This entry deals with what An Evangelical Manifesto has to say about conservative fundamentalism. Also be sure and read the companion post on liberal revisionism.The following two paragraphs serve to introduce both posts so it will be repeated in both.  

I am still working on a post on how Evangelicalism is defined in An Evangelical Manifesto. But along the way I thought I would write a post on the distinction made between liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism. This is one of the sticking points for many people – namely, what do the Manifesto writers have against fundamentalists? The writers spend just over a page (the end of page 8 and all of 9) explaining the distinction between the two groups. What are their criticisms and who are they targeting?

First a word about the terms. The writers are careful to explain that Evangelicalism cannot “be reduced to political categories such as ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’”. Their discussion about liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism is not about liberals and conservatives but a certain type of liberal and a certain type of conservative. The terms liberal and conservative encompass people who range from extreme to moderate positions. What the writers want to address are those people whose views and behaviors occupy the extremes. 

The writers of An Evangelical Manifesto are less specific about the problems with fundamentalism than with the problems with liberal revisionism, and their lack of specificity is one of the reasons some people have decided not to sign the document. Those who feel sympathetic to or identified with fundamentalism feel that the Manifesto is not clear enough in what it is rejecting and that the writers do not say whether or not anything within fundamentalism is praiseworthy. The writers do say that they “celebrate those in the past for their worthy desire to be true to the fundamentals of the faith,” but what of fundamentalists today? There the writers are not clear.

The writers begin their discussion of fundamentalism by saying that “the fundamentalist tendency is more recent [than liberal revisionism], and even closer to Evangelicalism, so much so that in the eyes of many, the two overlap.” Revisionism came first and fundamentalism followed as a reaction. Between revisionism and fundamentalism, Evangelicalism is closer – perhaps much closer – to fundamentalism. This alone should say something to the reader. Writers of the Manifesto are not outsiders looking in at fundamentalism. They feel a kinship to fundamentalism but have decided that in some areas fundamentalism is or has become too extreme.

The writers note that what distinguishes fundamentalism from Evangelicalism is not the gospel itself. They say that fundamentalism is “an overlay on the Christian faith”. What this implies is that the writers recognize that fundamentalists do hold to the Christian gospel. They are not like the revisionists who often reject Christian truth. Fundamentalism grew as a defense of Christian truth against revisionism. As such fundamentalism has ”developed into an essentially modern reaction to the modern world.” Whereas the definition of Evangelical is not bound to time and culture, the defining aspects of fundamentalism restrict it to a modern reaction to modern problems.

What the writers are criticizing about fundamentalism is fairly vague. They say that fundamentalism “tends to romanticize the past,… and to radicalize the present, with styles of reaction that are personally and publicly militant to the point where they are sub-Christian.” A little later they say that fundamentalists can “fail to follow the great commandment that we love our neighbors as ourselves” as well as fail to “forgive without limit and love even their enemies.” The writers acknowledge that this is something all people, certainly including Evangelicals, can fail to live up to. But the implication is that this is a particular problem with fundamentalism.

Historically, fundamentalism grew as a defense of several specific doctrines that were called the fundamentals. Fundamentalists were those Christians who fully affirmed the fundamentals of the faith. (I have tried to find a list of the fundamentals but have not yet succeeded. Can someone point me in the right direction?) As liberal revisionists wore away at Christian teaching, fundamentalists drew a line in the sand and said these things must stand. If someone fails to affirm any of these fundamentals, he is not a Christian.

I believe that most if not all of those fundamentals are affirmed by Evangelicals and are affirmed in this Manifesto. The problem is the force with which fundamentalists defend the fundamentals. In the past they have refused to have any fellowship with any people who were not themselves fundamentalists. They were even critical of people who affirmed all the fundamentals but were willing to associate with non-fundamentalists. Someone like Billy Graham, who affirmed fundamentalist beliefs, has come under heavy criticism because of the people he has allowed to share the stage with him at his revivals. Someone like Timothy George, a member of the Manifesto steering committee, would be in trouble because of his involvement with the group Evangelicals and Catholics Together. In fact, some fundamentalists have criticized the Manifesto precisely because of the associations some of the writers have with people who do not agree with the fundamentals.

One of the problems with fundamentalism that I believe this document is addressing (where it says that fundamentalists “radicalize the present”) is the tendency to create a great deal of distance between themselves and all those who are not like themselves. They will often display hostility rather than the love of Christ. The writers of the Manifesto do affirm the need to proclaim and defend the gospel and to speak up in opposition to error (“Just as Jesus did, Evangelicals sometimes have to make strong judgments about what is false, unjust, and evil.”), but that we must do so in love. One big difference between an Evangelical and a fundamental is in how we respond to those who disagree with us. Fundamentalists tend to condemn and separate while Evangelicals oppose but continue to converse with and show love to those who are in the wrong. Later in the Manifesto the writers describe fundamentalism as being “thoroughly world-denying and politically disengaged from its outset”. Fundamentalists have recognized the problems of the modern world and seem to feel that nothing in the modern world is compatible with faithful Christian truth. The answer is to pull out of the world, to separate from it, and to try to rebuild a community that returns to a romanticized past.

I believe the writers of the Manifesto would affirm that fundamentalists are basically correct in what they believe about God and the Christian life, and the writers would affirm most of not all of the fundamentals, but that the writers feel fundamentalists have wielded truth in ways that are at times unhelpful and even “sub-Christian” in that they fail to display the love of Christ. The aims of fundamentalism are limited and fail to represent the full context of the gospel. The actions of fundamentalists are limited to their reactions against liberal revisionism and neglect other areas of the Christian life. From my own experience, it seems that fundamentalists can be reluctant to recognize the full extent and importance of social obligations Christians have because such obligations have been the only thing upheld by liberal revisionists. Revisionists have often distorted the gospel into a social gospel or liberation theology so fundamentalists are suspicious of any teachings that move in this direction.

Fundamentalism is only mentioned one more time in the rest of the document, but I believe some of the problems faced by Evangelicals deal with our tendency to act like fundamentalists. Also, how Evangelicals behave in public/political life should be distinct from how fundamentalists behave, but we often act very much like them. But that is a discussion for another post.

This entry deals with what An Evangelical Manifesto has to say about liberal revisionism. Also be sure and read the companion post on conservative fundamentalism. The following two paragraphs serve to introduce both posts so it will be repeated in both.

I am still working on a post on how Evangelicalism is defined in An Evangelical Manifesto. But along the way I thought I would write a post on the distinction made between liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism. This is one of the sticking points for many people – namely, what do the Manifesto writers have against fundamentalists? The writers spend just over a page (the end of page 8 and all of 9) explaining the distinction between the two groups. What are their criticisms and who are they targeting?

First a word about the terms. The writers are careful to explain that Evangelicalism cannot “be reduced to political categories such as ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’”. Their discussion about liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism is not about liberals and conservatives but a certain type of liberal and a certain type of conservative. The terms liberal and conservative encompass people who range from extreme to moderate positions. What the writers want to address are those people whose views and behaviors occupy the extremes.

The first group addressed is liberal revisionism. There is a lot of distance between Evangelicalism and liberal revisionism. It would not be correct to say that this document looks for a middle-of-the-road approach between revisionism and fundamentalism. The writers themselves acknowledge that fundamentalism is “even closer to Evangelicalism” than revisionism. They describe liberal revisionism as holding “an exaggerated estimate of human capacities, a shallow view of evil, an inadequate view of truth, and a deficient view of God.” The writers go so far as to say revisionists are “sometimes no longer recognizably Christian.” They then describe several areas that revisionists have cast off Christian truth:

1. They reject the truth of the Bible, turning instead to things that are culturally acceptable.
2. They reject the historical teachings of the church, separating themselves from Christians of the past and from Christians around the world.
3. They are unstable as they tend to be blown about by whatever trend is currently en vogue, following “the spirit of the age”.
4. They lose credibility by claiming a “new kind of faith” (which reminds me of the title of Brian McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian though this was probably not in the minds of the writers) which looks more like the claims of the skeptics than the teachings of the Bible, leaving nothing “solidly, decisively Christian for seekers to examine and believe”.
5. They lose identity by turning themselves into something different than “the historic Christian faith that is true to Jesus.”

In other words, liberal revisionists can hold to a faith that is not biblical, historical, stable, credible, or recognizable. The writers do not name names in the document, though Os Guinness specifically mentioned Bishop John Shelby Spong in a radio interview with Al Mohler. I forget who made the comment and on which site it was made, but one person has already compared the description of liberal revisionism to some of the claims of the emerging church. While most of the people in the emerging church are more faithful to the teachings of Scripture than someone like Bishop Spong, the movement does seem to tend in the direction of revisionism and in some places have crossed into it completely.

The writers are less specific about the problems with fundamentalism, and their lack of specificity is one of the reasons some people have decided not to sign the document. Those who feel sympathetic to or identified with fundamentalism feel that the Manifesto is not clear enough in what it is rejecting or to what degree the writers believe that fundamentalism is praiseworthy.

I plan to spend a few more posts digging into An Evangelical Manifesto. One post will be devoted to what the Manifesto says about Evangelicals. Another post will talk about what the Manifesto says Evangelicals struggle with, and what we should do. A final post will contain my own thoughts about the Manifesto, whether or not I will sign it, and why or why not. I have some initial opinions (which will probably be discernible in this entry) but will reserve my final judgment until I work through these next few posts.

>First, I want to offer some thoughts about the Manifesto as a manifesto. Along the way I will offer general comments about the contents of the Manifesto. In scouring the web for reactions I noticed some comments like, “one thing the document is not is a manifesto” or even ”There is no need for a manifesto when we have God’s word” (in the comments of the linked page).

So how about it? Is this a manifesto, and is such a document appropriate for Christians?

Let’s start pedantically. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines manifesto as “a public declaration of policy and aims, esp. one issued before an election by a political party or candidate.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary says the word means “a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer”.

The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology tells me the word early on simply meant proclamation and came from an Italian word meaning an indication or public declaration. The Latin word means manifest, as in to make something manifest/apparent or, in this case, make public.

And for one final piece of pedantic peddling, The Oxford American Thesaurus of Current English offers the following synonyms: “proclamation, pronouncement, declaration, declaration of political policies, announcement, statement, publication, notification.”

Jacobs, who I earlier quoted as saying that this document is not a manifesto, unknowingly acknowledges that the Manifesto meets part of the Oxford definition when he says, “the Manifesto is a very American document, the product of an election year”.

There have been many manifestos throughout history. Some famous, some infamous, most obscure. Among them are the Communist Manifesto, the Humanist Manifesto, the amusing DADA Manifesto (I had never heard of this before Jacob’s WSJ article), and the bitter Hacker Manifesto.

Plain and simple, a manifesto is any public declaration of self-identity and/or self-intent. Groups might use a manifesto to declare who they are, why they are that way, and what they will do.

According to the writers of An Evangelical Manifesto, there are two purposes for the document: “to address the confusions and corruptions that attend the term Evangelical… and second to clarify where we stand on issues that have caused consternation over Evangelicals in public life.”

The bulk of the document addresses the first of these two purposes. The whole document is 20 pages, and of that seven pages deal exclusively with Evangelical identity. The four pages introducing the document also include elements of identity, and the remainder of the document addresses Evangelical behavior today and the fact that many Evangelicals have strayed from what it means to be an Evangelical. In other words, in one way or another this entire document deals with what the writers believe it means to be an Evangelical.

There are three main sections of the document which the writers call “three major mandates for Evangelicals.” First, “We must reaffirm our identity”. Second, “We must reform our own behavior.” And third, “We must rethink our place in public life.”

The second and third mandates are primarily reactionary. The writers have seen problems in the Evangelical world and address those problems by pointing them out and proposing what the proper behavior should be.

In some ways the Lausanne Covenant of 1974 is a stronger document. But it is not so much a statement of identity (it does not say “this is what we are”) but is a statement of intent, or an agreement on what we should and will be. This is why it is called a covenant and not a manifesto. Signers of the covenant were not so much saying, “Yes, we agree this is what we are,” as they were saying, “Yes, we agree that this is what we should be, and we covenant together to strive to become this.” In the Manifesto the writers are making a statement about what Evangelicalism is, how some Evangelicals have failed to live up to the name, and what we can do to be what we should be. In my opinion, documents like An Evangelical Manifesto and the Lausanne Covenant could go hand in hand. One document states what Evangelicalism is, the other document calls for people to then live in this way.

Pulling all of this together, I do conclude that An Evangelical Manifesto is a true manifesto, functioning as a public proclamation of identity and clarification.

Now, on the question as to whether Christians should have such documents. Recognizing that a manifesto is simply a public declaration of some kind, in this case a statement of identity, this manifesto is not different than any other statement a person might make. The person who posted the comment that “there is no need for a manifesto when we have God’s word” was himself offering a manifesto of sorts – he was issuing a public statement of identity. Namely, Christians are people who need nothing but the Bible to define who they are. His point might have a chance of being reasonable had he quoted the Bible rather than himself. But by using his own words he demonstrated that it is at times (and I would say frequently) appropriate for Christians to use their own words to present how they believe Christians should act and speak. Those words should be shaped by the Bible. They should include the Bible. But they can be a restatement and clarification of the Bible for modern times. Read me carefully – I do not say the message of the Bible changes and so must be reinterpreted for today. Rather, the world does change and people need help seeing how the unchanging truth of the Bible should be lived out in today’s world.

I believe that An Evangelical Manifesto presents the writer’s views on what it means to live out biblical Christianity in the 21st century. They certainly do not touch on every possible issue, but the matters they do address are defined in terms of biblical Christianity. They do not want to add to or take away from the Bible, but from the statement it becomes apparent that they believe Evangelicalism is the best way to live out biblical Christianity, so by defining and describing Evangelicalism they want to help people understand some ways the Bible applies to Christian life today.

So to summarize the two points of this entry: I believe that An Evangelical Manifesto functions as a true manifesto, and I believe that the writers did not in any way undermine the authority of Scripture by offering such a document but rather are seeking to present what it means to live out biblical Christianity.

The document An Evangelical Manifesto has been released (I first blogged about it here). The website offers visitors a full version (20 pages), a summary version (6 pages), and a study guide (29 pages). At the website you can also read who the steering committee and initial signers were. You can also sign the document yourself.

I have read the document and am very pleased. I had feared it would be little more than a watered-down statement against the politics of the religious right. Instead it is a very careful document that does far more than talk about religion and politics. The bulk of the document contains a discussion about what it means to be an Evangelical, with the writers talking about what makes Evangelicals distinct from other believers and other religions. The document then contains a section about ways Evangelicals have failed to live up to Evangelical ideals, and it presents some ways we can address those failings. Finally, the document contains a section presenting a good, balanced approach to living as a Christian while being involved in politics.

I plan to post more on the document later but I want to give it one more run-through to pick up some pieces I might have missed. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you read it.

Also, Justin Taylor has posted a good summary of the document. Like all summaries, it can’t cover everything. Be sure you also read the manifesto itself.