Friday, July 04, 2003

Jared over at Thinklings has a great explanation of the difference between fundamentists and evangelicals. Those two terms are often interchanged, but they really mean different things, especially to the Christian you may be describing.

For instance, I would say that in my teens and early twenties I would have fallen firmly in the fundamentalist category. But as I’ve gotten older, wiser, and grown in my faith and understanding of grace I’ve moved more into the evangelical category. For example:

1. Human thought. Fundamentalists in general distrust scholarship and can be very anti-intellectual. Evangelicals on the other hand, believe all truth is God’s truth, that our minds are God-given, and that we insult God when we fail to think and use logic (or science when it is appropriate).

2. The nature of the Bible. Fundamentalists adhere to a literalism so broad, even they are doomed to violate it. (Stott points out: “Not even the most extreme fundamentalist believes God has feathers” (Ps.91:4).") Evangelicals, however, while believing that whatever the Bible affirms is true, add that some of what it affirms is figuratively or poetically (rather than always literally) true and is meant to be interpreted thus.)