaction to the liberalism that began to appear in the thrn of the century. With the rise of liberal theology, there were a lot of Churches that began to take a look at Jesus as just a dude, and as Christianity as reletivistic. This, of course, is bad. The fundementalist backlash saw a number of churches becomehardline in their definition of what was right. But most in this camp became extremely ridged in their definition of what faith should look like. Anything that does not fit the fundementalist mold is often lashed out at as being "unchristian" or "offencive to God."

Fundamentalism is NOT about the fundamentals of Christianity. KJV only is not a fundamental of Christianity, style of worship is not a fundamental of Christianity, building codes, pews, hymns, church buses, suits and ties in church, women wearing hats, women in ministry, these are NOT fundamentals of Christianity. A lot of y'all might take issue when I say women in ministry, but guess what, it's not a fundamental of Christianity. Salvation, sanctification, Evanglism, Dicipleship, Worship, Fellowship, Giving, Serving, Loving those are the fudnementals of Christianity.

To guise an agrument that is tertiary to Christianity as a primary "Fundamental" issue is essentially what Fundamentalism is all about, and I think it does far more harm than good and yes, to me it IS a bad word. I'm sorry if you don't understand the place of Fundamentalism within contemporary Church History, but to me, it's place is just a little bit less then Gnosticism (and that you can all take issue with, but I really believe it has done serious harm to the Church in North America).

This was the definition of fundamentalists that was given:

To be completely honest, its hard to figure out how to respond to this. The Fundamentals (http://www.xmission.com/%7Efidelis/) is what the original movement was based on. And 5 points were affirmed:
# Inerrancy of the Scriptures
# The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus
# The doctrine of substitutionary atonement through God's grace and human faith
# The bodily resurrection of Jesus
# The authenticity of Christ's miracles

[Qyöt27]

I don't believe either quote really contradicts the other, since most of those issues mentioned in the first quote arose specifically from the degree of seriousness attributed to the second, particularly inerrancy. How they arrived at those conclusions is somewhat secondary, but I feel it's rather safe to conclude that those things came about through those churches holding to the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy (which is a different concept from how the Bible was always regarded - historically, it has always been regarded as infallible on moral issues; Biblical Inerrancy extends that infallibility to every single thing - moral or not - contained in Scripture, and then the idea as to what is considered a proper interpretation is more solidly adhered to as being infallible as well - the popular interpretation in said camps is usually some degree of literalism, which then causes the issues to arise).

The line about Fundamentalism being the need to defend is central as well, in that the Fundamentals were indeed written in order to defend against the threat the authors saw coming from churches that were being influenced by Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment ideals.

As to the main question posed, to the best of my knowledge it's not an official position of the denomination, but it is a common position that you'll see in most non-Fundamentalist denominations/congregations, and it's mostly taken from looking at the very history of the movement itself.

[sinner/SAVED]

I'd give that guy some reps if I knew who he is.

[Texas Lynn]

Weslayans believe in the individual conscience. There is no official Weslayan position on fundamentalism or much of anything else. We have Weslayan fundamentalists and Weslayan anti-fundamentalists. We're more about what we do than having some sort of political correctness to the group.

The guy's quotes are not bad and I agree with I guess about 90% of it, but he's speaking for himself. His affiliation if shown is for identification purposes only.

Kevin Phillips provides a good definition and concise history of fundamentalism in his new book American Theocracy. Depending on your preference, Phillips' pontifications are either hard or easy to read. He does give a history of religion in American culture and addresses statistics of growth and decline of various churches and after that makes a remark about how by then the reader must be overwhelmed with statistics.

[AngloWesleyan]

Fundamentalism is antithetical to a Wesleyan understanding of God, Jesus Christ, Scripture, salvation, and any number of other important doctrines. By giving priority to "the inerrancy of Scripture," it elevates God's written Word over his living Word, that is, Jesus Christ. There is nothing incarnational in fundamentalist theology. It is every bit as rationalistic and humanistic as the (now long since discredited) liberalism it purports to oppose.