Labels

by   Mark Coppenger                                                                                                                                       Vol. VI, No. 3, April 1993

[Mark Coppenger is now Vice President of the SBC Executive Committee for Convention Relations. At the time this article appeared in The Indiana Baptist, 23 October 1990, he was editor of that newspaper. The Banner has been holding this excellent article since it was first published, looking for an opportunity to present it to our readers.]

It's popular these days to say that you don't like labels. Well, certainly they can bedevil you. But to say that you don't like them is like saying you don't like nouns and adjectives. It's been my experience that it's awfully tough to talk meaningfully without them. Wouldn't it be far better to say that you don't like unfair or misleading labels?

Which brings me to a recent local act of journalistic labelling, one in which I was the labelee. I was called a fundamentalist, as were the majority of the voters in the last 12 Southern Baptist Conventions. Am I? Were we? I think it would be instructive to sort through the categories. Let's look at the terms "fundamentalist," "conservative," "moderate," and "liberal."

A few years back I was turning through a copy of Sword of the Lord and was amazed to see a long article castigating Jerry Falwell for fraternizing with the likes of W.A. Criswell. You see, Criswell was giving to the Cooperative Program, and some of that money found its way into the hands of some professors who were not strictly kosher. Both Falwell and Criswell were guilty of violating a cardinal principle of modern fundamentalism, "biblical separation." Criswell erred at level one; he actually gave these folks some funds, albeit indirectly. Falwell erred at level two; he associated with someone who erred at level one. If you desire even greater purity, you can move to level three and fault the people who associate with Falwell. And so on.

Let me give you another example. Fundamentalists turned their backs on Billy Graham because of his willingness to work with folks along a broad denominational and theological spectrum in mounting his citywide crusades. He, to their way of thinking, was hopelessly compromised because of this, even though the content of his messages was accurate.

As a Cooperative Program enthusiast and a former member of the committee to invite Dr. Graham to Little Rock, I do not pass muster with those who call themselves fundamentalists. While we may agree on points of doctrine and share alarm at incipient liberalism, we differ on strategy. I work for denominational renewal. They counsel withdrawal. They see me as dreadfully mired in accommodation, fighting a losing battle. I see them as missing out on a most thrilling and effective program of Great Commission work, and wish that they were less inclined to denounce and withdraw.

I do have one outstanding reservation over staying with the SBC. I believe it was Groucho Marx who said it: "I'd hate to belong to any group who'd have me as a member."

The fundamentalists do, of course, have a point. The world has shaped the church more than the church has shaped the world. We need to be cautious in our selection of companions for the journey. But I must say that the SBC is rich with wondrous companions, with people so biblically sound and evangelistically zealous that we should lack nothing in counsel and inspiration. Sure, there are problems, but the resources to deal with them are formidable.

Back in the early 1900's, fundamentalism had not yet insisted upon separation from denominations. They/we simply rallied around such basics as the inerrancy of Scripture, Christ's virgin birth, deity, and substitutionary atonement and biblical miracles. The vast, vast majority of Southern Baptists then as now affirmed these points and looked with disdain on "theological modernism." (Among the contributors to the original series of volumes called The Fundamentals was Southern Seminary President E. Y. Mullins.) I wholeheartedly join in these commitments and am prepared to sound the alarm if our leaders and teachers spur them. So in that distant sense, I am a fundamentalist. (This is small "f' fundamentalism as opposed to separatist, capital "F" contemporary Fundamentalism. I'll start at this point making that distinction.

A lot of baggage has been heaped on the term since 1920. As I said, Fundamentalists themselves have added separation as an essential. The world, in turn, has made the Fundamentalist an object of contempt, picturing him as an untutored killjoy intent upon unwarranted censorship and regimentation.

Foes of the conservative resurgence in the SBC were fully aware of this connotation and insisted on slapping this label (along with "Norrisism") on the opposition. The secular press picked it up in an instant, and you had one of the great propaganda coups of our time.

A good deal of it was innocent enough. I'm reminded of the television correspondent who called a thinly armored personnel carrier a "tank" and the screenwriter who put the self-contradictory message, "Roger, Wilco, Over and Out" in the lieutenant's mouth. They meant well. They just didn't know Army stuff. Similarly, many outside writers don't know SBC stuff.

Of course, there's no escaping the world's contempt. The Bible makes this clear. And I so very much appreciate the Fundamentalists' readiness to forsake popularity for principle. I envy them their enemies.

That being said, I still press on in my response. The truth of Scripture and Christ is offensive enough to the world. No reason to add to that the contempt that comes from misrepresentation. And to call Southern Baptist conservatives "fundamentalists" is confusing. What's more, it's inaccurate to call most Fundamentalists "fundamentalist" when you use the word in its pejorative sense.

Let's look now at conservatives. (I believe that this label fits me better.) Conservatives conserve, they take steps to guard their theological heritage. You might even call them theological traditionalists.

Does this mean that everything in our background is sacrosanct? Mercy no. Conservatives have cast aside old racial prejudices. They've broken fresh conceptual ground in church planting and growth. They've worked with a variety of new music and worship forms. So how are they traditionalists? Just study the old state papers, the old Broadman and Convention Press books to see the continuities.

As I grappled with perhaps the toughest issue a pastor faces today, what to make of divorce and remarriage in the church, I came upon bold statements from the thirties, forties, and fifties. Here A. T. Robertson took a stand against cultural drift on this issue. There Ronald Q. Leavell uncompromisingly held up a standard. Now I'll grant you that biblically conservative men come to differ in application on this matter. But the tone of our heritage is plain enough. We do not wet our finger and put it into the wind to find out how we should proceed. We scrutinize Scripture and press ahead whatever the world might think.

Read on. Note the early passion for souls, the zeal for revival, the insistence on piety. Mark clearly the conviction that sin and hell are real and dreadful and that the blood of Christ is our only hope. Acknowledge our predecessors' absolute confidence that God commanded the decimation of Ai, that Isaiah foretold Cyrus's assistance, that Lazarus came forth. Friends, that is our core heritage.

Everyone seems to like the word conservative. But I marvel that someone who smiles at the emergence of women pastors and raises doubts about the existence of a personal devil could presume to call himself a conservative. Either he's fudging, or he just doesn't know where we came from.

I once asked a Nazarene what they believed. He said simply, "If John Wesley were to come back today, he'd join us." Maybe so. I can't judge. But I think the approach is instructive in our context. What's a conservative Southern Baptist church? The kind B. H. Carroll or Lottie Moon would join were they to return. Do you doubt this? Read Carroll's remarks on Scripture. Study Lottie's falling out with Professor Crawford Toy.

What then of the moderates? Who are they?

The stock explanation, the one you see again and again in the press, goes somewhat like this: "Conservatives (or fundamentalists) believe the Bible is literally true. Moderates allow for interpretation." Every time I read something this outlandish in print, I begin to doubt all the other things I've ever read in newspapers. Perhaps men didn't really land on the moon after all. Maybe Elvis is still with us.

Listen people. Conservatives don't believe the Bible is all literally true. They don't believe that a literal honed, seven-headed beast will arise from the sea, that Jesus is a literal gate, that there was a literal Good Samaritan. They know that Scripture contains metaphors, symbols, and parables. And they surely make room for a wide range of interpretations – just watch conservatives wrestle with predestination, the millennium, spiritual gifts, and church governance.

What they do say is this: When the Bible gives historical reports, it gets them right. You can trust the miracle accounts. The Jordan really did stop for the Ark of the Covenant to allow the children of Israel to cross. You can trust the genealogies. Adam really existed and was an ancestor of Jesus as Luke reports.

But wait a minute. Many moderates too claim to believe the miracle accounts. What's the difference? Simply this. They don't think that it's crucial to believe in this way. If someone thinks Adam was myth, that God wouldn't really have commanded Abraham to kill Isaac, it's really no big deal, just so long as they accept Jesus as their Savior. It doesn't trouble them when someone says, "The Bible is a book of salvation, not a book of history or science. We must not press it to do things it was not meant to do. Lighten up."

Conservatives agree that the Bible should not be asked to do what it wasn't designed to do, but [maintain] that it does intend to report history in many places. When it does, it does not err. Conservatives hold, furthermore, that to question the historical veracity of Scripture is spiritually disastrous. You'll have no power for soul-winning. You'll meander into all sorts of doctrinal confusion. You'll poison your students' prospects for anointed ministry. Over against the moderates' "No big deal", they assert "Big deal!"

The label "moderate" implies equanimity and measured thoughtful action. No fanaticism here. No stridency. Just good ole middle of the road stuff.

Is this accurate? Not really. On the surface, you have the "You're OK/I'm OK" approach. But, in fact, they are mellow only up to a point. Allen Bloom has described them beautifully in his book, The Closing of the American Mind. Their warm toleration gives way to wrath at just one point, the one at which they perceive intolerance. Pass judgment on a professor's writings and urge sanctions and the moderate will most immoderately beat the tar out of you. Moderate indeed! We hear references to militant fundamentalists. How about militant "moderates?"

When a U.S. Congressman supports the ERA, gay rights, NEA funding for Maplethorpe, and Roe v. Wade, then he is called a liberal. Never mind that his wife is a traditional homemaker, he is heterosexual, he finds the photos repugnant, and they'd never consider an abortion for themselves. Whatever his personal bent, it's his public policy commitments that determine our description.

We hear again and again of Southern Baptists who are personally conservative in theology, but who will not raise their voice to question the funding of professors who seem intent on undermining the very theology that gave their schools life. Instead, they will fight to secure these positions against their critics. Why doesn't this count as liberalism as it would, by analogy, in Washington?

"But," they say, "there are those to our left-Bultmann, for instance. So you can't call us liberals." Well, Chapman has folks to his right and you call him a Fundamentalist. Fair is fair.

What, finally, shall we say of liberals? I agree with G. K. Chesterton here. He can't imagine how we can call folks who disbelieve in angels and parting seas liberal. Instead, they seem to be the most constricted of theological thinkers, blind to the miraculous, enslaved to current scientific opinion, toadying before the world's agenda. Call then skeptics. Call them secularists. Call then anti-supernaturalists. But liberals? I recall asking an emeritus professor from the Vanderbilt Divinity School whether they had any evangelicals on the faculty. He said, "No, we take a more reasoned approach to religion than that." Well, excuuuuse me.

Did I mention the bonds of intellectual arrogance? I declare, the "liberal" works on a very short leash.

Let me propose something of a cease fire among Bible believers. Moderates should stop calling conservatives "fundamentalists," and stop calling themselves "moderate-conservatives." Conservatives should stop calling moderates "liberals." There's some truth to all those labels, but there's a lot of untruth, silliness, or meanness in their use as well. Can't we just settle in with "conservatives" and "moderates?" There's give and take here. I believe it would help to lower temperatures a bit. Some of the steam could clear, and we might see a little better.