by David Cox
Overview - Basically each group, especially religious groups have control structures to prevent unauthorized variation. The struggle that ensues when a faction changes the norms, beliefs, or practices of group is what social theology treats. Relational theology is basically the same thing, only the stress is even heavier upon the relationship between people.
In ancient Christianity, these things were dealt with under the concept of heresy, and little love was displayed (the Spanish Inquisition and others burned at the stake was the norm). Certain powerful, influential, and persuasive individuals stood and took positions which became the norm of Christianity in their day. In some cases their positions would not be understood as being biblical by most Christians today. Eventually things settled down in different denominations or religious groups that tolerated to some degree one another. Each group had their own founders, beliefs, practices. Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, were perhaps the principle groups entering the 20th century.
In modern Christianity things changes to conflict within these established groups, instead of making a new denomination, the objective was to convict people in other groups to one's position without forcing that person to leave that group. This new tactic was one of subterfuge. It was one of deception, with the idea of leaving "evangelists" to transform denominational organizations to a position without it being so visible until the very end. This battle was tremendous and extends into the 21st century. The term we can put on this is "compromise". The doctrinal beliefs and practices are sacrificed under the guise of compromise for peace and tranquility.
The problem with these intrusions is that they just do not define themselves very well. History has shown a trend, and that trend is that once a denominational structure has fallen to the forces of compromise, very rarely is it ever "rescued" back to a truly biblical position. Two groups, the Southern Baptist Convention and Herbert Armstrong's group are two that I know of that have tried exceeding much to return to a biblical position, but both are lacking horribly in actually achieving anything real.
Let's be clear about one thing, people are very different, and even the same people change over time. Some get away from God, and others get closer to God. The power of God's word, if the person really opens his heart and obeys it, is amazing to bring people to a central position that is biblical. Rebellion is also amazing to move people away from a biblical position.
Within all of these denominations and religious "churches", there is this factor working to some degree. People are never static, and groups are always changing for the better or the worse. We have to keep clear in our minds a few things. One thing is what the group officially teaches and practices, and another is what the people and individual isolated fractions of that group do. For example, in many cases a group may make a drastic change in a position, for example the Southern Baptist Convention decides that the book of Isaiah was not written as prophecy by the prophet Isaiah, rather it was written by several people using Isaiah's name some hundred years later (after the events were completed, and they wrote them pretending to be prophecy). Having taking that decision as a group, most in the group didn't hold that position before, and the arguments put forth don't convince them. So they stay in the group, and simply don't hold nor teach this position.
There is doctrinal diversity in their group, but as time marches on, something happens. The older people that were correctly taught the Bible gradually die, and the leaders as well die off, and new people enter, and new leaders enter. Usually the new leaders see the conflict and remain silent, taking no position on the issue. As they shuffle about from church to church or they too die off, more new leaders enter the group, each being taught in one of the group's official seminaries, and they come in with this position stronger and stronger. Eventually one takes it as his duty to teach "the truth" as he has been taught, and teaches what nobody accepted.
This illustrates the battle going on within Christianity. Although much of this is on a local church level, a great deal of it is in organizational structures, especially the teaching organs (seminaries) of these groups. Every few years the issues change, and the older issues become more "resolved" which usually is that the compromise sticks with time. The issues facing many groups in the past few years are divorced ministers, then women in the ministry, then accepting practicing homosexuals as members of the church, then marrying two same sex homosexuals, and finally the most current issue seems to be accepting homosexuals as ministers (Anglicans and Methodists). Within the Presbyterian church the issue of women elders was fought and lost, and now they are fighting the firing from their position of any male elder that speaks out publicly against female elders.
This is the way this thing goes. First they want equal acceptance as a valid alternative of their view. Once they somewhat gain that equally then they push their way in the door by wanting their alternative taught officially, then division and evil is declared against anyone who speaks against their position, and finally those who are not of their position are expelled from the group as being wrong.
In these fights, a very few groups break away from the main group because they are in the minority, cannot change or convince a majority to change (or the structure of the group is so designed to prevent this, such as the Roman Catholic Church), and their only option is to break away and form a new group. The history of Protestant denominations have been saturated since their beginning by these fracturing forces, which in most cases center on some central belief or practice that one is not willing to give up, and splinters the group. In some cases the issue would seem to be biblical and clear on one side, and in others the stubbornness is the issue it would seem.
Liberalism - Within American Christianity especially, these forces identified as liberalism took a strong grip of things around 1801. Liberalism literally means being liberal, generate, noble. But liberalism in helping the poor is one thing, conceding or giving a poor person of your own personal wealth accumulation is good. (We take a drastic different position from liberalism in that they see the government as the instrument and deciding entity for this social distribution of welfare, and biblically this has been in the church and mostly in the individuals power.) But being liberal in theological battles with unbelievers who seek to destroy the Christian faith is a completely different matter. Liberals take the position that the miraculous of the Bible didn't really happen, that the Bible contains errors, was written by normal men without God making their very words inspired, etc.
This liberalism is also known as "modernism" (to bring Christianity up to modern views, not accepting things like miracles and other hard things to believe in the biblical narratives, and also to bring Christianity more in focus with current views of feminism and other issues).
Orthodoxy and Neo-Orthodox - As this liberalism cranked up, a counter movement also evolved which was basically known as orthodoxy. The point here that needs to be grasp well is two-fold. First is that people did not separate from their previous religious affiliation to start liberal or orthodox groups, but they stayed in their denominational churches and simply changed or clarified their position. The second point is that names are used to identify the positions and practices within these groups. This later point needs more comment.
The trend before hand was definitely that a group name held a certain definition of doctrinal belief and practice. They also organized around their beliefs and practices to maintain homogeneity within themselves. A Methodist always had certain beliefs and practices. But whereas before this time, a group of Methodists may vary from the main group, they separate in communion, and then separate in name and organization. The idea of remaining within the main group mixed up was not normal.
Liberalism brought in a kind of infiltrate and conquer philosophy to Christianity that has its precedent in the New Testament false prophet, but was now the way things are done.
From this reaction to liberalism, the Orthodox name tag or identification was used. This is because the previous identifications "Methodist", "Baptist", lost their meaning as these liberals remained in the denomination to recruit others to their positions. Soon the issue of evangelism became the spotlight, and orthodoxy was no longer sufficient to identify somebody. The term evangelical began to be used.
Evangelicals and Neo-Evangelicals - The issue here was whether a Bible believer should stay in a group that officially (according to the group's leadership structure and official proclamations) had gone off of the biblical position. When people left a bad group because of their compromise on biblically essential doctrine and practice, what should be our attitude towards the people that stayed behind in the corrupt group? Some said that as long as we personally don't hold that corrupted position, it is okay to fellowship with our old friends that hold different positions. This extended to even entering into evangelistic endeavors with them, and other social programs. These people were now identified as Neo-evangelicals (Harold Ockenga in 1947 first used the term "Neo-Evangelical" in reaction to Fundamentalism). Separation was the key issue in dividing people into one or the other of these groups.
When evangelicalism first formed, their concentration seemed to be upon doctrinal orthodoxy, and a heart and personal relationship with God, as well as strong preaching, personal conversion, and evangelism. In general their essential doctrines were:
- Orthodox Christology and emphasis on Christ's atoning work and bodily resurrection.
- Belief that salvation is result of God's grace rather than human works or merit.
- The Authority and inspiration of Scripture, with high regard for inerrancy of original autographs.
- Emphasis on biblical preaching and teaching.
- Emphasis on conversion experience, typically referred to being born again, or new birth.
- Emphasis on evangelism and the importance of mission work.
Although the term used was evangelical, and later as a negative thing others called them neo-evangelicals, the tendency to associate and fellowship with people who are not biblical in religious contexts was given the term ecumenicalism.
Fundamentalists -
Wikipedia -
Fundamentalist Christianity
The birth of the fundamentalist movement came when people saw the influence of fellowshipping and cooperating (even though through a separate organization) with these who were liberals. The idea of a fellowship centered around the essential doctrines and practices of the Christian faith gave birth to the term "Fundamentalist."
The problem in this scheme of things is simply what are the fundamentals then? As a fracture group, they seek to be as large as possible because that helps their continued existence (supposedly goes the thinking). On the one hand, they want the fundamentals defined so as to include as many positions as possible. This produces a strong trend in fundamentalism to limit the fundamentals to the barest essentials.
On the other hand, various within fundamentalism left their previous group over a certain issue, and they disagree (and take it "personally") that fundamentalism didn't see their primary doctrinal issue as a "fundamental of the Faith". R. A. Torrey undertook the project to try and define the Fundamentals. He took the position of editor, and many of the fundamentalists of his day wrote individual articles on many different issues, and they printed these in a series of works called "The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth". They were sent out to pastors and missionaries around the world.
Torrey, RA - Fundamentals v1
(b)
809K
(306 pages).
Torrey, RA - Fundamentals v2
(b)
930K
(319 pages).
Torrey, RA -
Fundamentals v3
(b)
891K
(312 pages).
Torrey, RA -
Fundamentals v4
(b)
827K
(303 pages).
The problem with this is that it did not really define what are the fundamentals, and it gave no criteria for what is included and excluded as a fundamental. Separation became another key word that is used for getting an approval as biblical on a person or group. Some trace the fundamentals to five key fundamentals (taken from the Niagara Bible Conference in 1878-1897, and in 1910 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.
Within Fundamentalism, this same subterfuge trend appeared, and some calling themselves Fundamentalists simply took a separate approach of accommodation rather than rejection. They maintained that they themselves are biblical, and the other fundamentalists are excessively sectarian. Within these groups Jerry Falwell, John MacArthur, and others are usually identified as "neo-fundamentalists" or simply not really being fundamental. Their fellowship in religious contexts of groups that are radically non-fundamentalist eventually shows itself.
More Modern Trends in Fundamentalism - More recently the trend in Fundamentalism has been to try to force one particular issue to the front as the acid test of "orthodoxy". The issues used have been music, use of the King James Version, and several other issues.