My Fundamentalist Journey

My story is a story that is not unique.

My circumstances are not necessarily unique.

My locale and fellowship are in some ways quite different from the majority of those who have left extreme fundamentalism.

I haven’t left Fundamentalism, or extreme fundamentalism.   I haven’t left Fundamentalism in my doctrinal beliefs.  I have not left extreme fundamentalism in my area of ministry, only in my beliefs and in my teaching.

I was raised in a Christian home.  My mother tells me that, as a child, I would get up on the couch and “preach.”  I invariably preached to women about their hair and their pants.

As I grew older, I heard hard preaching against makeup, pants on women, facial hair on men, women cutting their hair, and anyone wearing any form of shorts.

All of this is in the context of a Landmark Baptist fellowship of churches.

I also heard much preaching about how wrong it was to use baptisteries.  After all, Jesus was baptized in Jordan where the water was running.  Are we better than He?

Much preaching was done against fellowship halls.  We built fellowship sheds instead.  I heard those preached against, too.

TV was an awful sin.

These things were tacked on to the other typical extreme fundamentalist dogmas.

I began to have some questions as a teenager.  I learned that it was better not to ask them.

Little by little  over the years I have found myself rejecting more and more of the more extreme views that I was raised to believe.  In the midst of all of this, I actually found myself very attracted to a very extreme group of IFB’s.  Some of their rules were not as stringent as those I was accustomed to.  I found, however, that attitudes were horrible in that bunch, and that conformity was the name of the game.

What truly led to my “deliverance”, or exit was the grace of God.  What He used, however, was a man and his book.  Desiring God b John Piper, and its companion volume The Pleasures of God took hold of my heart and gradually led me to see that true Christianity is indeed spiritual in nature instead of a blind conformity to rules and regulations.  Through these I learned to truly appreciate the Scriptures and love Christ.

I have found that Christianity is about pursuing holiness through a relationship with Jesus.  It is not about rule keeping.

I have learned the joy of loving Christ.

I have learned the doctrine of justification by faith as well as the free nature of grace.  I do not have to perform in any way to meet God’s approval.  I have that in Jesus Christ.

I have found that there are Christians who are not Baptists, and that I can love them and learn from them.  There are many who are not Baptists who love Jesus.

I have learned to seek to lead my people by teaching them the Scriptures (expository preaching, YES!) so that their transformation will be from the inside out as a work of God.

I have move from King James Only-ism to an understanding that God’s Word is in many different translations.  I still prefer the KJV, but that is a topic for another time.

The last eighteen years have been a blessed, but difficult journey.

I enjoy being a Christian now.

I can laugh without fear that I’ve sinned by laughing.

I can read my Bible and learn instead of imposing my own ideas on the text (something in which I’ll always have to grow).

I can rejoice that I’ve moved beyond most of the bitterness (if not all) that I once held toward those who misled me and mistreated me once I began to change my views on extreme fundamentalism.

I can rejoice that Christ still blesses and saves folks where the Gospel is preached.  I was saved in extreme fundamentalism.  Others can be, too.

I can rejoice for my heritage.  There were and are many in extreme fundamentalism who love Jesus.

I can rejoice that I am being used in a small way as an instrument of change in the fellowship of churches where I grew up.

I look forward to the future as I seek to serve Jesus.  I remain a Fundamentalist.

I am Fundamentally Changed, yet fundamentally the same.