Mikey V.D.’s Blog

So, this is hard to say… overall fundamentalism was good for Christianity. There I said it.

You may be asking “Mike are you okay, are you sick?” This would be a valid concern considering how I have and will continue to confront modern fundamentalism, really baptist fundamentalism.

The fundamentalism that I am talking about is the one the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the one’s that stood up against the liberal “Christians” of their day. I challenge you to look into the history of the fundamental movement to grasp a deeper understanding. However the short of it is that the belief of what it meant to be Christian came to a point at Princeton and they started Westminster Seminary.

The legacy of these guys is that they defended Christianity from apostates, they stood up for Truth, you see they believed that the Gospel was worth fighting for. If they hadn’t the reality would be that the state of Christianity in America would be that like Europe. So now while we have problems in the Church of America we still have a viable church. So these men are true heroes.

So in their tradition, in their love for Jesus I declare the fundamentals or the essentials of the Christianity to be true

• The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this.
• The virgin birth of Christ.
• The belief that Christ’s death was an atonement for sin.
• The bodily resurrection of Christ
• The historical reality of Christ’s miracles

These are things that I am willing to fight for. Are you? Do you believe these things?

So while the new liberalism that is running through Christianity especially in academic settings. Threatening to bring down the Church in America. A sect that is disputing the Truth of their “faith”. While they are denying the basic believes of Christianity and still trying to call themselves Christians. Seems absurd to me too.

So I chose to stand up and voice what I believe, I love Jesus and His bride (the church). I will defend His honor. The truth is important. You see the early fundamentalist fought modern liberals and now the fight is against postmodern liberals.

Now I am different than the original fundamentalists. I believe in engaging culture, we do not need to build a separate subculture. Things are not wrong just because culture believes them. You see, my hair is a little long, I wear the scruffy look a lot, I don’t wear suits and ties ever, especially not to church. I may say a bad word or two, I don’t think that drinking in moderation is wrong, smoking a cigar now and then won’t send you to hell, playing some cards isn’t a horrible sin. I have a tattoo and want to get another one. I want to engage culture not go fall away from it.

I am a the new type of fundamentalist. I hold the fundamental beliefs to be true and believe that I am to engage culture within the frame of those beliefs being true. See my blog name Emerging Reformer really fits in with this. The Reformer part, I am always trying to reform back to the truth of the Bible. There are some out there that would lie and tell you that you are to reform away from the Bible, they are liars and deceivers. We are to always reform back to the Bible. The Emerging part, is that we are always to be changing the way that we engage culture, culture is not sacred. Culture is not to be fought, Truth is to be fought for. Jesus is to be fought for.

So where are you on this? Are you willing to stand up for truth? The truth about Jesus has been attacked by the postmodern liberals (the emergent church)? So are you a new type of fundamentalist?

Without Jesus there is nothing.

There seems to be this breed of “Christians” that are out there that think that the ideas of Jesus can be disconnected from Jesus.  They talk about forgiveness and love, however they don’t mention Jesus or disconnect the being able to do these from Jesus.  They act like Jesus was a good teacher and that was it.  They think that Jesus leads them to a higher spiritual place.

The reality is that Jesus leads us to him, the reason is because Jesus is ultimate.  So I want to call out the emergent leaders, stop acting like Jesus is one way to a higher spiritual plane (doesn’t that sound like another religion) and realize that the point is Jesus.