Pat Robertson: The Rest of the Story

Remember how Robertson popped off about assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez? Here's the story on the fallout from his comments that you won't hear in the mainstream media:

In a nationally televised speech from a village in the southern state of Apure, Mr. Chavez announced he would expel missionaries from New Tribes Mission (NTM), a Florida-based organization that has provided Bible translation and humanitarian relief in remote regions of Venezuela for nearly 60 years.

Calling NTM a "true imperialist infiltration," Mr. Chavez accused its missionaries of "colonialism" and of spying for the United States: "We have intelligence reports that some of them are CIA." Mr. Chavez also accused NTM staff of living in "luxurious camps," and said the group's ouster was an "irreversible decision that I have made."

The president's announcement came less than two months after U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson suggested that Mr. Chavez should be a candidate for assassination. Mr. Robertson later apologized for his remarks, but within four days Venezuelan authorities had frozen all missionary visa applications and placed restrictions on some evangelical pastors.

Marsden on Big Tent Fundamentalism.

Unknowing cites a thought-provoking selection from Marsden's Fundamentalism and American Culture.

Mind If I Vent?

In the three years since I enrolled at SEBTS, tuition has increased about 60%. SIXTY PERCENT! In-state tuition at public colleges and university increased 7% this year, 9% last year, and 13% two years ago.

Was this unavoidable? Maybe. Are there reasonable explanations? Probably. Is my comparison with public college tuition like apples to oranges? Certainly.

Does any of this make me happier? Not hardly.

Piper on the Battle for Culture

I posted this link as a comment to a previous post, but I thought Piper's recent thoughts deserved some more attention in light of our recent discussions of impacting/winning/redeeming "culture." I think this statment is the heart of it:

But Christian exiles are not passive. We do not smirk at the misery or the merrymaking of immoral culture. We weep. Or we should. This is my main point: being exiles does not mean being cynical. It does not mean being indifferent or uninvolved. The salt of the earth does not mock rotting meat. Where it can, it saves and seasons. And where it can’t, it weeps. And the light of the world does not withdraw, saying “good riddance” to godless darkness. It labors to illuminate. But not dominate.

Highlights from the SharperIron Interview of Mark Dever

SharperIron.org posted today an audio interview of Mark Dever. Below are what I believe to be just a few of the highlights, both the serious and the witty.

On the modern church, Mark Dever, and the gospel:

6:01—"I am concerned that the gospel would go forward better if most Southern Baptist churches in America were closed down. So I think most of the churches I am familiar with—many evangelical churches—are not good witnesses for the gospel.

6:58—The community of the church is to make visible the gospel that our sermons make audible.

7:05—Q: If I could to boil down Mark Dever to two or three hot-button passions, what are you passionate about?
Dever: God, the gospel, the church

On the pitfalls of incorporating visuals into preaching:

33:14—I think our eyes are hungrier than our stomachs. I think God made us that way. I think we're dissatisfied at not being able to see God. We want that immediacy and certainty that we get through visuals, and yet I think at the http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifFall that is precisely what God has denied to us. And I think the great climax of the Bible in Revelation 22:4 is that we get to see God again . . . Therefore, I want to be very careful about doing faux things to satisfy it.

On the gospel and professing Christians:

35:52—I think one of the hardest groups of unreached people on the planet have to be nominal Christians—people who have the gospel right maybe propositionally . . . People may have those propositions correct but yet may themselves have so communicated them to others that others have given mental assent but without really fully engaging their heart in any way that represents their true person . . .

On discipleship and church programs:

41:50—Q: Do you have a one-on-one discipleship program?
Dever: Well, we have not a program but a culture.

On associations and the gospel:

58:51—Q: Do you feel more at home with the Alliance than with Southern Baptist Convention?
Dever: Well, more at home? I mean, some of these [Alliance] guys are in sin because they haven't even been baptized.

I've barely scratched the surface. These quotes are merely designed to whet your appetite. Interestingly, I'm told that nearly 20% of the September Weekender attendees were alumni of independent fundamentalist institutions.

Fundamentalists Everywhere!

Not just Freddy Adu; Harriet Miers too!

At least I assume she is after reading her biography file in World Magazine:

Church membership: Valley View Christian Church, but the church is in the middle of a split that began when Pastor Ron Key did not go along with the decision of the board of elders that he reduce his leadership role and agree to emphasize a contemporary worship service so as to attract more members. Ms. Miers is apparently siding with the group that will stick with Mr. Key and form a new church that will give half its revenues to mission work; Valley View has cut back its missions support.

I mean, how can a person leave a church over contemporary worship and not be a fundamentalist?

Intriguing Mohler

Listening to the Albert Mohler Radio Program while I'm jogging sort of takes the edge off the pain. If I skip through the first news segment, it's the perfect length for my shorter route. Last night I listened to his program from October 13th, "Who Was the Greatest Leader of the Past Century?" He opened by talking about a few people he considers among the greatest leaders of the 20th century (Reagan, Churchill, Thatcher), then opened the lines for his listeners to opine.

It was immediately apparent that Mohler's audience is fairly broad. Well, maybe it's just a bunch of avangelicals (spelling intentional). Listeners' suggestions were:

1. Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
2. Mother Theresa
3. Billy Graham
4. Martin Luther King, Jr.
5. Reagan
6. Eisenhower
7. Gandhi

I wasn't particularly surprised by what he said. I was quite surprised by what he hinted at and what he didn't say. You'll have to listen to form your own impressions.

Freddy Adu Is a Young Fundamentalist

I know this for two reasons:

1. I've seen him play. He is the most fundamental soccer player I've ever seen for his age. He thinks all the fundamentals are important, not just the big five (passing, trapping, shooting, heading, and hmm, I forget the fifth).

2. He complains that the authority figures in his life don't respect his game.

If anyone is actually interested in Adu and his situation, Mike Wilbon of PTI and the Washington Post wrote a great piece for today's edition.

Big Tent Fundamentalism [or] Has the Movement Ever Been Serious?

Kevin Bauder believes that fundamentalism needs to get sober if it is to be worth saving. Fundamentalism must be serious about doctrine, the human condition, learning, meaning, piety, and separatism.

He’s made a believer out of me, and it seems that his ideas rang true with a healthy number of others from backgrounds similar to mine. He influenced me enough that I began to apply myself more seriously in some of the areas he outlined. Now, I still have quite a long way to go. Praise the Lord for His patience and His promise of progressive sanctification.

Nevertheless, in the first steps of my move toward seriousness, I’ve given some thought and study to fundamentalist history, and one big question has taken root in my mind: Has the fundamentalist movement ever been serious in the way that Bauder advocates? I have no doubt that there have been individuals who fit his criteria, but the movement as a whole seems to have been a constant mish-mash of diverse sub-groups.

For example, the early fundamentalists differed substantially in a wide variety of doctrines and practices, including (but I suspect not limited to) immersion, premillennialism, church government, denominationalism, tolerance of Pentecostalism, use of alcohol, hermeneutics, soteriology, secondary separation, and Finneyistic evangelistic methodology. The authors of The Fundamentals were not even unified in their willingness to combat theological liberalism in the denominations.

This information was largely new to me. It destroyed a vision in my mind of a fundamentalist utopia from decades past in which leaders agreed on the better part of their theology and attacked a false gospel with a unified voice. I now learn how ignorant I was. I’ve become increasingly aware that early fundamentalism was trying to respond to a specific threat (modernism) in a specific historical context, not trying to define the full range of New Testament Christianity. Their agreement and cooperation were far more limited to the immediate enemy of modernism than I had perceived.

Now, those of you who have read Bauder’s article may be thinking that his standard for seriousness about doctrine recognizes that not all doctrines are of equal importance. I’m looking forward to seeing further discussion of the proper rubric for prioritizing doctrine. To this point all I’ve seen is Bauder’s general reference to what is “essential to the gospel itself,” and what has been offered by the self-professed-but-not-approved fundamentalist Phil Johnson. (Phil is not approved because he associates with MacArthur who associates with Mohler who associates with Graham who associates with all kinds of apostates. If it matters, I’m typing this with a smile, not a sneer.) As I'm writing this, Phil's blog, Pyromaniac, is down, but I hope to provide links to his thoughts when it is up again.

Bauder’s point about a hierarchy of doctrine is well taken, but many people in Bauder’s general segment of fundamentalism would not tolerate nearly so much diversity as the early fundamentalists. If sober fundamentalism demands a reasonable hierarchy of doctrine that puts the gospel at the top of the pyramid but allows for differences on other doctrines, they do not qualify.

So, has fundamentalism ever been serious about doctrine and meaning? If it has been authentically serious, why has diversity on unconditional election been more tolerable to many than diversity in musical styles and the timing of the Rapture? How can unconditional election not be “essential to the gospel itself”? If fundamentalism as a movement has never been serious about the gospel in this way, then Bauder’s call is not for a return to something old but for a pilgrimage to something entirely new. This new think, as he describes it, certainly seems to me to be a good thing, but it is not a thing that seems ever to have existed before, at least in the movement that has called itself fundamentalism. Were one to suggest otherwise, it would seem to me to be revisionist history.

The inescapable implication of the big tent fundamentalism of generations past is that co-belligerence made for some strange bedfellows in the battle against modernism. If fundamentalism is to convince rising generations that its ideas are right, some of these uncomfortable sleeping arrangements that were tolerated for decades will face radical upheaval. Twenty-first century fundamentalism will need to define its doctrinal hierarchy with a primary emphasis on a sound definition of the gospel if on that basis it is to formulate a refined fundamentalism. Only through that process will we improve on the big tent fundamentalism of the past hundred years.

A Bombshell Quote for the Guessing Game

I've been sitting on this one for a while. Michael C. (a reader) made a special request for a quote game, and this was all I had handy. Blame him if you don't like it. And remember, googling the quote is not acceptable. Severe Paleoevangelical retribution will result. This quote has two speakers, and you have to get them both to receive any credit. My guess is that this one is way too easy. Here goes:

Person 1: I think that everybody that loves or knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, they are members of the body of Christ. And I don't think that we are going to see a great sweeping revival that will turn the whole world to Christ at any time. I think James answered that—the Apostle James in the first Council in Jerusalem—when he said that God's purpose for this age is to call out a people for his name. And that is what he is doing today. He is calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something they do not have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven.

Person 2: What, what I hear you saying, that it's possible for Jesus Christ to come into human hearts and soul and life, even if they have been born in darkeness and have never had exposure to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what you are saying?

1: Yes, it is.

2: I'm so thrilled to hear you say this: "There's a wideness in God's mercy."

1: There is. There definitely is.