THE FAILURES OF FUNDAMENTALISM

By J. P. Sanders

Table of Contents

BIOGRAPHY

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J. P. SANDERS was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1917. His father was a Church of Christ minister and the family, on both sides, are members of that church. Mr. Sanders attended the Austin, Texas high school for the blind, graduating as valedictorian in 1936. He graduated summa cum laude from Abilene Christian College in 1940, with a major in English and Bible. He earned an M.A. at Vanderbilt in 1941, and a B.D. from Vanderbilt's School of Religion in 1943, where he won the Founder's Medal for scholarship. He studied at Yale in 1943-44.

Mr. Sanders served Churches of Christ in Covington, Kentucky (1944-47) and Cincinnati, Ohio (1947-50). In the Ohio area he preached in most of the Churches of Christ in the Great Lakes region and served the Christian Leader as associate editor. From 1950 to 1954 he served the Kilbum Avenue Church in Rockford, Illinois, where he also organized and directed a camp for under-privileged children.

In 1954, Mr. Sanders accepted a call to the First Christian Church in Anaconda, Montana, remaining until 1959. He went next to the First Christian Church in Missoula, Montana, and remained there until June, 1964. He moved to the Fruitridge Christian Church in Sacramento, California, in 1964. His strong concern for social justice keeps him involved in many service areas. He works now with the Sacramento Peace Center, is on the board of the city's Society for the Blind, and labors with the Social Action Commission of the Sacramento Area Council of Churches.

[INTRODUCTION]

When faith dies, its remains are embalmed into a creed. After fire goes out, only ashes are left as a reminder of the warmth and glow. When the spirit flees, the letter stays.

This alternation is discernible in literature, art, politics, and religion in what we know as convention and revolt. When a creative and dynamic spirit appears, it finds the old forms and conventions inadequate for its use. It revolts against them in order to express itself in its own way. Its new forms are fluid, experimental, subservient to the spirit that struggles to express itself. In time, however, even this revolt is captured by the system-makers who proceed to turn the revolt into a new and rigid convention. After a while, a new rebel arises to break through this convention and form his own medium. New wine can never be contained by old wine skins but must be forever finding new ones. Each new skin in turn becomes old.

A Shelley finds the literary conventions of his day brittle and confining for his free spirit. He rebels and shocks contemporaries with radical innovations. The critics who followed him, however, accepted his new forms and made them into another orthodoxy. In religion there is a built-in tension between convention and revolt. It is not always described in these terms but is more often described as conflict between letter and spirit, between law and grace, between works and faith. To put it in personal terms, the alternation of convention and revolt can be seen as the perpetual struggle between priest and prophet.

Micah, the revolutionary prophet, attacked the priests head-on when he asked religion's basic question: "With what shall I come before the Lord?"

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Micah wanted to know if (as the priests were saying) he could come to the Lord with burnt-offerings and calves a year old -- that is, would outward ceremonies and works of obedience bring him to God? If he brought thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil -- would the multitude of the works bring him to God? This was a clear taunting of the priests and their system of external works and doctrinal orthodoxy. In contrast, Micah made the startling challenge: "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Space does not permit me to explicate this tension as seen in the writings of Hosea, Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, and some of the late psalmists. All of them, in their own way, challenged the same orthodoxy and with the same revolutionary insights.

Twice Jesus quoted Hosea's succinct attack on the priests: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice." He used it to summarize his own battles with the Pharisees. He told them to go and learn what Hosea meant. His hearers were proud students of the Scriptures who were surely familiar with this saying from their prophet. Jesus seems to be saying that they had so conventionalized the rebel that they could no longer comprehend what he was really saying. Thus the priest, though well-versed in the letter of the law is unable to lay hold of the spirit of the law which is its true meaning. It was their misunderstanding of the prophets that let them decorate the tombs of the prophets while they themselves were unprophetic and would have killed the prophets if they had lived at the same time with them. The Daughters of the American Revolution are perhaps the last ones to comprehend that revolution because they themselves are so unrevolutionary. The Pharisees had conventionalized the prophets' revolt and made their heresy into an orthodoxy. What the prophets had cried out in the power of the spirit, the Pharisees had formalized into the letter. Faith had

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become a creed, the fire ashes. The dynamite of the prophets could now be handled with safety.

It was this battle for the prophetic faith which brought Jesus to his death. Defenders of the priestly orthodoxy would not let him live. He showed them that their own prophets, Elijah and Elisha, did not share their racist views. His statement that "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath," was itself enough to mark him as a dangerous radical who was distressingly "free" in handling Scripture and its requirements.

Paul's conversion, in my understanding, was not so much the conversion from one religion to another as it was the conversion from priestly to prophetic faith. He said he was brought up in the "strictest sect" of the Pharisees. He evidently was unhappy in it quite early and was tempted to rebel, for he "kicked against the goad. He was wretched under that strict system, for he found in it only condemnation. If Paul had been brought up in the prophetic tradition instead of the priestly, his subsequent life would doubtless have been much different. Needless to say, in that event Christianity itself would be much different. What Paul found in Jesus Christ was what Jesus himself had found in the prophetic stream of Judaism. When he wrote that "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life," he was probably speaking out of his own harrowing experience of changing from the priest to the prophet.

Paul soon found that even Christians, called to the prophetic faith, could fall back to the priestly way without leaving their formal relationship with the Christian church. Christians can make a convention in their turn out of the Christian revolution. Paul found it necessary to remind his Christian friends that "circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but faith working through love." This was precisely the same point Jesus had made about the sabbath's being for man, not man for the sabbath. Paul's

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battle with the Judaizing teachers in Galatia was the same as Jesus' battle with the Pharisees, or the battle of the eighth century prophets with the priests of their time.
 

FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE PRIESTLY TRADITION

The Protestant Reformation was the revolt of the prophetic spirit of the sixteenth century against the conventionalized religion of the priestly medieval church. Luther's stress on faith within as opposed to outward works, on individual conscience as opposed to dogmatic orthodoxy, on the freedom of the man in Christ -- all this was but a re-phrasing of the old prophetic language. Again, it was the struggle of the spirit against the letter.

In our day, this prophetic Protestant revolt has been conventionalized into a new orthodoxy and rigid creed. This modern priestly form of Protestantism goes by the name of Fundamentalism.

As we have seen, the words and phrases used in the battle change from age to age, but the basic issues remain the same. Fundamentalism has the four inevitable marks of the priestly tradition in all ages, and in our time we have chosen to term these issues as follows: Scriptural literalism, legalism, sectarianism, and social irrelevance. I should like to discuss these marks in order and demonstrate how they are the essentials of any Fundamentalist -- or of any other priestly system.
 

 SCRIPTURAL LITERALISM

The priest, in seeking a system of faith which can be the unquestioned basis for conformity within the sect, may find authority for the system either through an infallible church or an infallible Scriptural interpretation. If he chooses the latter, the interpretation must be literal, since close attention to the spirit of the writing is individualistic and leads to heterodoxy. The

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jot and the tittle become supremely important, for the system as a whole depends upon them.

In his conviction that he can discover through the letter what the early church was and taught, the priestly type is persuaded that he can "restore" that early church by duplicating it detail for detail in our time. Restorationism is the effort to catch an historical process at one moment of its evolution and to fossilize it at that point for eternal duplication. Literal interpretation, at the most, can hope to resurrect only the corpse from the past; the experimental, fluid, and dynamic life is too evasive for such capture. The early church was not itself a rigid structure; the development of it, as seen through New Testament letters, shows this clearly. To talk about "restoring" the early church requires that we designate which early church -- for example, the one of Corinthians, or the one of the pastoral letters.

It seems to me that literalism, with its consequent efforts at restoration, fails to take into account the most elementary findings of modern Biblical scholarship. The Scriptures were obviously not written to be complete descriptions of anything, or blueprints. Paul, for instance, wrote letters as they were needed and addressed himself to the specific problems before him. He did not self-consciously write Scripture. He did not try to portray in detail what the church was; his readers already knew. We do not even have all the letters he wrote, and what he said that has now been lost may be most vital to any type of literal interpretation. Trying to piece together a coherent picture of the early church from these miscellaneous fragments is like following a truck loaded with a pre-fab, hoping that we can rebuild the house from the few pieces that chance to drop off.

There have been so many glosses, additions, and editorial changes in the process of time that we have

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no way of knowing exactly what the original text was. From what we have, we get glimpses -- little more.

One detail will suffice here. Acts 20: 7 says that "on the first day of the week, when we were gathered to break bread . . ." From this passing reference, some restorationists have tried to develop a pattern as to frequency of celebrating the Lord's Supper.

All that this verse says, however, is that on that particular day of the week that particular group in that place met to break bread -- whether it was the Lord's Supper or a common meal is not even made clear. We do not know whether this group always met on that day, or if it did we do not know that other groups did; certainly we do not know whether it was a common or universal practice. The fragmentary nature of the Scriptural record makes any such conjecture vain.

Restoration, it seems to me, is not only futile but also undesirable. Why should the church of the twentieth century want to be like the one of the first? That church became what it was in order to meet its needs and exigencies; to attempt to follow its exact form today is to deny the urgency we ought to feel for meeting the needs and exigencies of our own day.

We can read the New Testament and find the spirit of Christ at work. We can see men "compelled by Love," going forth to call men to God through Christ, and into fellowship with each other. But to assert that we have discovered the pattern of what that church was is to assert more than we can prove and more than we need to assert. The spirit of that early church can still give us life, but trying to live by its letter -- which we cannot even discern fully -- is lethal indeed.
 

LEGALISM

We have seen that the priest seeks an exact system of faith which can be the basis for the sect, and he seeks it through the authority of the church or the

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authority of literal Biblical interpretations. This system is a code of requirements, or what is often called "the plan of salvation."

Legalism sees sin as a violation of the written code. The code may or may not have relevance to man's need; it may be simply arbitrary requirements revealed by God. Man's disobedience to these rules becomes an affront to God.

The Pharisees loved the sabbath but saw little in it except its legal value as a rule to be kept. Jesus called on them to see the real meaning of the sabbath -- it is made for man. These people were scandalized when Jesus pointed out that one of their heroes, David, had illegally eaten the sacred bread when he was a hungry fugitive. Man's need had precedence over legal requirements and taboos.

Paul, under legalism, was wretched because he was honest enough with himself to know that he could not fulfill any law which God would give. The fault, he said, was not in the law but in his own fleshly weakness. He went on to say that not only his flesh, but no flesh, could be justified by law. Under legalism he had to fulfill the law to be justified, but he could not fulfill it, so that the law was to him constant death and condemnation. In Christ he found freedom from legalism through a new basis for salvation: his relationship to God through inward faith. Now, as a son, he worked harder than he had as a slave -- not to fulfill legal requirements, but in response to the love that had -set him free.

The dilemma which Paul posed remains legalism's dilemma. How can imperfect man be saved through the keeping of a perfect law? Some solve this dilemma for themselves by reducing the law's requirements to a keepable minimum. Since man cannot measure up to the law, then cut the law to his size.

Some, for example, put great emphasis on baptism as "essential to salvation." They do not usually put

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the same emphasis on forgiving enemies as "essential to salvation" -- though Jesus said more about this than about baptism. Some will make a test of fellowship on church polity but will not make a test on the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faith. In short, legalism, in its efforts to find justification by works of the law, eliminates the more difficult requirements in order that it might establish a law that can be kept.

Since legalism holds sin to be a legal violation, it holds salvation to be a legal payment. Man as a sinner must do certain things required of him for forgiveness. This is like paying a grocery bill or any other legal obligation -- so much for so much. If the grocer agrees to discount the bill and will settle for five cents on the dollar, still this is a legal transaction and a means of achieving debt-free status by meeting the required payments.

Prophetic religion would insist that salvation is not through a "plan" at all, but through a relationship; not through meeting requirements, but through love. Good works are a response to God's love, not a means of earning it. When love is there, there is a seeking to know God's will for his family; this means an involvement with the social problems of the day. Jeremiah blistered the priests in besieged Jerusalem for offering the people a false hope through legalism. The priests were saying that the city could not be captured because it had God's temple and because its people were obedient at the altar with their ceremonies. Jeremiah said that the truth was that "if you thoroughly amend your ways and doings, if you thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor, if you oppress not the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place neither walk after other gods to your own hurt: then will I cause you to dwell in this place . . . " The people, following their priests, were trusting in their scrupulous obedience to outward forms of religious practice and were ignoring

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the real will of God, which is for the relief and help of his people. Jeremiah called on the people, as Micah did, to seek God through social justice to his people, rather than through obedience to meaningless legal requirements.

Legalism begins with a God who is Judge, loving his law and wanting it kept; prophetic faith begins with God who is Father, loving his children and wanting justice and mercy for them.
 

SECTARIANISM

Priestiy religion seeks to establish a legal system or code for salvation through literal interpretation of Scripture. The code so arrived at must be accepted in detail by all who would be of the "in-group." Agreement on this legal code becomes the touchstone of belonging to the group. Those who differ are of the "out-group." The in-group, by definition, becomes a and its accepted interpretation becomes its creed, whether written or unwritten.

Restoration and its "Plea" became such a creed for the sect which separated itself from other Christians on this basis. This view of the church is the same as that held by the medieval Catholic Church-the only difference being that restorationism marks the church by its "true doctrine" while Catholicism marked it by the "true priesthood." In both cases the church is seen as a definite organization, exclusivist, infallible.

In the early days of the restoration movement, it was held that restoration of the early church pattern was the only means for uniting Christians. Unity and restoration were part of the same plea. It was thought that if the Biblical pattern could be presented, right-thinking people would all agree on it and unity would follow.

However, time and experience have convinced us that there is no one pattern that is convincing to all right-thinking people. Historical criticism has shown

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that with the process that produced the Scriptures it is impossible for any coherent pattern to be found. Thus, far from being a basis for unity today, patternism or restoration may become a sure and certain barrier to unity and has, as a matter of fact, resulted in more divisions. Any pattern we propose becomes divisive, marking those who reject it as the "nonchurch," and those who accept it as "the church," that is, a sect.

A group may advertise itself as being non-sectarian, when the very claim is in itself sectarian. By this claim, it marks itself as being different from other groups, unique in having some special truth that keeps it from being a sect. A group may say that it has no creed, while its very "creedlessness" is its test for exclusion, or its creed. If an unimmersed Christian should seek to enter that church, he might well find the sect's creed on immersion barring his way.

Paul told the Romans that "the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." Evidently some of them were literalists and legalists, exalting petty details into required doctrine which all must accept. Paul told them to center on the real matters of the faith. He urged them to get rid of the legalism and sectarianism that caused them to quarrel and divide over the minutiae.

We have not yet seen a sect built on justice, mercy, faith, peace, and righteousness. Such great concerns produce something greater in fellowship than a sect.
 

SOCIAL IRRELEVANCE

The sect, by the nature of its life, is introspective. It has mirrors where windows ought to be. Its concern is for its own housekeeping problenis-how to maintain the orthodoxy of the sect, and how to bring others to it. It must constantly define and redefine its terms so as to guard against creeping heterodoxy. In

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this introspection, it loses significant relationship to the world around it. The sect is not only separated from other sects but is also cut off from the mainstream of secular life. Being absorbed in its own institutional purity, it becomes irrelevant to the social concerns of the world.

Since the sect seeks to live by a document of two thousand years ago, which it interprets with great literalness, its look is also primarily retrospective. It lives in the backwater of life, talking of old questions and ancient issues but unable to come to grips with the contemporary urgencies. The early church was vital and dynamic, turning its world upside down, because it was valiantly dealing with the problems of its day. To try to live by a literal imitation of that church and its solutions is to be called from the living present to the dead past.

In a world like ours, filled with revolutionary change and challenge, the church must find through faith the insight and courage to minister as the early church ministered -- but not by the same letter. A world with increasingly crushing problems of exploding populations, urbanization, automation, racial tension, emerging nations, armaments escalation, the constant threat of nuclear disaster, mounting discontent of the world's poor in the presence of over-abundance -- in all this the church must have something more to offer than dry-as-dust irrelevances about the form of baptism, frequency of the Supper, and church polity. While the world is topsy-turvy in its search for new and meaningful value and understanding, the church cannot sit it out, arguing about the details of its own housekeeping chores. The church must be in the world to minister to it, and to give its life as a ransom for many.

When Paul was brought before Gallio for trial, his Jewish accusers babbled and quibbled about hair-splitting differences of their literal interpretations. Gallio, a pagan but a judge concerned for justice, became disgusted

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and said: "If this were a matter of right or wrong, I would deal with you. But since it is a question of words and names in your own law, see to it yourselves. I am not minded to judge in such matters." He drove them from the judgment seat. Here is the sad spectacle of a pagan man driving religious men away in indignation, not because they were too challenging and demanding, but because they were too trivial, talking nonsense, to a man concerned about more vital things.

In his parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus did not have to include a priest, but he did. The priest was pious, orthodox, meticulous about proper details of doctrine and practice in his temple functions, but he passed by his neighbor's need. His religion was of the temple, not of the road or marketplace. The one Jesus approved in the parable was the heretic, the despised Samaritan, who doubtless worshipped at the wrong temple in Samaria and who followed corrupted rituals at an illegitimate altar. Jesus' contrast between the priest and the Samaritan was not the contrast of race, for we do not know the race of the man who needed their help. He was contrasting priestly religion -- the religion of the altar, the legalistic, literalistic, sectarian religion of the Pharisees -- with the prophetic religion that is relevant to the bleeding of needy men.

When Jesus talked of separating sheep from goats, he said not a word about sound doctrine, the true sect, or any of the other priestly conditions. On the contrary, he talked about social needs: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, ministering to the thirsty, the sick, imprisoned, and strangers. Jesus held that separation comes at the point of a man's involvement with his brother's need and his willingness to sacrifice to release him, from misery. He further said that when we minister to men we minister to him. Micah had asked how we shall come to the Lord. Jesus said that we come to him through ministering to suffering. This is

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not far from Micah's own answer: "to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God."

The twenty-third chapter of Matthew contains parts of the bluntest and most scathing prophetic denunciation of priestly religion to be found anywhere in literature. There Jesus scored the Pharisees because they would carefully "tithe mint, anise, and cummin, and leave undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, and mercy, and faith." The conflict between priest and prophet is always here: which is more important, tithing and the other housekeeping chores of the sect, or justice in the marketplace, mercy towards the oppressed, and inward faith toward God?

One-tenth of our brethren in the United States are humiliated from morning until night every day of their lives simply because they are darker than most of us. Their cries for justice have gone unheeded, even by the church which should have been most concerned for this brother beside the road. The cry and demand has been taken into our streets. Still the nation resists, and still the church hesitates to take an unequivocal stand for their rights as men. Could anything be more priestly than for us to continue to baptize, commune, tithe and the rest, while our brethren and their children are daily humiliated? Shall we continue to call the people to solemn assemblies, to religious feasts, to prayers, and hymns, or shall we with Amos say that all these externals are no delight to the Lord but that we must let "justice roll down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream"?