The Gospel of grace is the end of religion, the final posting of the CLOSED sign on the sweatshop of the human race’s perpetual struggle to think well of itself. For that, at bottom, is what religion is: man’s well-meant but dim-witted attempt to approve of his unapprovable condition by doing odd jobs he thinks some important Something will thank him for. Religion, therefore, is a loser, a strictly fallen activity. It has a failed past and a bankrupt future. There was no religion in Eden and there won’t be any in heaven; and in the meantime Jesus has died and risen to persuade us to knock it all off right now. . . .
The Reformation was a time when men were blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late Medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace — bottle after bottle of pure distillate Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel — after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps — suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started. . . . Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.
Robert Capon as quoted in Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel
I’ve never actually celebrated Reformation Day before. Not formally or corporately, at least. Hearing the pipes this past Sunday actually made more sense than it has in years. Up until now, there’s been very little from the British Isles that is recognized in our home. Oh sure, we have a Westie. And somewhere in the world there’s a bolt of tartan with my (married) name on it (literally!). But I’ve never heard my own heritage in that drone. Now I get it. Now, as a Presbyterian.
I got called a “Neo” the other day. No, no, it’s not a super-cool Matrix reference (I wish!). It’s short for “Neo-Evangelical.” Evangelicals never actually call themselves “Neo-Evangelicals” anymore. Now it’s always a devil-term lobbed from a Fundy toward an Evangelical.
It’s an old term too. Like calling a Hillary Clinton a “libber.” At the very root, “Neos” are people who support Billy Graham. ::gasp::
I’ve never understood the Fundy fear and trepidation for Graham. My grandma listened to him back in the day. He does preach the Gospel — albeit a very Moody-esque, Keswickish, revivalistic Gospel which is identical to BJU’s, so that’s not the problem. As I read primary documents from his early days, it’s interesting to watch the falling out. I mean, my alma mater sent students to sing at his Hour of Power! But all of a sudden after 1952 (after he integrated his crusades maybe?), Graham is persona non grata.
Strange.
And because my current church supported Graham back in his 1966 Greenville Crusade — two years before I was born — it, too, is a persona non grata to my previous employer. So that now makes me a “Neo” too, I guess.
The practical difference between Fundies and Neos, according to the Fundies, is preferred Bible translation. Or a strict insistence that women wear modest clothes. Or music. For BJU fundamentalists, music is the big boundary marker that includes a continuous and mysterious harangue about how things over here are drastically different and superior to things over there.
So in my now-Neo church a scandalous NIV translation is the pew Bible. I wear “immodest” pants to worship. ::shudder::
But the music? It. is. exactly. the. same. In fact, some of the very same musicians accompany the congregational singing. And my darling hubby hums along with all the choir numbers. I love hearing the tenor part perfectly and quietly in my ear.
Well now, there are a couple of musical differences. Their corporate singing of “And Can It Be” sounds more like a dance than a march. And in all my years of singing “Amazing Grace,” neither my Masters-in-Church-Music husband nor I have ever learned this verse:
The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.
Where has that been? That promise of God’s goodness? Why was it missing? I, like all my fellow Fundies, know very well how to change the words in Newton’s last verse. But why was this verse so easily dropped? We messed up Old Hundreth too!
The differences between my previous worship life and my current one really struck me Sunday as we celebrated the Reformation. For all the talk about Machen’s Warrior Children, these people don’t seem as jingoistic. Maybe their fight is older. Maybe they’ve moved on. Maybe I just can’t perceive it yet.
Maybe there’s a robust enough culture that the more irenic themes are still organic:
You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.
John Knox
Either way, I’m going to have to get some Lewis plaid ties for my little Reformers for next year.
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24 thoughts on “Happy Reformation Day!”
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I love that verse of Amazing Grace! (goes off to listen to Chris Tomlin sing said song)
I loved singing “And Can It Be” in the presby church that we went to. 🙂
Isn’t “The Old Hundreth” “Holy, Holy, Holy”?
I never cease to be amazed by your old world. Thank you for your glimpses. And welcome–once again–to the world where the fact that God has promised good to us is not scandalous. This is the week when this Lithuanian-German-Welsh family is 100% Scottish.
(and I’m going to take my chances and admit I wish everyone would wear bathing suits like that. Not because I think we have to go so far in the name of modesty, but because it would be so nice to cover up so much of my mommy body. 🙂 )
I bet my “neo” trumps your “neo.” 🙂
I’ve been accused of joining an apostate group with pagan practices that “went neo-orthodox long before the Jesus Freaks, neo-evangelicals, and the Charismatics were ever thought of” and that “oppose[s] all that is holy and godly.”
That same fundamentalist also said, “God cannot be reached by intellect. It comes through obedience.”
(Remind you of a certain sermon on grace?)
Happy Reformation Day from all of us in Wittenberg.
I grew up in a Baptist church and also went to BJU. I discovered the Doctrines of Grace years after I left BJU as a staff member. Along with the discovery of the Doctrines of Grace, I also discovered the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed and best of all the Trinity Hymnal. Who would have ever thought that there were more than 3 verses to a hymn. I thought every hymn had 4 verses and you were only supposed to sing the first, second and last verses. I thought that was standard Baptist Doctrine.
Needless to say, after discovering these great treasures of the Christian Faith, I thought I had been robbed of an education to which I now think all Christians should now be exposed. I will never forget the first Sunday I visited our little PCA church in Pennsylvania and we were singing “My Faith has found a resting place” and I blurted out the Baptist version of the first line “not in devise nor creed” while everyone else was sing “from guilt my soul is freed”. I love singing every verse of every hymn because there are treasures in those verses that, as Baptists, we never sang because they took up too much time.
Gosh, words like “good,” and “hope” are omitted from BJU-style Christianity? Go figure :sarcasm noted:. It’s amazing, when you sing Old Hundreth correctly, it’s like a dance. “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow… .”
Funny, I am still a Baptist and have heard and love that verse of Amazing Grace. The more amazing thing is that in my church I hear about God’s grace, His goodness, and the hope we have in Christ. I may not be Presbyterian but I am daily thankful for the truth of God’s sovereignty, am saved by grace and live daily upheld by His-yes- undeserved grace. I am glad that God isn’t Presbyterian or Baptist- He is just God. He is our Savior. I spent some time trying to figure all this out. I found it was NOT helpful to me at all. I would look around my church after hearing all the negative things about Baptists and see people who love God and live by grace. Although I could understand some of what people were saying- I do recognize the warts- I couldn’t see it like they were saying. One day at the point of tears I talked to my husband about my turmoil-what was the truth. Were we all wrong at my church? Did I misunderstand and we don’t believe in grace? And it hit me I was spending so much time trying to figure out who was right that I was missing God altogether. He is my Savior and my Heavenly Father. That is who God is!! I go to a Baptist church and it may not be perfect. In fact you won’t have to go far to find people who feel it has failed them. This I know I to- I go to church with people who love God. I am learning more about God and I am where God would have me to be.
Stacy,
It’s not about being a Baptist or not. And it’s not about being a fundamentalist or not. Can Christ be found in fundamentalism? YES!! Of course! The wise men found him by studying the stars of all things!
God is big enough that He can cut through all the human hurdles that get in the way. He is sovereign. And He pulls us to Himself.
Yes, it doesn’t matter and I guess that is part of what I was trying to say. I have found peace in realizing that God doesn’t see labels, He sees His blood washed children. I, honestly, growing up heard positive things about Presbyterian groups. I never doubted their relationship to God. But, wow, have I realized the feeling is not always mutual! And yes I know there is negative stuff from those of a Baptist persuasion also. I just have felt more judged in the past few months than ever in my life. And it hasn’t been by “fundamentalists”, it has been by those in the reformed camp.
I have had a difficult time since last spring when I started being exposed to all this. There were several factors involved and I can’t get into all of them. I don’t regret the searching I did. The thing was I had learned so much about grace already before I ever really had any idea of what reformed was all about. But then I started questioning so much. I would read what people said and then look around and realize my experience was different. Why was that? Like I said I finally had to come to the point that I realized like you said it isn’t about being Baptist. Believe it or not, I could shed that label pretty easily. I long for the days before all this when I didn’t think about labels so much, I just thought we were all Christians saved by grace and at times interpreted things in the Bible differently. The thing is that God has my husband and I at a church with the “Baptist” label. And I don’t think going to my church is anywhere near as big a hurdle as studying stars:) Anyway your blog has afforded me a place to hash some of this stuff out and I appreciate your letting my post my views. I like discussing other viewpoints- I just may not always be persuaded:)
My mom told an old friend that I had joined a Presbyterian church. She gasped and talked about how sad it was that I’d “left the Faith.” I doubt any of the “Reformed camp” are saying that you are not a believer for being a Baptist. They *are* criticizing, I’m sure, the custom and system that has developed under the moniker “Baptist.” *I* would argue that the current iteration of fundamentalism is not being true to their roots because Baptist polity is all about congregationalism and democratic rule, not the monarchies that have developed. Now my Presbie friends would say here that that polity is precisely the problem. And there’s something to be said about that, but I’m not the one to say it.
There is a grand exodus away from revivalism and toward more confessionalism right now. You’re probably running into people who are still digesting that shift for themselves. The Reformed folk call it the “cage stage” because they wish these people would get locked in a cage until they were settled in their newfound religious culture.
They need grace too. We all do.
Ok- I really need to let this go:) However, I do agree that people are leaving for reformed churches. Please know I don’t think they are “leaving the faith”
I think they are going where God is leading them. But what if God isn’t leading you? What if you are growing in grace where you are? Can we accept that that is possible? I don’t know. I don’t know that as an individual I would consider myself a fundamentalist. I am pretty sure I wouldn’t in fact. I just know so many good, godly, and yes, grace-filled people in the movement. You think they are wrong, they think they are right.
Kind of just wish we didn’t have labels and were just followers of Christ. Why is that so hard?
Of COURSE, I think they are where God wants them. They are there. They are His. I think you’re reading something in my words that isn’t there. It honestly doesn’t matter what I think at all.
I think the system is bad. I think it obscures Christ. Does that mean the people *in* the system are evil? Not in the least!!
First, I am delighted to drop by and read about something besides politics. I hate that subject.
Second, I love the author’s illusion to “two hundred proof” grace. Luther would love it. One of my friends here tells me that he has read Luther’s letters home to his wife, and that Luther always complained when traveling that the local brew was slop compared to what his wife made.
Third, Long Life the Reformation.
Thank you, Camille. It IS about where Christ is found. I believe Christ can be found in the simple harmony of a gospel song, as well as the complexity of a fugue. I even remember Dr. Panosian saying that a person could find Christ in the Roman Catholic Sacrament.
This strikes me as an odd insinuation coming from you. For one thing, our time at BJU overlapped a number of years, and I remember hearing often during that time that BJU’s break with Graham had to do with the latter’s ecumenicism. This was the same time that the no-interracial-dating rule was active and being defended, so if the break with Graham was about race, surely there would have been some mention of it, as there was little reason to pretend otherwise.
But more importantly, BJU’s break with Graham has well-documented reasons. As Mark Dalhouse writes in An Island in the Lake of Fire, a book which you’ve surely read:
So there’s nothing strange about their split. When fundamentalism distinguishes itself from evangelicalism, the distinctive usually has to do with ecclesiastical separation. One can think that fundamentalists in general and BJU in particular are wrong to make such an issue of separation, but it seems clear that it’s an issue based more on theological principle than racial bigotry.
Yeah, I’ve read Dalhouse, and I don’t at all believe the part you cite here is the whole story. There’s something missing. In fact, if you read the WHOLE of Dalhouse — which I just did recently to look for more proof — you get the impression that BJSr. was pretty ecumenical himself. But something happened with Graham and Junior, and it wasn’t merely ecumenism in the least. I have a strong hunch that “[religious] ecumenism” is a code word for a racial ecumenism, but everyone — especially Graham — is too polite to say it.
Most historians chalk it up to jealousy. There’s strong evidence for that. But given BJU’s go-down-with-the-ship commitment to segregation and Graham’s rather radical commitment to integration, I think there’s a strong probability of a connection.
Read those primary documents I linked to from Wheaton. Something’s up with all that. In time, I’ll get to the bottom of it, but I’m not done yet. The real controversy between Junior and Graham is all in private correspondence. Perhaps when Graham is in Heaven they’ll get released.
I’ve heard rumors, too, that BJSr spoke in tongues. I can’t get to the bottom of it though. That’s nearly impossible to prove without digging up old eye witnesses from back in the day. Based on my research at the beginning of the Pentecostal movement, it would be highly unusual if he DIDN’T speak in tongues. He was Methodist/Holiness, a revivalist, in Alabama, on the lower-end of the economic ladder, in the early 20th century. But that’s not hard-core proof.
This Graham idea has even more proof than that. Most people outside fundyism wouldn’t care. They would just shrug it off as “of course they were racist.” It means more to us who grew up in the movement.
My guess is the Graham/BJ rift had more to do with jealousy than anything else. When you add all the factors together (Graham was a former student who left because he didn’t like the rules + he became president of a small Christian college + he left the college presidency to go into evangelism full time + he was successful as an evangelist and reinfused the movement with new blood = jealousy).
I followed the link to the Wheaton site, but all I see are some joint events from 1951, which is not new or surprising. What are you referring to?
Maybe you’re right that the principal or at least an important motive was racism; for logical reasons it is impossible to prove the motive wasn’t racist. However, it seems to me that charity would side with published correspondence and the conclusions of independent scholars such as Dalhouse, over a “hunch.”
But there are at least two more points that go against the racism theory. The first is one you make yourself:
That’s just it: Dalhouse and others don’t have any reason to sanitize BJU’s history, so if there were evidence of racial reasons behind the Graham/fundamentalist split, we could expect them to have brought them out.
The second is like unto the first. From the fifties onward the Joneses said a number of inflammatory things about racial issues. And their public correspondence about the Graham issue cost them supporters, board members, students, and therefore money. So if a) the Joneses weren’t trying to say racially sensitive things and b) they weren’t pulling any punches about Graham, it stands to reason that they would have made explicit a racial basis for their separation from Graham. But they didn’t.
There’s ecumenism and then there’s ecumenism. Early Twentieth Century fundamentalism was a bigger tent than it is today, but the different denominations had in common that they lined up against Modernism, and embracing its leaders and institutions was something Graham did intentionally.
You point to Graham’s integrated meetings as the significant event several years prior to the split, but more significant was Ockenga’s coining of “Neo-evangelical” around that time. In so doing he drew a line between evangelicals and fundamentalists, and Graham stepped over the line. Suggesting as you do that the main differences between “new” evangelicals and fundamentalists have to do with racism, the King James Bible, or women wearing skirts does a disservice to the idea of fundamentalism. That idea deserves to stand or fall on its own merits, not on the devolved practices of its contemporary claimants.
All research starts with a hunch. Come on, Austin, I’ve already got one published work on the rhetoric of fundamentalism. I’m not done. That all started with a “hunch” too.
Gee whiz, you think ideas come out of the box perfectly formed?
There’s more evidence out there that the ideographic shadows. If it ever develops into something larger, you’ll know. I’m working on it. But I think I’m gonna have to wait until Graham is gone.
I know what fundamentalism is. I was an apologist for it. Big time apologist. And now that I sit in a “neo” congregation, I’m telling you, Austin, there’s no difference except the few surface things I’ve mentioned. The Neos still preach inerrancy. They still see the flaws in the Catholic church.
The Billy Graham “controversy” is a tempest in a fundy teapot, pure and simple.
My grandmother went to a PCA church and was a big fan of Billy Graham. I agree that fundamentalism was bigger when modernism was the enemy. I find it interesting that I find more true faith in my current denomination now that they’re post-modern. Some of us emphasize the Great Commission, the Great Commandment and Matthew 25 more than others.
One of the BJ Senior sayings you don’t hear much is “Stay in the middle of the gospel road.” Did the road change and the Jones stayed the course, or did they get out of the center of the road? I don’t know – more than likely both.
I think the Graham controversy stems from jeolousy not racism, but it’s an interesting theory worth pursuing. And, I always believed that the jeolousy came from Dr. Bob Sr, in his declining years, not Junior. That is the impression I get from my parents who were at BJU from 1953 – 1957.
Dalhouse – he’s like a Victorian travel writer visitng a strange and exotic country. He sees the surface but doesn’t get below.
I’ll look forward to it. My objection was not to inchoate research but to your original post’s implication that we lack an historical or ideological explanation for the fundamentalist/evangelical split.
You said that the falling out came “all of a sudden” and “strange[ly]” post Graham’s integrated meetings, as if there weren’t a large amount of historical evidence mostly converging on an explanation.
I know you’re not ignorant of fundamentalist history, and I respect you enough to think that you would never deliberately omit facts just to fit your thesis, so the remaining option seems to be that you so discount matters of theological difference as not even to consider them worthy of mention. “Surely,” you seem to say, “those fundamentalists couldn’t really take ecclesiastical separation that seriously. Racism, jealousy, or petty lifestyle differences must be the real explanations.” And that’s where I disagree: I think this is a case of parties disagreeing out of principle.
Okay. I gotcha. In time, I’ll have some of this fit for public viewing. But there are enough primary documents out there where people seem to just wink-wink-nudge-nudge SOMETHING away about this division. I have them in a little messy txt file here on my desktop — too messy still for anyone to understand (even myself). It keeps coming up in random places, like they all are getting the inside joke that I’m not.
So . . . we’ll see. 🙂
“Two-hundred proof grace”
I love it!!!
I’m always amazed when I read your blog posts that are from years ago in light of what I’ve learned myself in the last two years. It’s quite obvious now that not only is “ecumenism” a Jonesian cypher, but just about every official statement that’s ever come from of 1600 Wade Hampton Blvd is code for something else.