Who should you trust? Who CAN you trust? Separatism and degrees of separation. Reforming Fundamentalism--Part III

I ran across an article two weeks ago on a fundamentalist website as I was looking for information about some of the people I count as spiritual ancestors. I have run across these kinds of articles in the past. I figure it is time I at least acknowledge their existence and say something about them.

As so many other such articles, The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree attempts to paint all efforts at Christian unity--working together for the advance of the Kingdom of God worldwide--as virtual blasphemy. No one who refuses to be quite as "holy" ("separate") as those who write these articles escapes the brush. Thus, as I have discovered,

Discovering my spiritual heritage: Reforming Fundamentalism--Part II

When I received my copy of Reforming Fundamentalism, I began reading from the very beginning--the Preface, the Introduction, and then the body. Already, at the Preface, I was impressed with Marsden's candor and, frankly, insight:

Inevitably one's point of view will shape one's work. Since it is impossible to be objective, it is imperative to be fair. . . . I work from a particular Christian commitment that makes me generally sympathetic to what Fuller Seminary has been trying to do since its inception. At the same time, I have also tried to step aside from my sympathies. I think the primary justification for having historians these days is that they can provide critical perspectives, especially on traditions that they take seriously. Partisanship, then, although to some degree inevitable, is to be suppressed for the purposes of such historical understanding.

This approach will not entirely please those who see Christian history as adequately understood only as a battle in which it is perfectly clear who stands with the forces of light and who with the forces of darkness. I do not have any difficulty with the concept of the Christian life as a battle; I do not believe, however, that we can identify the forces of light and darkness so easily. My world is filled with ambiguities. Even with the light of Scripture we are very limited humans who see as through a glass darkly.

--p. xi

But it was as I began the Introduction that my heart leapt. I "couldn't believe" whose names I was reading as being associated with Fuller Seminary from the very beginning.

Introduction: Reforming Fundamentalism--Part I

I've mentioned this book a couple of times already: Reforming Fundamentalism by George M. Marsden. Sub-title of the book: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Fuller Seminary. I know I was. Maybe I had heard the name, but I paid it no attention until Sarita and I moved to Pasadena, California, at the beginning of 1984. In 1984 and after, however, living in the same community where Fuller is located and, probably more importantly, working for Dr. Ralph Winter, a former professor of the seminary's School of World Mission, I couldn't escape hearing about the school and becoming aware of some of its strengths and weaknesses.

I came to understand that Fuller had undergone a major shift in its commitment to biblical inerrancy sometime prior to our arrival in Pasadena. And, for some reason, I also came to understand that Fuller considered itself--and still considers itself--an evangelical seminary.