Maggie's Farm

When I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1969, the Bishop of Chicago asked me the following questions from the Book of Common Prayer (1928):

“Are you persuaded that the Holy Scriptures contain all doctrine required as necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?”

“And are you determined out of said Scriptures to instruct the people committed to your charge; and to teach nothing, as necessary to eternal salvation but that which you shall be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the Scripture?”

To which I replied:

“I am so persuaded and have so determined, by God’s Grace.” (1928 BCP p. 542)

By this oath I promised to uphold the authority of Scripture in my life, my ministry, and in the church I was called to serve. When I came into the fullness of faith through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and was born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit, I personally accepted the Bible as the Word of God to be the rule of my life. As I began to preach more faithfully from the Bible and to call people to new life in Jesus Christ, I was accused of sounding like Billy Graham, as if that would not be a great honor, and I was often called a fundamentalist. When asked the question of whether I took the Bible literally, I often responded by saying, “I take the Bible literally where it is meant to be taken literally. I take the Bible figuratively where it is meant to be taken figuratively. But I always try to take the Bible seriously.”

So what does it mean to be called a fundamentalist? Fundamentalist Christianity or Christian Fundamentalism is a movement that arose mainly within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by evangelical Christians, who in a reaction to modernism actively affirmed a fundamental set of Christian beliefs: the inerrancy of the Bible (Sola Scriptura), the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

While there was no single founder of of fundamentalism, many ideas and themes had been suggested by American evangelist Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899) and British preacher John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). The original formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs can be traced to the Niagara Bible Conference (1878-1897) and in 1910 to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which distilled these into what became known as the “five fundamentals:”

1. The inerrancy of Scripture
2. The virgin birth and deity of Jesus
3. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement through God’s grace and human faith
4. The bodily resurrection of Jesus
5. The authenticity of Christ’s miracles (or alternatively, his pre-millenial second coming)
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

But consider these questions:

Are these five fundamentals not the core of the Christian faith and life as contained in the Creed and traditions of the church?

Are they not held as the teaching of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as reflected in the teaching and praying of the Book of Common Prayer?

Are they not what the church has believed throughout its history?

So why should we be ashamed of being called a fundamentalist?

Perhaps if the Episcopal Church returned to these fundamentals of doctrine, we would find our way back into the fullness of the Christian faith and heal the many divisions in the church.

So the next time someone calls you a fundamentalist, respond by saying:

“Yes, and which of these fundamentals do you reject?”